This was one of the last four articles I published in Lost Treasure, it was also one of the four I did not get paid for or get copies of the magazine. This may have been because of Postal improprieties, the Democratic Party of NM, and the Hachita Mayes political wheels. Postal employees at Hachita Bella Flores and Regina Balthazar were directly involved in this identity theft from me, and were also individually rewarded for their actions. Still nothing from the postmasters about this use of federal facilities to try to disappear people into Mexico.
To Discriminate Or Not?
By Bill Gallagher
1200 Words
I don't know how many times I have told the story, but thats because its a good one, and its true. When I was a young man, a long time ago, I met an old guy who couldn't see very well but who metal detected often. By the standards of the day I had a very fancy metal detector with lots of dials and power, while the older man had a very old machine with two dials. You turned it on, and you turned it off, and you tuned it. There was no discriminator on his machine or even ground balance, and I thought to myself, "Well good luck old guy", and then proceeded to have my clock cleaned. He out hunted me and could even tell what a target was by the sound it made, even though his machine was not a discriminator. I watched him do it! That old duck took a young bird under his wing that day, and showed me a thing or three which I never forgot.
My first exposure to treasure hunting was through metal detecting, so early on I had no clue that other forms of treasure hunting took place, like digging, and screening, and eyeballing, and all the rest. When metal detecting was everything to me, I was kind of limited in my view, but it helped make me what I am, and I am above all grateful for the time and energy and health to pursue these things of ours.
However.
If anyone had asked me back in my early days of treasure hunting if Metal Detector Discrimination was a good thing I would have looked at them as if they were perfectly daft, devoid of sense. Of course discrimination of metals is a good thing, look at all the junk you do not have to dig, and on and on. I imagine I could have gotten right worked up over it, but that was in the days before high blood pressure.
I still believe that ferrous/non-ferrous discrimination when metal detecting is a good thing, it is upward technological advancement after all, and it is also one of the worlds first working electronic recognition circuits, a definite necessity, those, when contemplating things like artificial intelligence. Through use of phase analyzation circuitry metal detectorists have had almost sole use of something that could eventually lead to reasoning computers. In fact those things are right around the corner as I write this. Hang on kids! Its good to realize ideas like these, ties it all together, the world does not seem so overwhelming.
Anyway. I eventually learned a lot more about treasure hunting, and my vistas broadened appreciably. I had some great teachers, Gary Bonar, who passed the knack on, Joe Hines, Tim Hardman Archaeologist, and some others. There were not a Lot of teachers, because of the nature of the thing, its rare knowledge that very few people know, to tell the truth.
Then came that fateful day in Steinhatchee, Florida (Esteen-hatchee), and my awakening to what some metal detectors are really capable of in optimum circumstance. I and I were trying everything possible to eke as much depth out of the Coinmaster as was possible. There were deep deep targets in the white sand from the early 1800s and I wanted more.
I'd already found a capped bust half dime in uncirculated condition in the sand at about six inches, and realized too that this area had been turned more than once by the paper company. There were probably good targets four feet deep here. The machinery the paper company uses is monstrous. The area was planted in rows of 20 year old pines. We had permission from Mr. Cooey to hunt the land as often as we wanted, and he owned it, leasing the land to the paper company so they could grow their trees for pulp there.
This fort site was already well hunted, and thats why I wanted the really deep stuff. I put the Coinmaster in GEB MAX, a wavery and somewhat unstable all metal mode, though it is super powerful. I was using an amplifier on my headphones of my own invention, and found that after awhile I could hear small things at 15 inches and greater if I concentrated and went very slowly. Motion is not required in GEB MAX. I could also hear pants zippers and shoe eyelets real well too.
Thats the place where I really learned to metal detect, and discrimination was the last thing I wanted there, it was ALL old stuff. Hardman once found a small disturbed Spanish camp site where everything went back to the 1600s, it was this isolated little spot on private property in the woods of northern Florida which had been planted in pulp pine to make paper, and he too said discrimination was not needed there because even the iron was collectible medieval stuff. Some of the people who hunt the old plantation sites along the eastern coasts and islands just shake their heads when asked if they discriminate with their detectors much. Most say the biggest part of the job is moving the obvious metal out of the way, so small deep targets can then be heard. Its a process and shirking of the steps just makes it a longer way to the deepest earliest materials.
Here is where another interesting point should be brought up. All these new detectors go deeper and find better things and this has been going on a long time. We learned early during the 70s and 80s that any site really hot in metal detecting targets, like any dirt piles from around barracks sites of old forts should be sifted after they are "Cleaned Out" with metal detectors. They should be screened to a depth until the targets run out, which is sometimes formidable, but more than worthy, it can mean many good finds.
I recently talked to a well traveled and experienced metal detectorist who has recovered more than one cache of size in his career, and he said something which piqued my interest. He said that as far as detector discrimination is concerned, even out here in the west, he hardly ever uses it anymore, because he has discovered, through experimentation over time, that he passes up way too much good stuff when taking even iron out of the equation. Many successful cache hunters frown on using detector discrimination, fyi. I myself dig many large iron targets and am constantly amazed at the degree of preservation of some, and the unique handmade qualities of a lot of it too.
Many caches are in iron cans, and will be passed over if iron is discriminated out.
There are definitely situations where its nice to have a discriminator, but the best situations in my experience, with the oldest most valuable stuff, can and should be done without any discrimination, and then screened. Good luck, and I will look for you in the field.
Bibliography
Authors personal experience
Conversations with Gary Bonar, Joe Hines, Tim Hardman and Richie Rich
Photo Explanations
1-4. Good iron relics are routinely passed over by metal detectorists using too much discrimination. The long piece was found in a dump near the Mexican border of the Southwest United States, and is the iron edge of a deteriorated wooden trunk. It is a casting, and may be of early Spanish origin. None of these would have been recovered if iron had been discriminated out.
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