If a person is lucky, there will be a few times in their life where they truly find pleasure in an activity. For me, metal detecting has been one of them. The chance to look at something...anything...with child-like wonder is like nothing else. There's always been an "adventurer" in me, not all of those "adventures" were well-advised, if you know what I mean. 7 years ago my wife and kids were on a weekend getaway with my in-laws, I don't quite recall how I got out of THAT trip but there I was, at home. I decided to go through the classifieds because I always thought that metal detecting would be really fun, and I was looking for something for my twin boys to do outside. Little did I know that they would have little to no interest in the hobby, but it bit me badly.
After 4 years of running a well-known USA made machine, I had really done a number on my local parks and schools, they had been stripped of any coin of any kind. In that entire time, I managed to find 22 silver coins, which I was pretty happy with. If I found 1 silver coin in a dozen outings, it was exciting to me. I quickly became the hunter who read maps, did research, talked to whoever would listen about detecting...it was, and is, a big part of who I am.
After exhausting my local opportunities, I expanded, driving an hour or more to different towns to hunt whatever public land they had. The odd thing was, they didn't seem to have any more silver coins than my local areas did. I initially thought this was strange. After thinking about it, the problem wasn't that my area didn't have silver coins, it was that my machine wasn't able to see the real deep coins, which it turns out are mostly older...and silver.
As luck would have it, a fairly local seller traded me my machine which he wanted and a bit of cash for a used Explorer II which was in stock and great condition. I wanted to test it out and see for myself what all of the Minelab guys had been talking about...the Explorer's ability to see deep silver. I thought the test would be the best if I took it to all of the places I thought I had cleaned out very well.That first season(it was purchased in March) I found exactly DOUBLE the number of silver coins I'd found with my other machine in 4 years! To find 44 silver coins in my "hunted out" local area to me was astounding. Almost ALL of these coins were very deep, around the 8"-9" level. It did not take me long to buy a shovel made for detecting...and to realize that driving long distance to find these coins wasn't necessary after all.
In the spring of 2016 after one season with the Explore II, fate would provide an influx of money that allowed the purchase of the CTX 3030. I thought to myself, “People have been RAVING about how this machine can find even more targets because of its ID capabilities on targets that are very deep. I have to try these SAME SITES all over again!" So I did, and at the close of 2016 the number AGAIN DOUBLED...88 silver coins! I had trouble reconciling my first "awesome machine" with the fact that it had missed 5 times the number of silver coins that it had found.
When people talk of how "good" a machine is, to me, the results do the speaking. If a hunter goes out to find ANYTHING and happens to find something good, that is circumstance. When a hunter goes in search of a particular target, and is able to find them on a regular basis, that is more than "circumstance”, it is precision hunting. For me, to be able to go to my local areas without driving long distance in hopes of "better" sites, that is priceless. In 2017 I've had the opportunity to hunt some new areas, and the numbers again are impressive at 109 silver coins so far! There are so many spots that most people have that with the FBS/FBS2 technology, they may be able to hunt for a lifetime. The silver coins are out there, possibly in numbers that would dumbfound anybody. With the proper equipment we can ALL have a great chance of finding them. And it doesn't have to be a long road there...
Kevin - Wisconsin, USA