Beach Metal Detecting Secrets!

Beach Metal Detecting in 2019

Everything you read below this paragraph will cover my experience in 2018. However beach metal detecting in 2019 will be a little different for me. I’m going to try something completely different in and use the XP Deus metal detector and it’s the Gold Field program. I plan on writing and taking video for a full review sometime this summer. Now keep reading if you want to know how I did beach metal detecting at Hilton Head in 2018 using the XP Deus.

UPDATE 08/16/2019:

I am back from my beach vacation and like I promised I gave program 10 -Gold Field a good testing with the XP Deus. You can check out my full write up for 2019 by clicking HERE.

Metal Detecting Beaches With The XP Deus (version 5.X) and The HF 9″ Round Coil 

Over the summer, I took the XP Deus metal detecting with the High Frequency (HF) 9″ Round Coil and had some good success with it. The beaches I metal detected were at Hilton Head, SC. If you haven’t detected there before, the beaches are clean, hard, long, and vast. In other words, the beaches don’t give up their treasure easily so expect to work for everything you find there. Metal detecting is hard!

Here are a Couple of Things You Might Consider Before Metal Detecting on The Beach

1. One of the first things I do is figure out the low tide schedule. You can find the Hilton Head’s Tide Schedule here.
2. The 2nd thing I always do is take notice of where all the people are hanging out in the water and where their towel lines are in the sand. High tide really comes in close so there are always those few unfortunate tourists who don’t realize how high the tide actually gets so pay close attention to where the wet and dry sand meet. Metal detect from the dry line to about 50 feet into the wet sand. You will tend to find most of your clad there and maybe that gold wedding band that someone tucked under their towel and forgot about.
3. Test your machine. Take a few coins, bottle caps etc. out on the beach and bury them in both dry and wet sand. This will give you and idea of how your machine reacts. Most VLF machines have a hard time ground balancing in the wet sand so its important to figure out these things first before you start hunting.
4. Get a red light. If you beach hunting at night I always take a flashlight or a head lamp that has a red light. At Hilton Head you aren’t supposed to be on the beach with a light between certain hours. I think it was somewhere between 10 PM – 2 AM. But red lights are fine. It all has to do with the sea turtles.
5. Finally, take pepper spray or something in case you get corned by someone. Especially if you are hunting during the early morning hours. Society is getting too whacked out on drugs and this was the first time I’ve ever been approached by zombies. They were seriously tripping on something and I politely kept conversation and kept walking away. You never know what kind of people you’ll meet on a Friday and Saturday night on the beach so be careful. I will be armed with some kind of spray next year!

So what did the beaches of Hilton Head give me in 2018?

Honestly, I dug up a lot of junk but they were good targets. They were the typical items you would expect to find on the beach like bottle caps, fishing weights, coins etc. I did manage to pull up a religious bracelet that includes the lords prayer and a small ring. In addition, I did break a personal record by digging up 7 pairs of sunglasses (2 pair are missing from the photo). Again, not a bad outing for a couple of nights on the beach. The Deus did well in my opinion and I would use it again.

Howto Setup the XP Deus (version 5.x) for beach metal detecting?

Here is my custom program that I used on wet sand and it worked really well. I prefer hunting the wet sand over the dry sand because I personally believe you have better odds at finding the lost bling bling. As a result, I did most of my hunting with this program. Remember, I was using version 5.0 at the time with the HF 9″ round coil. This program should work fine if you are using version 4.1 or 5.1. If you need to or want to upgrade your XP Deus software you can get the the update by clicking here. If you aren’t sure how to update the software, I put a link to the XP Video that explains and walks you through the update process. Its really easy but you have to do it on a Windows PC and not a MAC.

MentalMetal’s XP Deus Custom Beach Program:

DISCRIMINATION = 0 I found that this worked really well for me on that beach. 

3 TONES  Fregs: 202, 518, 993
THRESHOLD: 0, 0-50, 50-100

SENSITIVITY = 85

FREQUENCY  (whatever works, but 14.4 seemed to work the best for me)

IRON VOLUME = 0

REACTIVITY = 2.5
SILENCER = (-1)

AUDIO RESPONSE = 3

GROUND BALANCE choose Beach and use the “Pumping” technique to ground balance. You might have to GB often. . 

Would you recommend a different setup for the beach? Leave a comment below. I’d love to try something different the next time I’m heading for the beach.

Need to update your XP Deus? Here is a video explaining how.

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