Ken’s poker-chip site survey

Ken’s poker-chip scout

A 10–15 minute first visit can give you a reason to return. Ken uses this technique to locate easy, worthwhile signals and focus limited time where the strongest clues are, rather than spend the visit wandering randomly.

Owner’s field technique, based on his experience. This is a selective survey to plan a fuller hunt.

1. Read the site. Study old maps, photographs, entrances, paths, gathering places and how people would have used the ground. Confirm access before searching.
2. Set up for coverage. Choose a larger compatible coil where practical. Test a dime on your own rig and use a selective discrimination pattern that retains its response. There is no universal dime cutoff across detectors.
3. Scout broadly. Walk likely activity areas. Mark promising repeatable signals with retrievable poker chips or Scout-mode VDI pins. Avoid spending all your time exhaustively searching the first patch.
4. Look for a pattern. Notice groups of signals and how they relate to historic use. Cross-sweep the strongest signals from another direction.
5. Recover the best clues. Dig the most promising easy targets. Record the actual find, date if legible, depth, rig, VDI and conditions. An easy older coin is Ken’s strongest reason to say, “I’m coming back.”
6. Make a return plan. Prioritize the promising concentrations, then return to systematically search the rest, including quieter areas and targets excluded by the first-pass settings.
7. Leave cleanly. Collect every chip, recover your equipment and check the return route before daylight runs out.

An easy old find supports a promising-site hypothesis. It cannot prove the site was never searched; missed targets, masking and later losses are possible. A quiet selective pass cannot prove the ground is empty.

High discrimination can reject valuable low-conductivity targets. Lower the discrimination and investigate other target families during the fuller hunt. Garrett’s discrimination guidance.

Scout → focus → return

Scout marks preserve your observations, not automatic identifications. Map suggestions show concentrations in your saved marks. They do not infer target density, guarantee valuable finds, or certify that a site is untouched.

Go to gives true-north bearing and straight-line distance. Backtrack uses recorded route segments and pauses at recording gaps. Arrival alerts require this page to remain active; test sound, volume, vibration and screen glow before heading out.

Sunset is an approximate NOAA solar calculation. US weather is loaded on request from the National Weather Service; it is not continuous warning monitoring.