TO CHERRY PICK OR NOT TO CHERRY PICK THAT IS THE QUESTION!!!!!

Everybody, welcome to episode one hundred and eight of the Metal Detecting Show podcast.

My name is Ciaran, and I have been Metal Detecting for nearly thirty years. This week, I want to talk about cherry picking or when to dig versus when not to dig.

So let's get on with the show. Everyone, before we start, I want to thank you for listening to the podcast, and I hope you enjoy the show this week. But before we begin, I want to give you the following information.

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Hey, everybody. I hope you had a great week this week. So this week, we got through that family event I talked about last week, some great success.

So it's starting to look good for me to start getting out there again. This week, I want to talk about cherry picking and what factors are at play when you should or shouldn't cherry pick.

Starting with when you shouldn't. Now, it's not a surprise when you begin detecting, you're always advised to dig everything.

Every signal is a learning opportunity. and only when you can tell the difference between a trash and a good signal should you start looking at cherry picking. This is very much a trap.

Most detectors fall into not advancing from the digging everything phase, making it hard to break that habit later in the hobby. Next, when you shouldn't cherry pick is when the targets are directly proportional to the level of trash.

So when the trash is low or zero and the targets are high, then dig everything. Don't cherry pick. Conversely, when the trash is high and the good targets are low, you will need to cherry pick or else spend a day digging trash.

Also, when trash is low, it's likely the targets will also be lower It's a simple fact that the good finds will always be less than the number of trash finds.

So the lower the trash, the more you should dig. So you can see cherry picking very much depends on location and site quality. but also is very dependent on the type of target you're looking for.

For example, the classic gold ring and ring pulls quandary. Beach Honkers will dig everything that smells like a pull tab simply because pull tabs are made of aluminium or aluminium which is beside gold on the conductivity scale.

And as most metal detectors operate using this scale, then the odds of one of those pull tabs being a gold ring is slightly higher than one, so you should dig them if you're searching for gold rings and maybe don't cherry pick.

However, if you're searching for silver coins or jewellery, then you should ignore these signals as silver is higher under conductivity scale.

In fact, it's the highest, so can easily be cherry picked out of the noise. It's about risk and reward, risk being finding trash and wasting valuable hunting time, your award being how likely the target is to being a keeper.

Only you can make that calculation For example, I can smell a twenty cent coin or a fifty cent coin in the ground. As soon as I hear it, I'm going, that's a twenty or fifty cent coin. and be right three out of four times.

However, depending on how long it will take me to dig it out and the chances of me being wrong, that one in four times sets off an internal conflict of am I wasting time here digging up a three out of four chance of a fifty cent coin.

So generally, I go if I can get it in the first shovel easily, I'll grab it.

Otherwise, I'll leave it. It's not worthy effort and that brings me to my next point. Time. How much time you have dictates to what level of cherry picking are targeting you can do.

Don't be complacent and fall into the trap of well. I have permission here. I can dig this as many times as I want and dig everything. Unfortunately, you might never get back to that site.

Permission might be pulled, you might get injured, or some other detectors also has permission and will blast true the sight cherry picking when they have the chance. It's a fact, the less holes you dig, the more ground you can cover.

So if you're digging everything, you're not going to cover as much ground. And because of this, you might not get that find that will make your day. Remember, it only takes one find to make your day.

I have never come home from a hunt, delighted that I dug up one hundred bits of trash. However, if I came home and I dug up twenty bits of trash and one silver coin, that's a different ballgame altogether.

Pick a target type, cherry pick, and get to the next target as quick as you can. It's that simple. If you're Lucy Gucci in general when selecting a target, you will have a high level of trash.

That's why the people who you love to watch a YouTuber TV are so good. Watch them. If it's someone who only looks for gold rings, they only focus on gold rings.

If it's Roman coins, they only focus on Roman coins, and they cherry pick their sights to match this. and attune their ears to what they want to find. And one hundred percent disregard everything else.

You could take a beach detectorist and put them on a field or vice versa, and port will struggle like a fish out of water as the detector is not playing the music they're used to hearing.

The same can be said for the type of detector you have you need to match your detector to what and where you're looking.

No point having a great field detector on a beach if you're only going to search beaches. especially if that detector is designed for fields.

Most detectors we have try to be all things to all detectors However, they do miss the mark most of the time or sit in the middle and not the best they could be when a detectorist is trying to cherry pick.

So if you're going to cherry pick, check out what your detector is good at cherry picking or what its natural environment is.

Terry picking takes a lot of discipline and requires that you know what you're looking for and whether the location supports that.

You can't really cherry pick if you're just going out hunting for silver, but digging every signal that is not silver in the chance of it being something else cool.

Which I have to admit is what I do sometimes. However, the days I enjoy the most are the days I go out with a specific target in mind, kinds, silver, or relics. That's it, Grace.

Before we go, I want to add some great information provided by Aaron McEwen via a speech like this week. Over to you, Aaron. Hello. My name is Aaron McEwen. I'm originally from England. I live in America now in Michigan.

I recently discovered the podcast on iTunes. Love it. Keep up the good work. I just wanna say I get a lot of tips each time I go out. I've been seriously detecting now for about four and a half, five years.

Was just going over your underwater metal detector podcast. A big thing to a big thing for your listeners is to make sure they know that equipment well because sometimes you won't be able to see underwater.

And occasionally, you might not wear a lens because it kicks up filts. So if you're looking for a target, you might lose it with all the silky kicking out.

I'll send you a picture of a find that I have from the neighbor that we lost their wedding ring, and they lost it for four years, couldn't find it, give a hope.

I said, if you don't mind, I wouldn't mind trying to take a look for Next thing, you know, I'm mister Richardson.

I found the wedding ring and they were super happy. I got fifty dollars and two days for it. So Anyway, keep up the good work.

Thanks again. Bye. Thanks, Aaron. Some great advice there, coupled with some very high praise. I really appreciate it. That's it for this week. I hope you liked this episode of the metal detecting show podcast.

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