Where people are active and moving around, coins and jewelry are often lost. Ballfields such as baseball diamonds, soccer fields, and football fields are excellent locations to use your Garrett Ace 250 metal detector. Though I personally do not wear my wedding band when playing sports, there are plenty of guys and gals who do wear their rings, chains and earrings on the field.
Throwing, tumbling, jumping, and tackling all require a lot of force that can fling a ring, spill coins or break a soft gold chain. Often the players do not even know they have lost their jewelry or coins until long after the fact and finding the lost items by eye sight alone is difficult due to the shear size of most playing fields.
Because most ball fields are well maintained, I prefer to only dig the shallow targets that can be popped out with a screw driver or with as minimal digging as possible so that the maintenance crews don’t become alarmed and try to ban us from searching the fields as has happened at some locations.
In general, I have found that both the sidelines and the field itself are productive, though my metal detecting strategy for each part of the ball field is different. Sidelines tend to be very trashy and so I prefer to use the Ace 250 sniper coil and will at times use a little more discrimination. I also slow down my sweep speed so that the metal detector has plenty of time to recover between targets.
During the first pass of the area, I like to cherry pick the high conductor coins and silver jewelry. If the location yields a fair amount of silver jewelry, then I know that there is a good chance that gold jewelry may also be present and depending on the amount of trash, I may back off on the discrimination.
Note: I prefer to keep the Ace 250 in all-metal mode to better distinguish targets. The discrimination I am currently referring to is visual in that I check the Target Id and mentally decide if the TID is acceptable or not.
When metal detecting the ball field itself, I like to use the stock coil or larger to get better coverage. It is helpful to grid off the playing field as you will not likely cover the entire field on one trip. When searching the field, be sure to take your time and don’t rush it.
While it is easy to stay focused in active zones such as near the goals or bases, it can take more discipline to not get sloppy in the outfield or open areas as signals are not as frequent. However, these zones often contain jewelry items and seem to be detected less often than the infield and high action areas.
Remember to always overlap your coil sweeps and to ALWAYS fill in your holes. Ball fields are one place where you should use a drop clothe to hold any soil if you do any form of digging. This keeps the field tidy and the crews happy.
Related Garrett Ace 250 Articles:
Ace 250 Discrimination & Target ID (TID)
Beach Metal Detecting with a Garrett Ace 250
Gold Nugget Hunting with the Garrett Ace 250
Relic Hunting with an Ace 250 Metal Detector
Water Hunting with a Garrett Ace 250
Garrett Ace 250 Silver Coins & Jewelry Tips