Just a few months ago I traded a metal detector I had for a Tesoro Tejon with a 12×10 wide scan coil. With only a few hours on the Tejon I packed up and was off to Ohio for metal detecting and family time. I really wanted to put some time in on the Tejon and learn it in the setting I’m most comfortable with which is relic hunting. My favorite thing to do is overlay old maps and find where houses once were that is nothing but a farm field now.
I arrived in Ohio and was disappointed to find that all my fields I had researched were still in crops. I had a few backups for this and did find a field I had recently hunted had been harvested. My first day out metal detecting, a good friend of mine came to hunt with me. I had hunted this field before and pulled a few keepers out but didn’t have high hopes for it. Much of the site is under mounds of dirt and farming equipment along with a few old burn piles.
Right away Tim started finding good targets. A few civil war era buttons then a civil war store card token. I would barely start to swing and I was back to filming him. What I didn’t film is all three targets sounded great on the Tejon, he just got over the targets before I had. I did manage a nice flying eagle cent with the Tejon though.
Hot Rocks and Iron
Right from the start I found myself digging hot rocks but soon noticed they give a very distinct sound. The best way I know to explain it is an oscillating, drawn out tone. After digging several hot rocks it was obvious to me and I learned quickly to pass them up. I also learned to how to tell when I was hitting big iron. Like any other metal detector I’ve ever used bigger iron will fool a metal detector. Even with the most expensive metal detectors out on the market I’ve always found this a problem. Relic hunting I do dig a lot of iron because there are some great iron relics but I don’t want to dig them all and It is nice to know when you have iron under the coil. What I was finding with the Tejon is it will usually hit perfect one way (although sometimes the audio is clipped both ways) and the tone will be clipped when you turn 90 degrees. Time after time it would do this on bigger iron. I would say 90 percent of the time I knew for a fact I had big iron and another 5 percent of the time I was more than 50 percent sure it was iron. I found that the Tejon gave me better identification on large iron than even the most expensive metal detectors out there today.
I have been a relic hunter for many years and there are very few metal detectors I haven’t tried for relic hunting. Many well-known relic metal detectors and it wasn’t until the Outlaw that I felt I finally found the best metal detector for relic hunting. One of the things I like about Tesoro is they are so simple to use, they are great at locking on to good targets even in the heaviest iron debris areas and they are deep. One of the things I don’t miss about more expensive machines is a bunch of tones and information being thrown at you which really just over complicates matter when you’re relic hunting.
After this trip I now have well over 20 hours on the Tejon relic hunting but the trip wasn’t nearly what I thought it would be. Everything was still in crops and there were so many fields I didn’t get to hunt. Matter of fact all I got to hunt was three sites that had been hunted really hard before. The Tejon didn’t let me down though I still managed several finds including some great horse shoes, a few musket balls and several bits of copper, pewter and lead and of course the flying eagle cent.
I was able to use the Tejon in some of the really iron infested areas where I never suspected I would be able to which was really impressive to me considering I only have the 10×12 coil for it at this time. When it got to trashy I would switch to the Outlaw with the 8 inch coil. The Tejon was very easy for me to learn and one of the things I loved about it even over the Outlaw was discriminated targets that would cause an audio target were clipped and quieter than good targets. The outlaw on the other hand the discriminated targets that would cause an audio sound would usually have to be investigated for a moment before realizing it wasn’t a good target. This allowed me to work through the site quicker with the Tejon.
I quickly fell in love with the Tejon and with a smaller coil for the heavy iron debris I have to say it will be my relic machine of choice even beating out the Outlaw. Don’t misunderstand me, I still love my Outlaw and could never get rid of it but the Tejon is powerful, goes deep and was easy to learn. To me, the biggest advantage with the Tejon over the Outlaw was it’s ability to handle targets a little better and to clip rejected targets and they gave a quieter audio response. I still feel like I have the two best relic machines out there and these simple, single tone machines never stop amazing me of just what they are capable of!
Tesoro Tejon Pro’s
- Simple to learn and use
- Lightweight
- Doesn’t feed me a bunch of information I don’t need
- Hits good targets hard, locks on them
- Deep and sensitive to even small targets
- Affordable
Tesoro Tejon Con’s
Headphone jack – I have this complaint with all Tesoro metal detectors. Being left handed the cord lays across the shaft and is often in my way. I would love to see the jack at the back of the detector.
Link to article/review of the Tesoro Outlaw
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