Bounty Hunter Tracker IV
John Castle
| Bounty Hunter is not only a great name for a brand of metal detectors, it is also that of a new range of versatile machines at very competitive prices. It is not a new brand, as many old hands will know; but it is one that has undergone a metamorphosis in the capable hands of The First Texas Manufacturing Co into an enduring and widely accepted marque of some ten years' standing. In the £200 price bracket are to be found some of the best value purchases in modern motion metal detectors. Into their ranks now comes the Bounty Hunter Tracker IV at £199.00 sterling, offering new standards of great value and versatility. After testing it I found the phrase "first among equals" came easily to mind. Impressed? I sure was! |
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The oval control box is the first things that strikes one. It is of the usual ABS plastic of course, but it is not for nothing that nature imposes a similar shape on eggs. The control housing is strong, durable and has no seams to let in water.
Two thumb-bolts hold it to the ubiquitous cranked upper stem, which incorporates a stand and padded upper-arm cup. Into its lower end slides the lower stem, being kept there by a spring button which is also used to set stem length. The two stems fit closely enough together to eliminate nearly all unwanted movement.
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The standard coil is an 8 inch spider, with a 10.5 inch spider and a 4 inch solid available as options. This coil option is very useful and commendable...it is rare to find an interchangeable coil facility in this price range. Well done Bounty Hunter! |
The whole detector is an off-matt black and the dull sheen of this colouring is most attractive. The weight is slight and many hours of fatigue-free operation should be easily possible.
I couldn't wait to get out and try it, but I needed to familiarise myself with the controls first!
Knobs & Thingies
The handbook is medium format and contains all you need to get you quickly and easily on the right road. Read it and study it!
The control panel features are:
On-off/Sensitivity. Turns the power on and off and allows for the detector's sensitivity to be adjusted. Set it as high as the ground allows. A reduction will be necessary if bad chatter is heard, indicating very bad ground. It is better to experience some loss of depth than having a spitting and spluttering detector. You can't drive your car in top gear all the time can you? The same applies to your detector! But the Tracker IV is so good at coping with bad ground that large sensitivity reductions should not be forced upon one too often.
Discrimination. This is achieved via a standard rotary reject control. It doubles as a notch discriminator, depending on where the mode switch is set. Iron reject is automatic in both discriminate modes, even at minimum setting.
Mode Switch. This is a three-position toggle switch giving standard variable reject discrimination (left position), all-metal (centre position) and tone notch (right position). All are motion.
Minimum discrimination will almost always be the preferred setting for ploughed field-type hunting as small finds are retained whilst much iron junk is rejected. You might need a higher setting on coinshooting sites. To achieve this simply rotate the control to the right, but not too much! Some users will prefer the tone discrimination.
Setting the switch to its right-hand position gives the two-tone discrimination mode. Rejection of iron junk is still automatic at the minimum setting and if the discrimination control is set to minimum only high tones will be heard. But rotate it further and items reading below the setting, but above iron, will cause a low tone to be emitted. More conductive finds reading above the discrimination setting will cause a high tone to be heard. For items reading on the setting both tones will be heard simultaneously (a squawky sound). Set it to read ring-pulls here and we have a notch. But remember other items as well as ring-pulls will read here too, so use with care!
The low battery alert may flash when the Tracker IV is turned on or off. A continuous glow, perhaps accompanied by a continuous or repeating tone, means that it is time for fresh batteries!
The needle of the deflection meter will move right when an accepted target is located. Stronger signals will obviously cause greater deflections.
I regard headphones as mandatory whilst detecting, and I urge you to use them. A standard quarter inch jackplug socket is provided.
Out on Site
Previous experience with various Bounty Hunter detectors had revealed excellent iron junk and bad ground rejection whilst getting the goodies of all shapes and sizes. I didn't expect the Tracker IV to be any different, and it wasn't.
It was the potential beach use that aroused my curiosity. Bounty Hunter claimed chatter-free performance there, which isn't usual on motion detectors unless sensitivity is greatly reduced or if they have a specially-callibrated beach mode.
Well, Bounty Hunter were speaking the truth! A test coin, buried a few inches down, gave the same good response in wet or dry sand and at the same depths! The 10 inch coil would be a real benefit here as twice as much ground could be covered in any given time.
While I was on the beach I kept a weather eye on the workers who were repairing and/or replacing battered groynes. Field testing is fun and challenging, but I do like to find things too!
They knocked off for lunch at 12.30, except for the guy in the crane who watched us with interest...especially, no doubt, as we bobbed up and down picking up coin after coin (my wife Maureen was with me and using another model in the Bounty Hunter range). Coinshooting? "Coinscooping" would be a better term!
All our finds were totally encrusted and the one gold ring found (by me) was our grottiest ever. The bezel design had long been battered into illegibility. The freezing weather had nearly curtailed our trip, but in consideration of the finds made I was really glad we braved it!
Testing the detector on a farm field was rather more difficult...simply in terms of finding one to search. Most were seeded, but the one I did find was left fallow and covered in weeds. This field is one of my favourite test sites having badly mineralised ground and being full of iron junk.
True to form, the Tracker IV blithely ignored the bad ground and iron. But not the finds! These included a token from the 1660s, a coin weight, a hammered penny, and a badly corroded ring brooch; this was besides masses of non-ferrous junk, some of it very small.
I used my normal technique with four-filter motion detectors, which is to search in all-metal then check each signal in discrimination. This is easy on the Tracker IV with the handy mode switch. Finds are less likely to be missed in the all-metal mode, although some types of bad ground will cause the discriminate mode to give better results. This is the exception rather than the rule and only site and detector experience will dictate which should be the primary search mode. In either case set discrimination at zero to ensure small finds are not missed. Iron and bad ground reject will still be excellent.
The weekends we spend at my eldest son's house are usually taken up with playing Trivial Pursuit, in which he and I reign pretty well supreme over the team consisting of our respective spouses. But there was to be no late night and long lie-in this trip. There is a river foreshore not too far from his house. So off we went to paddle in the mud for an hour or two.
The mud represents awful search conditions in terms of ground mineralisation and iron junk, but the Tracker coped fine - even with the 8 inch coil. I have never found anything old here in the past, and I didn't this time. My finds were decimal coins, probably thrown in for luck (fancy thinking that a measly 1p or 2p coin would secure the benevolent attentions of Lady Luck!). However, it was another enjoyable session - despite the mud - and I am sure the Tracker IV would make a great Thames machine, especially with the natty little 4 inch coil.
The last site tried was yet another common, near home this time. Heavy junk meant that discriminate was my primary search mode, although I checked anything I wasn't sure of in the pinpoint mode. The pinpoint mode is motion as well, but I had long since learned how to adapt to that.
I finished the test with a smile on my face. I am glad that Joan Allens will be importing, and I will be selling this machine. I would not like to try to compete with it!
This is a very user-friendly detector at a very competitive price. It works well everywhere and is light and easy to use. I cannot see anything else in the £200 price range that offers any serious challenge to it in terms of versatility and value for money. I would be perfectly happy to keep one as a back-up machine, or even use one as a main detector where extremely adverse site conditions make deep detecting impossible. It is an ideal beginner's machine and the optional coils extend its versatility even further. I can't see how the Bounty Hunter Tracker IV can fail to be a success. In fact, I'd put money on it and I am not normally a gambler!
The Bounty Hunter Tracker IV is available from Joan Allen Electronics Ltd, 190 Main Road, Biggin Hill, Kent TN16 3BB, UK. Telephone: +44 (0)1959 571255, Fax: +44 (0)1959 576014, E-mail: sales@joanallen.co.uk.
