As a native French speaker from France I will give you some insight about how we use “dégoter” here.

As everything else in French, it’s again a matter of context.

“Il est sorti en boîte de nuit, il s’est dégoté une fille pour la soirée” – “He went to a night club and found a girl for the night”

Here dégoter gives the idea of trials and errors. The girl he found was likely not his first choice and also express a slight idea of randomness behind finding the girl.

Whereas in “Il nous a dégoter un petit resto” – “He found us a little restaurant”

Here it somewhat expresses the idea of expertise. Dégoter means finding a secret gem.

But I can confirm that French people do use dégoter. It’s use by people liking the precision of language as well as by everyday people that naturally have a thing to use typical expressive French.

“Dégoter” comes from a game where it was the use to shout :”Dégot s’en va !” when the player was trying to score, so basically, dégoter used to mean “to give it a try” while playing to this game.

I’m sure in France and Belgium no native speaker will ever understand “dégoter” as in Switzerland.

In Canada however, I wouldn’t be surprised, many french words in Canada and Switzerland are closer to their etymology than they are in France.