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Bigger Than A Bullet


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G'Day to our American Friends from Australia,

i am new to your forum and new to Gold detecting, the little amount of detecting I have done has been very successful in finding dozens and dozens of 22 bullets along with the odd can pull tag.    I live in an area renowned for Gold, but I am starting to question the advise I have been given by the sales people, it's fine to have a detector that will pick out the smallest gold, but to my way of thinking you need to be in an area that is isolated, 

Can you advise me on detectors that are designed to highlight small nuggets but larger that a 22 bullet, I am thinking that if a detector is less sensitive it would miss some of the trash, your thoughts are appreciated.

Cheers.......Aussie

 

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No real easy way around it Aussie, tis the small scraps that are the bread and butter. The trash digging is part of the game unless you move away from old established diggings and that you will once you get the confidence but that takes time, experience and persistence. 

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Aussie,it took me a couple years of finding bullets and trash before i found my first little nugget,but i was sure i would find gold and i did, it just took time and effort and the willingness to just get out and walk the country swinging your detector.

Good luck out there

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Hi Aussie,

Welcome to the forum!

What detector are you currently using? The desire nearly all of us have is for more powerful detectors. Less powerful is easy - just about any regular lower frequency coin detector under 10 kHz will pick up larger than .22 bullet size targets while being less sensitive to the tiny stuff.

Bullets are normally not all that deep so personally I find them not to be a real issue. I accumulate both the lead and the brass casings for recycling (buys some batteries). As noted above the existence of lead means an area has not been detected well and so if anything it is a positive sign.

What can get bad with something like a GPZ 7000 or a good PI is bits of fine wire or other tiny ferrous stuff. Some areas are so rife with the stuff I will go to VLF detectors (less powerful machines) in order to deal with that kind of stuff.

However, I would personally never pass on any non-ferrous signal while nugget detecting. Click on the picture below of some lead and other trash items I recover as a matter of course while nugget detecting. Bullets are no big deal as they are large and usually shallow. It's the bird shot and lead fragments that get a bit crazy at times.

Now, cutting off at .22 size I would never do. However, cutting off at birdshot might be a more viable option for some areas as bird hunters can lay a lot of birdshot down fast. Most normal PI detectors are relatively insensitive to birdshot - lots of SD/GP/GPX/TDI etc. owners were in for a surprise when the SDC 2300 and GPZ 7000 got into their hands and birdshot they never knew existed started showing up by the pound. Again, most normal coin detecting type VLF detectors will miss birdshot and smaller targets. Yes, I have thought about this quite a few times. And then I go right back out and dig them up!

The best strategy really is to just realize that every one of those items could just as well have been a nugget and finding it is a testament to your detecting skills, gold or not. The first sign that a new detectorist is doing at least something right is that they are finding lead, and the smaller it is the better a job you are doing. Get the small lead, and the gold will take care of itself.

Some nugget detecting "trash" - click for larger version.

trash5.jpg

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You have all the advice you need already.  You are finding lead.  You can find gold.

We find much if not most of our detecting gold where gold has been found before.  If you know someone who will tell you about or take you to an old patch you might be able to find some 'missed gold' or you might expand the patch on the edges.  

Look at that location where gold has been found before on Google Earth.  Study it and map the nuggets you found or the patch where it had been worked.

If you still don't have any gold then take that new land knowledge and find a patch of your own.

Mitchel

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Hey Aussie.   Mate I`ve no clue where in Australia you are, but you say you are new to detecting, I would suggest that you start with small steps to find out if you even want to do this pastime, Some people think it would be fun to go out and find gold, but after doing it for 3 hours for no gold they want to smash their detector around a tree. I have witnessed this, people giving up detecting after the first day.  (I generally last about 6 hours before I want to smash my detector against a tree). Here in Victoria very rare are the days that I don`t find gold if I use the SDC2300.  Along the way with the 2300, you will find a hell of a lot of birdshot, but damn the detector is good at finding gold, and if there is a 22 bullet size piece at a reasonable depth the 2300 will get it.  From there you can work out if you even want to do this, and from there you can decide if you want a 5000 or a 7000, or infact if you even want to do this at all.     My opinion is, you are starting out, get a 2300.   IF you are in a gold area as you say, most days you will get gold. Dave 

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Wow...what a response, thank you all, firstly I live in a small country town called Mudgee, this area was teeming with prospectors in the gold rush days, lots of Chinese, some, would send gold back home in ashers of people who had died, Hill End is the town where the Holtermans Nugget was found, it is the largest nugget ever found, This town is only 75 kms from Mudgee, about an hour away.

The detectors I have used are the Minelab x-terra 705, (toy?) the GPX4500 and the new Gold Monster1000, we do get gold but by panning the creek banks, and if we run a detector along the top of the bank and get that beautiful beep sound, we will dig the bank out under it and pan there, the result is far better than just picking a spot where you think the gold may have accumulated in a flood.

I am looking at buying better equipment, and have been trying to analyse what I do and what I should buy, because the detectors have been great at finding bullets but not much gold to speak of, I am wondering if I should take the leap up to the GPZ7000, or is this just going to be a stupid move, Steve I have read your comments, along with other things, when you have put pen to paper, and your input, along with the others has helped me with redirect my ideas.

The need to practice and get to know the detector is the thing that matters, I know that, apart from the GPZ7000, I have been looking at the White GMT, the Minelab SDG2300, or the Fisher Gold Bug 2, coupled with the Minelab GPX5000 in enable a coverage of most situations.

Thank you all again,

Cheers Aussie

 

 

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Just for your interest....

Bernhardt Otto Holtermann (29 April 1838 – 29 April 1885[1][2]) was a successful gold miner, businessman, and politician in Australia. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame is his association with the Holtermann Nugget, the largest gold specimen ever found, 59 inches (1.5 m) long, weighing 630 pounds (290 kg), in Hill End, near Bathurst,[1] and with an estimated gold content of 3,000 troy ounces (93 kg).[3] A larger find was made by the same men, but was broken up soon after being brought to the surface without being photographed.

 

 

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