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Here are my finds from last Sunday out in the sunny southwest corner of Arizona the total was 7.35 grams along with my brothers 2 gram piece , we had a good mornings hunt that day. I was using the 7k with the 12 inch NF coil .

The storms are a few days behind us but there are a few good waves coming in to make some patches. I found one patch today on one of my 'go to' local beaches and got a couple of golds! One has some stones (10k/2g/diamonds) to go with it. The other is a 14k gold earring that is not so rare this year. It is my 2nd one after many years of the similar style being always junk.

Fresh out of the ground today in sunny southwest Arizona , my brother dug up a good one from under a boulder that was about 3 foot in diameter it was back under it about one foot and about one foot deep ,found with the 7000 and a nugget finder 12 Zsearch coil .

Went over to Gold Basin today for a hunt. Found a nice specimen and two small sub gramers. I was told a guy found a 47 gramer, a 2 gramer and a half gramer in Gold Basin two days ago. The 47 gram specimen was mostly gold. He was using a Gpx 6000. Here are my pieces for today.

i have not been able to get out in 3 weeks due to work and rain. managed to get to a few new areas this morning. first 2 were to deep to beep. then i stopped the buggy at a small rivulet that looked like it had been worked long ago. turned on the 6k, first swing had a mellow hit, dug 8 or 9 inches to Caliche when i first saw it in the scoop, i was like no way. even had to take my glasses off to make sure i wasn't looking at a yellow rock. my partner and i hit the rest of the area hard with nothing but 50 pieces of trash. such a trashy area and my first target was this 103 grain/ 6.67 gram specimen.

Last night after dinner I went for a quick gold hunt, the day was hot but it cooled a bit by evening. I just went to a hillside a few minutes from where my caravan was parked and fired up the 6000. I didn’t bother with the GPZ for such a little hunt and the 6000 is more like a quick easy VLF especially now I can use its speaker, which I exclusively do now unless somewhere noisy as it’s not a loud speaker. the GPX behaved well, so much better with the EMI fix done, I quite like it now. There is lots of quartz around, it goes in a line like a vein up the hill. My first nugget for 2023 a nice flat one, very shallow easy target and of course sounded different to the pellets I’d been digging. Near a surface target. I got another straight away, the pick is the first nuggets hole, coil the second. Another flat bit. I called it quits now as I had to walk down the hill to my car before dark. The photo probably doesn’t show it but it’s steep, at least down is easier than going up. My junk, not bad for 2 bits of gold. I put 3 hot rocks in the photo but I must have dug 30 of them, the 6000 loved them and I couldn’t balance them out, normal, difficult, low sensitivity, nothing helped. They sounded just like gold too especially when buried. I will go back tonight after dinner when it cools down and try again, maybe with different equipment, might try the DD.

Hey folks, I met up with a few friends on boxing day and headed into the wilderness to try and find some gold. After a hike into the location and setting up camp I headed off with my sniping gear to find my fortune, about 10.30am. By 1pm I had about a gram and a half in small pieces from a range of crevices. At this point I had a short break and considered my options. I chose a good looking crevice which cut across the river and had a good bedrock / current arrangement. After removing a little of the gravel which covered most of the crevice I spotted a couple of of slightly chunkier bits than what I’d got earlier. Well, shortly after this the crevice really pu on a show and in the following 1.5hours I found some fantastic gold. I ended up with 29.6g for the 4.5hrs I’d spent in the creek. This is pretty up there in terms of total gold Iver personally found in a day.

I've been doing a little comparison testing lately between the new Garrett Axiom and the Minelab GPX 6000. My focus was on sensitivity to small gold, as most areas I hunt still have plenty of tiny nuggets left; if there are any large, deep pieces left, they’ll still be there for the next generation GPZ to unearth. This comparison is not scientific by any means, and was done just for my curiosity, but I've decided to share my methods and observations for anyone here that may be curious as well. So first up was comparing the Ax fitted with its 11”x7” mono coil to the GPX 6k with its stock 11” mono coil. Settings for the Ax were Fine Mode, Tone at 77 (which is the same pitch as the fixed threshold tone that the GPX 6k runs at), Audio 01, MS-3 wireless headphones wirelessly connected, Speed set to Slow, Volume 25, Threshold 15, Sensitivity 8 and Ground Track Off. And the 6k sensitivity set at Manual 10 (I typically always run on Auto+, but since there were high voltage power lines near this location, I didn't want the Auto sensitivity reducing itself to compensate), Volume at 1 bar and the Avantree Torus neck speakers wirelessly connected via the 6k's inbuilt bluetooth, and Normal selected for the ground type. For this test, I selected a small area that had been raked and detected in the past, most likely during the late 80's to early 90's era, with the VLF detectors of that time. My comparison method was simple: I slowly and carefully gridded the raked area with the 6k until it hit a target, then switched off, fired up the Ax and gridded the same area in the same direction that I just did with the 6k, until I reached the same target. After digging the target, the gridding would continue, this time with the Ax, until another target was encountered, then switched off, fired up the 6k and re gridded that same area, etc. The idea was to see if either machine would see (or not see) targets that the other could (or could not) see. After gridding the entire raked area in this manner, all targets found were detected by each machine, and there were no targets found by either that the other could not detect. All targets save one were small gold nuggets, the only exception being a weak magnetite hot rock. The only thing I wasn’t liking about the Axiom at this point was the sound quality of the signal through the MS-3 headphones; it was no where near as clean and crisp as the target signal from the 6k and Avantree Torus speakers. It was a little cleaner using the Ax's inbuilt speaker, but it was still not to my liking, so I sent for a small Bluetooth transmitter from Amazon that I could plug into the Ax's headphone port and receive the signal with the Avantree Torus Speaker (you’ll see it attached to the Ax in the photo below), and that did the trick. A friend generously sent me his Axiom 11”x7” DD coil to test on small gold, and this time I pitted it against the 6k outfitted with Coiltek's hot little 5”x10” Goldhawk coil: Same settings on each machine, except nowhere near power lines, so was able to run the 6k on Auto+ sensitivity. This time, I selected as the testing area a small dry wash gully that had some old dry-blow heaps (dry-washer piles to us yanks) up on the banks. Small nuggets can always be found by following the dry-washers, especially in their fine tailing piles. Though many targets were found, only one turned out to be the color we all look for; the rest were small bits of wire brush bristles, aluminum foil and some small pieces of bullet jacket shrapnel. As far as the comparison goes, it was the same story - each detector heard all targets, and none were missed by either. As I noted at the beginning of the post, the comparison between the two machines wasn’t scientific, in fact I didn't bother measuring target depths or weights of the nuggets found; it was mainly to see if the Ax can keep pace with the 6k on sensitivity to small gold, and it appears to me that it certainly can.

I didn't get to the 800 mark like I was hoping this year. The 6000 certainly improved numbers quite a bit but the overall weight was down slightly. Only 774 pieces for the year. 5.25oz. Better than the 608 I got last year with the 4500 and 24K, but weight was slightly less (6.1oz). Still pretty good considering I'm hitting the same areas as previous years (mostly within 10km of home) and only spending an average of 16 hours each week detecting. Biggest was the half ouncer, with a big specie containing 9 grams and several 3 grammers and 2 grammers. Love to know how others have done for 2022. Posting some gold pics for future inspiration..... HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

First find of the year , My brother and i were out in the hills in the sunny far south west corner of Arizona yesterday and i ran my coil over this beauty at first i thought it was a piece of old lead but when i got down on my knees to looked at it closer i could see it was a nugget , had to call my brother over from the other side of the wash to come look to see if what i saw was real. We both made a guess as to it's weight mine was seven and one half grams his was over eight grams it came in at 10.36 grams . It was found on a small fan just at the top of a small wash.

A nice little video showing the Axiom. Steve of course finds the first little nuggie 🙂

Been beating this hilltop for 2 years now. Targets where getting slim...last time out, had to break out with the Deus and elliptical coil, cranked up to 74k, just to avoid the skunk. Hit it with the good Ole GP Extreme/ minelab 11dd today, and damn! Was digging signals , where there was none all summer, ha. Thought I would finally post something, since I've become more of a lurk n give an attaboy type member.

Happy with the 6000. Goes deeper than I expected. The picture of the hole shows depth on the 3.37 gram nugget that is on the coil. Total weight of all these nuggets is 7.6 grams. Fun finding.

Christmas is near.

I hunted all morning without anything to show for it. About 1:00pm I meant up with some friends for lunch and talk over the mornings hunt. Nobody had found anything. We all took off in different direction again. I ended up in a very small wash leading into a slightly bigger one. It was about 30 feet long and 2 feet wide and maybe a foot deep. I had never detected there before so I though I would try it until dark about 2 or 3 hours away by now. There were some old tailing piles there. Wasn't long I got my first target. I dug it up and it was about 1/2 a gramer. Then 5 minutes later another one. This went on for a few more nuggets. Seven in total I believe. Then I did a coil sweep on the topside of the wash. My 6000 sounded off different. It seemed to give me a low high tone. I scraped the bigger rocks away and still had the same tone. Went down another 5" until I could hear it with my Equinox. the equinox was giving be a Constance 15 for the target ID . I was thinking big lead or maybe a tin can. I finally got in out of the hole and into my scoop but what is it. after washing it off a little I see it is gold, big gold for sure. it came in at just under 13 grams with the 7 others I was over a 1/2 ounce for the afternoon. Best day in my life!!!

Was fortunate to get into some gold on my last trip to California. Started the trip sniping on the NF of the Yuba, one day on Slate Creek and ended with several days detecting in the northern Mojave desert. Thanks for looking

Went hunting a late 1880s to 1920 era park. Had hopes of finding an old dime, or at least an IHP or Wheat I'd missed. A few hours into the hunt, I was digging anything that might possibly be a good deep target. Popped a plug about 6 inches deep, and found an old rusty screw. Darn it. But, right next to it I caught a glimmer. Wiped the dirt away, and there was a bright gold chain. Ran the detector over the chain, and nothing. I detected garbage, but found a gold chain by coincidence. After I separated it from various roots and freed it, it was anywhere from about 5-7 inches deep, but laid out in a line, so very little to hit on with a VLF machine. Found examples online w/ the clasp from the Victorian era used to hold fine pocket watches. This one has a mark that is nearly gone, and not discernable on the clasp. Test holds 18k acid completely, and 22k very slowly eats away at it. 14.44g! Someone had a very bad day 100 years ago. Suffice to say that i checked around the area thoroughly. All metal, various frequencies, etc....in hopes of the watch. But no avail! Made my day. Even left home this morning imagining finding a gold pocket watch....but didn't expect the chain:-) All the best, Zincoln

Caution!....lotsa swearing

Hey guys. Been waiting to get out for a while. Some health issues but finally out! Did a drive to a place I love from years ago. Awesome day weather wise. Loved it. I down graded due to my health but any day swinging a detector to me is bliss, especially where I went. See nobody, hear nobody and all alone. In my element. Used the Garrett 24k with the 6" and it cruised on half Sat, 7 sens Audio Boost 2. Dug heaps of targets, several surprised me up to about 8" deep for their size. Damn lead. 😆 Ended up with 2 Specimens, 1 id guess from experience has close to 1/2 a g, the other lucky to be .1 and a tiny .1 bit free gold. No record breaking but was a great day. Was really surprised though how the 6" handled the area. Expected to be running it around 5 to below. Tried above 7 and other settings but just a little too chattery and picking up too many real little hot rock chips. Its amazing with this just what 1 step down sens does. 80% vanished and it ran so much better than on 8! Anyway, didn't get rich 😆 but was a ton of fun. Drive in. Big drop off to the right. Nearly there. Arrived and the spot. Good fun and happy I can still swing something. 👍

Despite the frozen ground, my brother Jim and I got out for a few hours on some new ground and got some sub-grammers. Being housebound, forces us to take a chance sometimes. Anyway, we got some with the Gold Bug 2 & GPX 6000, along with a bunch of square nails, shotgun pellets, bullets and bits of steel. We quit digging on quite a few signals, due to hard frozen ground, though. We'll check them next spring.

Well, I think I have that little area cleaned out now. I thought I would put all the pictures in one thread. So far its been a great start to the season. Many more miles to hunt. I hope I can keep it going, but I know all to well what happens when one area drys up. Just hope to keep that skunk away for awhile longer. If I did my math right it is a total of 15.35 grams! The biggest being 10.01 grams and the smallest, well I am not sure it even weighed anything.

Having only one detector now I have been forced to learn how to use it for hunting gold. I have had the Nox 800 for about 2 years, and have not really used it that much. A little on coins in the summer months when I am back in Michigan, but never while in Arizona hunting gold. It has been a real learning experience with many many hours in the field the last 3 weeks with little to show for it. I am hunting one of the most pounded area in western Arizona and maybe the US. I have read and re-read many articles on gold hunting with the Nox but by far what has help me the most was a series of 3 articles produced by Steve Herschbach back in 2014 “Finding gold with a VLF” published in ICMJ magazine. It is very good reading for those who have not read it. After apply Steves principles things started to come around for me. I have hated being without my Monster and my GPX6000 but maybe it was for the better. I surely am becoming more capable with any detector I pick up now but I am still learning everyday out in the field. That will probably never end. Some days are still great even though my best detectors are in for repairs. I don’t have any fancy pictures but here is a couple of my finds with the Nox.

Hi there, It was fathers day recently here in New Zealand and as my wife and I have a habit of getting a day to do what we wish on mothers / fathers day I chose to go detecting. Area of choice this time was a somewhat remote but relatively well detected area. As I'd only fairly recently (in the last year) come to get to grips with my equinox 800 I thought I might be able to produce something with it. My good friend accompanied me on this trip and when we arrived to our chosen river after a 3hr journey from home he set about sniping in a bedrock area where we'd found some gold previously. I also had a bit of a snipe but it wasn't too far above freezing so I decided to go detecting. If found about 4 micro nuggets / flakes in the first 10 minutes. Then I crossed the river to the next area of bedrock and got another small piece in a crevice that led under some gravel and boulders in a likely drop on bedrock. I decided on a hunch to clear a little of this material off the crevice and detected it again. Another target was uncovered straight away. This target actually was the start of a concentration of a few dozen tiny pieces along a 1m long shallow crevice. Took me a couple of hours to get get it all out. Thi is what I got from there, maybe 6 grams. After the success from that crevice I found another similar bedrock situation close by and got another couple of grams or so from that. This was a lot more than my friend found sniping in the same time, and I was warm and dry! The rest of the day we sniped and detected various areas and the equinox steadily found small flakey nuggets and my friend got some slightly larger bits and pieces from his sniping. All in all a very enjoyable father's day with a respectable total of 14.9g between us for the day

got out today. weather is getting cooler here, 87 degrees and was able to get out for a 6 hour hunt. this was a prospecting hunt in a new wash/area so was very happy when the first 8 grain bit came in within 30 minutes. after that we slowed down knowing there was gold in the wash. about 2 hours later my friend was calling to me he had got this nice 31 grain nugget. fun watching him all excitedly carrying it one hand griped over the other like it might get away. the area is remote. a hard, steep hike to the wash and the wash is loaded with black sand, so much so that the 6k was really struggling on its lowest settings. targets were being masked by the black sand. would a beeper with discrimination help with this. we were using the neo mags to clean up the black sand off the bedrock and the non ferrous targets were much crisper after a sweep with them. my friend wants to file a claim on it. i don't know. it is really hard to get to and i don't really know if i want to bring attention to the the area with a new claim. it is going to take a lot of trips/time to placer this wash out. we barely made a dent in what needs to be checked out. im sure someone will come along and see our work and figure out that there is nuggets there. catch 22 i guess. also i cant see bringing a dry washer in as it would be too difficult, so probably just going to scrape it down beep it and keep moving on. anyway, always a good day with new ground to hit.