What's Your View Of Detecting's Future??

[Norvic]

3 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Most responses thus far have been about natural occurring gold or beach/water detecting.  Here's something from a book I'm reading which seemingly applies to all forms of detecting and seems relevant to this topic:

The pristine, virgin... sites are becoming fewer and fewer, as most detector-users know all too well.  Seldom does a person find an obvious huting spot that has not been searched already, not anymore.  (emphasis mine)

and later:

Who amongst us has not heard, over and over again, "Oh, that's a hunted-out spot."?

OK, my quiz question for the day to you:  what year was this written?  (Answer in a couple days if no one gets it before then.)  Your goal should be to get within 5 years of the date.  I'll call that a 'correct' answer, but I may still wait unless someone nails it (likely someone who has read the book).

 

Total guess 30 years back GB, I remember way back on my favorite piece of OZ being told something along those lines, I`m still there and have done only a small % of it, would love to live long enough to justify such a statement. Thus the golden rule of gold detecting....... NEVER take notice of negative comments/negative people in fact go the opposite stubbornly. Applies to fishing and probably every pursuit, oh!😉 and never say never............

[afreakofnature]

Look.....maybe the easy gold is gone, but I believe people think detecting is just gonna put gold in there pocket.  I have said this many times before.  Prospecting (detecting) is 85% research and 15% boots on ground.  And in that 15% you have to learn how to use your equipment correctly and prospect correctly.  Most new people fail first because they do not research and second they don't learn.  Getting access to places to go and obtaining knowledge from others is not as easy as just going up and asking, you have to provide something.  I worked 10 years forming relations with a family to be able to go on their land, now I have lifetime access.  If you want to gain knowledge from an experienced prospector, you need to give up some of the research that you have did too.  They might already know everything you researched but that begins the trust factor.  Plus if you want to form relationships you have to show trust and not greed.  One guy that I was detecting with (name will be left out) was showing me some ground after I made attempts to say we should go to where I researched, but after 4 days of getting next to nothing, we went to his spot and I found a patch within an hour!  Instead of keeping it all to myself, I called him over and said I found a piece over here lets grid this out together.  He said he had never done that before with another person.  I just said we keep what we find, lets just get all the gold out!  I would rather us both have fun together than one person getting left out.  I think that a trust factor was formed there, I gave him all my research for that area in the end, mainly cause I wanted to see if more gold could be found and so that I could have a detecting buddy in the future too.  In the end he also showed me exactly where he found an over ounce ripper, that's gotta be trust.

I have a mining buddy where I live where both of us have shared researching responsibilities.  Having two work at it has been even more rewarding than what I could do alone.  We now have both lead each other to patches.  Including one this fall that as a geologist I would have never expected gold to even be.  Nuggets at the surface and not on bedrock..........just like the references said.

BTW I have only started detecting maybe 6-7 years ago maybe less, prospecting though for 14-15.

[Nevada Brian]

9 hours ago, phrunt said:

 

I realised I had to get a GPZ some time ago when JW and I were at one of these hunted out spots, he had his GPZ and 10" X-coil and I was using my GPX 4500 and 14x9" NF Evo,, we were sitting down having lunch, we got up to get stuck back into it, and he walks off waving his detector.  I'd already completely done the area where we left our bags, it's where I started the day.  He had a signal right near our bags, I said what in the hell... wait a minute I'd done this area.  He turned his GPZ off and I went over with my GPX to see if I could get he target.... NOTHING not a signal at all, I was running it maxed out too.  I felt like throwing it in the creek next to us.  No wonder I wasn't finding near as much as he was, and of course it was a bit of gold.   I since bought a GPZ and got myself the same coils as him as my gold take has dramatically improved.  My problem was I was using technology the areas had already been done with finding stuff that was missed, not stuff that was out of reach. JW has often talked about new technology brings old ground back to life, and I believe it! It does.

 

Simon, out of curiosity, do you recall what timing you were using during this comparison?

Thanks,

Brian

[kac]

The more active hunting for many is still coin shooting in parks or beach combing, both get replenished so that part of the detecting hobby still goes. With cash going virtual with debit and credit cards the coin shooting aspect will probably be a thing of the past so leave those zincolns for the new guys!!!

Old grounds here have been picked through for decades, newer machines give many of the people a reason to pick through them again and maybe squeeze out a few more finds. Permission hunts can be tough and limited to get and housing developments kill much of the old land that could hold those prizes on our bucket lists.

Maybe someday we will have a consumer grade machine that can detect objects not just metal under ground and breath new life in what we look for.

[Gold Catcher]

21 hours ago, jasong said:

A very large percentage of the really great finds are coming from places most other people don't have access to. Or, people trespassing on private lands or private claims. Or people tracking/spying on others and raiding their spots (this just happened to me last year). Which is one reason you don't see people posting the finds a lot here in the US.

I have to agree with your statement, Jasong. It so much matters where you hunt. I have been to private claims where you could find gold easily, without any advanced techniques and literally with only golf-swing type coil movements using an old GB, without even paying much attention. Hard to believe how things can change when the location changes, i.e. on open, but gold bearing land, where you work super hard with the GPZ to only every now and then find small pieces (if you get lucky) or get skunked. Location is "virtually" all that really matters, and most modern detectors past the 90's will more or less perform similarly when you literally walk over gold nuggets in a wash ready to be picked up.

But to me, that is not the important point. It is the adventure, the challenge, the planning, the nature experience, the hard work, the hiking in brutal heat or freezing cold, and ultimately the encounter with yourself in Nowhereland that is the ultimate experience. One I never want to miss and that changed my life profoundly.

[Mike Hillis]

Metal detector manufactures do not make and sell metal detectors, they make and sell dreams.

Treasure hunting is all about dreams.  People will always dream, if not for themselves then for a child or a parent or a friend, or a spouse.   Metal detectors support the dream.  From the cheapest model to the most expensive model there will always be dreamers willing to buy it. 

I'd say their future is bright. 

HH
Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gold Catcher]

5 minutes ago, Mike Hillis said:

I'd say their future is bright. 

Agreed. It is what you make of it and what it means to you.

[geof_junk]

They were saying there is no gold left after the first couple of years. I remember 1983 that all the gold was gone, but it was my first really good find. The thing is treasure hunter after a quick fortune will come and go in a short time, but the Detectorist that love the fact that you can't see it but the detector can, will enjoy the hunt and with luck or excessive time on the hunt will be rewarded.

[mn90403]

This thread has turned into mostly about finding gold which is a part of the future of detecting but certainly not everything.  But following along that theme here is a guy that I respect that has helped me find gold in the past and if I follow his advice I'll find more in the future with my sons.

Bill Southern has been saying the same thing for many, many years and it still has to be 'our future' when you are hunting for nuggets.  New machines have come along to make it easier and yes the gold previously found is not replaced but it can be a good place to start and learn as many of us know.

 

[jasong]

It's been discussed in prior threads, but "hunted out" in 1980 with VLF's that go maybe 6" on your typical 1 gram type gold wasn't as strong of a statement as it is today with ZVT and PI machines that butt heads with the immutable, physical depth limitations of exponential EM field decay in dirt. Like, you can keep making a faster spaceship - until you hit the speed of light and then it's game over. 

There is only so much more than can be improved upon, tech wise, and I think the improvements will come mostly with dealing with bad/salty soils better and getting closer to normal depth in those, and not with finding deeper nuggets in normal soils. I'd love to be wrong there though. But there are also geologic limitations which are relevant today since many places simply don't have nuggets beyond a certain depth which we are already scanning with modern tech.

There are places that aren't hunted out here (yet) but they aren't the places you usually read about on the forums - for good reason! And many of these are located within (or on) patchworks of private land that really require living locally in order to spend the time and make the connections to get access to.

The population here in the USA also doesn't help. Phoenix metro area = entire NZ popluation. There is roughly the entire Australian population living within a day trip of most Arizona goldfields.

And that's a clue where the really unhunted places are left still here in the USA.