A Quick Outing In Sunny / Hot Yuma

[Condor]

I woke up to a fierce thunderstorm, rained for about 30 minutes at my house, so I decided to take advantage of the cloud cover and swing the old 7000. A balmy 84 degrees with a decent breeze.  The 7000 hasn't been fired up for about 6 weeks and I was surprised at all the noise she makes in the Insanely Hot settings.  I eventually took the threshold way down so that I could tolerate the reorientation.  I knew it was too hot and humid to do any real prospecting so I concentrated in an area that produced a bunch of small stuff this past winter.  I maxed out the settings and plugged in my earphones, swinging low and slow, just looking for a repeatable threshold break.  I found the first one about 20 ft from the truck.  After I concluded that it wasn't surface trash I went back to the truck and got out the XP Deus to see how it would do in hot ground on an undug target.  I used the Goldfield program with no discrimination.  The Deus couldn't find the target at about 4 inches deep.  The 7000 was quite definite on the target, so much so that I thought it was small iron trash.  I kept digging and scraping and running the Deus over the hole, still nothing.  I dug out about 6 inches and ran the 7000 over it, the target was out, so I went back to the Deus.  It sounded off on the nugget  in the pile, but needed a pretty brisk sweep speed to get there.  The reactivity was at 2.   No low and slow for something this small.  The 2nd nugget was the smallest and maybe 2 inches down in an old Dozer furrow.  Again the 7000 signal was quite definite, but the Deus got nothing on the undug target.  I dug out the signal and the Deus hit on a Hot Rock in the pile, but had real trouble hitting on that tiny nugget.  I'll remain cautiously optimistic that the alleged new coil option will improve the Deus performance on small gold.  In the meantime, I'm going to keep playing with the Deus and learning coin/relic hunting.  

I've cleared my home schedule and going to head North next week.  I hope to be out to N. Nevada by the 2nd week of August.  I've got to get out of this ferocious sun and heat in Sunny Yuma.  Maybe I'll see some of you boys out there.

[beatup]

Nice pair of small ones Steve,good luck up north in Nevada

[Hard Prospector]

Nice pieces Steven and good luck in Nevada. Oh, and I do have an interest in that GB2 peanut coil that you came across during your move......Rob

[Condor]

4 hours ago, beatup said:

Nice pair of small ones Steve,good luck up north in Nevada

Hey Beatup,

These came from within 30 yds of where we parked the trucks when we met up for the first time last year.  I knew it was a hammered area, but looking to find something without busting my butt.  It's a different kind of gold hunting, just looking for a dink or two. 

[mn90403]

Steve,

I saw the 110 plus around your area and now I see your posting.  Good story for the nuggets.

Mitchel