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Hello all, I finally got a chance to get out for a day of detecting and met up with a few friends. We had a large area to detect so we all split up and went our own ways. One of the guys told me about a digging that followed the large gully we were hunting on. He mentioned that the digging was up the hill and paralleled the gully.

I found the area and it was what I had hoped for, a pocket digging. The old timers had opened up a seam of rotten shale that was about fifty yards long, ten feet across and about eight feet deep. I detected the digging itself first and did not get any gold. The guys had told me that they detected some gold out of it earlier. It still looked too good so I went over the berm to the hillside between the digging and the gully. You could see where material had been thrown over and down and I figured that I might get a small scrap somewhere along that zone to at least keep the skunk away.

As I moved across the face of the hill I came to an area that had more brush and less dig holes. I went into my regular routine and dropped to my knees and started detecting into the brush. About ten feet in I got a really nice mellow signal and scraped the leaves out of the way. The target was still there. I moved the topsoil off my small clearing down to the red and orange clay that was mixed in with the rotten shale. The shale began to get hard and about six inches deeper as I was pulling the soil out of the v-groove when I thought I saw something yellow glint in the late afternoon sun. I reached down and grabbed a hand full of dirt. As I switched the dirt from hand to hand I felt the weight of something as it dropped onto my palm. I pulled my hand out into the sunlight and right away I could see my nugget peeking out of the clay and dirt. Wow, I said to myself, that's a nice one.

When the nugget was put on the scales it came out to 14.88 pennyweights. After washing the loose dirt off of it I put it on the scales again and it came in at 14.83 pennyweight. I was using the 3000 with the Sadie coil.

I have been very busy the last month or so getting my book "Detecting for Gold, Adventures, Trips and Tips" off to the printer. I have also been working on my website "TRINITYAU.COM". The book will be available at the end of January. Thanks all, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

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Working in the manzanita ain't much fun but it does pay good on occasion. Congratulations.

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Ray,

Really nice nugget.

They way you describe the site, I would have expected typical "pocket" gold. Really rough.

But this is a well worn piece.  More like placer gold. 

This was "placer pocket"?  More like high channel?

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That is a very nice nugget. Congrats!!!!

I like your approach.  Get down and get to it!

HH
Mike

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