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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories


Lanny

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Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Part 2

Things that go “snort” in the night.


After our largely sleepless night, the next day we set about cutting firewood, and we went off in search of drinking water (we even located a local spring of pure water whose taste finished with a little buzz on the tongue, great stuff indeed).

Returning to camp and firing up the stove to get rid of the chill in the tent (there was ice on the fire bucket water in the corner), and after cooking grub on the stove, we ate a hearty breakfast, layered ourselves with bug-dope, then took the quad for a ride to wind our way along the twisting, bumpy road that headed up the canyon. The day was calm, the sky a pristine blue. Yellow and purple flowers grew thickly along the sides of the road. Lazy bumblebees went from flower to flower performing their unpredictable aerobatics. Butterflies and humming birds busily fed among the same blossoms. In addition, the ageless melodies of colourful songbirds filled the crisp mountain air. As a punctuation mark to all of this, the invigorating smell of new-growth pine was everywhere.

Steadily climbing in elevation, we worked our way toward the upstream placer workings, ancient and modern. When we saw a current site, we took the time to introduce ourselves to the miners. In this way, we discovered two operations just off the main logging road, with a total of eight crew members working at each. Both operations exposed old drift mines from the 1800’s and the 1930’s, revealing a fascinating series of dark tunnels and opened rooms.

The larger of the two placer operations struck pay running six grams of gold to the yard, with that amount increasing to eight grams to the yard on bedrock (the old rule about gold being on bedrock held true at these operations). The gold was coarse, nuggets in the half ounce to ounce and a half range were retrieved. Being bumpy and rough, the gold had lots of character, and with the channel material removed, it was bedded in graphite schist or slate formations.

The other operation was a bit smaller, their equipment was older, so they spent a lot of time repairing their equipment we were told. However, they were located where several ancient channels intertwined and intersected, and this formation produced gorgeous gold from their mine as well. They were very friendly and even shut down their wash-plant and excavation machinery to chat with us (not a lot of visitors in that remote area).

Both mining ventures invited us to detect their claims whenever we wished! What a shock, but a good one. We only had to inform them of our finds, and if we honoured their show-and-tell request, they didn't want any of the gold, very nice neighbors indeed! (We went home with fantastic, chunky nuggets from that trip thanks to them.)

Later, on a branch leading off from the main logging road, we came across a fellow in his late 70’s patiently working a small-scale operation. The old-timer was working a pay zone, dark gray in colour, six feet thick above a lighter-coloured layer of dirt resting on the bedrock (Strangely there was no gold on the bedrock whatsoever!). However, the gold he was getting was magnificent; some of it was crystalline, and all of it was coarse.

We learned quickly in that new region that the pay-layers had to be found and worked where they were, not where we thought they should be. We had to forget some of our previous learning, open our minds, and accept new inputs, strategies, and gold-deposition thinking. The old notion that the best gold was found on bedrock only was tossed out, and new facts were accepted.

That night before closing our eyes, my partner, probably still suffering from post-traumatic whistle-shock, told me, “You know, my wife always makes me turn on my side when I snore at home. She says it stops me cold.” And, with that, he turned on his side. (I did wonder why he’d kept this from me the night before.) With all quiet, I drifted peacefully off to sleep . . .

Later however, my conscious mind alerted my ever-alert subconscious that all was not right with the world. Something was once more amiss. Listening carefully, I noted that my partner was still as quiet as a sleeping newborn. Because of this, I was somewhat puzzled as to why I was awake. Thinking perhaps my subconscious was a bit overactive from the previous night’s debacle, I was just drifting off when I clearly heard what my subconscious had heard.

“Snort—snuffle!”

Icy fingers skittered up my spine; my body began to contract itself into its smallest form. Visions of Timothy Treadwell danced in my head. (Tent walls offer no protection from large, apex predators.) Then something big struck one of the tent’s guy ropes, and it reverberated with a loud twang. This contact with the rope produced an alarmed snort, followed quickly by several others. My brain’s alert level shot to the top of the scale, as we were in remote country filled with blacks and grizzlies. To complicate matters, it was certain there were multiple somethings out there in the dark.

To be continued:

All the best,

Lanny

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Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Part 3

Confronting the terror.

During this paralytic horror, my only comfort was the assailants were on the same side of the tent as my dozing partner. However, my shameless security in using my partner as a human shield vanished when one of the snorting monsters shifted itself to the back of the tent (right where our heads were) as it began to tear at the grass! I was no longer safe. A two-pronged attack is always harder to defend against. Imagine my heightened distress when another one started ripping up grass at the front of the tent! These attackers were definitely not browsing deer. The weight of these assassins caused the ground to shudder as they moved. Whatever they were, they were huge.

Having nothing to lose now, I reached over and shook my partner. He came awake with a slurping gurgle, and he asked me if he’d been snoring again. I shook my head, but at the sound of his voice, the snorting, snuffling, and tearing of grass immediately halted. The night was deathly still. Using agitated hand signs, I relayed my concerns.

From under my pillow, I flicked on a tiny penlight, then made my way to the front of the tent where I kept a large, halogen flashlight. As I picked it up, the snorting, snuffling and tearing started again. Turning around to check on my partner’s progress, my light lit his panicked, bulging eyes. His hair stood on end! (It didn’t matter it always looked that way; it was perfect for the mood at that moment.) Rushing past me, he flew to the foot of the bed and yanked his 30-30 from its scabbard. The new noises he made caused the outside noises to stop once more.

Gathering all of my courage, then nodding to each other to be ready, I unzipped the front of the tent, and we stepped outside.

I quickly panned my bright halogen beam left and right. Multiple, malevolent eyes were instantly lit in the darkness. I was thunderstruck by their number. We were besieged by an invasion force; evil eyes blazed hotly in the boreal darkness. And then, those demonic eyes, in those huge heads, jerked up from the ground. Massive blasts of exhaled, steamy breath, fogged, and then filled the air.

Regardless of the horror, and somehow finding a reserve of inner strength, I continued moving the light and fully illuminated that host of bodies. I watched in transformed terror as the nocturnal beasts’ claws turned to hooves, their imagined humps to manes, until as one, with a great blowing and snorting, off they all ran.

I have never been so terrified by a herd of wild horses.

We found out the next day that throughout the summer there was a herd that worked its way up and down the connected series of canyons above and below where we were camped.

Of course we both had a good laugh (a hysterical, counterfeit kind of a laugh for sure), and we both uttered macho statements about how silly it was to get all worked up about bears, when in reality it was only horses after all. Clearly, it was the kind of jittery conversation that accompanies the complete and utter loss of every shred of manly dignity.

Oh, the everlasting shame . . .

All the best,

Lanny

(P.S. In the last instalment of this “Tales From The Flats” series, I will relate another disturbing black and midnight event that plagued our seemingly cursed sleep.)

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(Alder Gulch, Virginia City Montana is where I first got bit! I wrote these lines in memory of that fateful day.)


The Alder Gulch Virus, or, Why I Chase The Gold

In days gone by, when just a lad
My sister’s spouse did somethin’ bad
A ghostly town we went to see,
That lit a fire within me . . .

Virginia City’s driving force
Was mining gold. You knew of course
That Henry Plummer ruled that town
‘Til vigilantes brought him down.

But his demise is not my goal,
A bug bit me to take its toll.
It bred a fever inside me,
Away down south, in Montanny.

What plague is that, you’ll likely say,
That sickened me that fateful day?
A golden fever, spread in me
And since that day, I ain’t been free.

The bug that bit that special day,
Infected me in every way.
Just let me say, there ain’t no pill,
To cure that sassy fever’s ill.

I’ve tried to lick it, ain’t no fun
That potent fever’s always won.
It’s driven me around the bend,
Up mountain streams, to canyon’s end.

It’s made me search in arctic climes
And in the desert many times.
But nothin’ ever seems to kill
My golden fever’s iron will.

But should I cure it? What the heck?
There’s tougher ways to stretch one’s neck!
There’s booze and parties, speed and weed;
There’s lust and pride. There’s crime and greed.

But blast it all, it seems to me 
It ain’t the gold that’s drivin’ me.
The lookin’ for it’s got me hooked
That’s why my fevered brain is cooked.

All the best,

Lanny

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Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Finale

Well, I know it’s hard to believe, but it took us a while to get back to sleep after the wild horse encounter. So, we bucked up our spirits by telling far less scary stories about real bear encounters, most-likely due to shock, and eventually we went back to sleep.

We awoke the next morning to a beautiful, clear day.

After breakfast, we went to the truck and took out our metal detectors. We connected the batteries and then walked a few steps away to conduct some tests. My machine worked flawlessly. So, I tossed me test nugget on the ground (glued to an old Golden Nugget poker chip) and got a nice low-high-low sound.

All at once I heard the most awful screeching. I figured my partner passed his coil too close to the truck, all of that metal overloading his circuits, the noise blasting from his speaker . . . However, as I turned to look, I saw a blur disappear into the tent. Nope, not the detector at all, my partner simply forgot his bug spray.

Well, we went out that day and dug all kinds of square nails (factory ones and hand-made ones too), bits of lead, pieces of tin, iron wire, copper wire, shell casings, bullet lead, but no nuggets. We came home dog-tired and ready for bed. Up north, it’s possible to get in fourteen or more hours of detecting in a day if the weather’s good, and we’d put in lots of hours of swinging the coils that day.

I actually fell asleep before my partner that night, as he was updating his little spiral-bound notebook he always carries in his front pocket (a hold-over from his ranching days). Anyway, around midnight (I sleep with my watch on), something woke me. At first, all I heard was a faint scuffing noise, off in the distance, accompanied by a human voice, and then the words started to sink in.

Someone approaching from downstream was weaving a tapestry of obscenity unlike anything I’d ever heard. He was a true master of the art. As he got closer, his cussing intensified, but then he sped past the tent. Swearing like a sailor the entire time, he faded away in the distance to be heard no more.

My partner slept through the entire event, blissfully unaware of the fine performance he’d missed. On the other hand, I was quite astounded by the profane sermon, but eventually I fell asleep.

Several hours later, I woke again to familiar sounds in the darkness.

The same scuffing noise, the same colorful language returned from the opposite direction! The volume increased until the midnight cusser sped by the tent, the words drifting off in the distance. Other than being annoyed at losing some sleep, I was ready to write it off as an odd, once-in-a-lifetime performance.

It was not!

(The next morning, I could clearly see bicycle tracks in the dust on the road. That explained the hurried arrival and departure speed of our midnight caller.)

The next night, at the same time, the northern preacher repeated his sermon in all its glory. Hearing his approach, I woke my buddy so he could witness the event. Several hours later, I woke my partner to enjoy the return soliloquy. (However, he seemed a bit cranky I’d woke him up.)

The next night, I was sound asleep, yet my partner woke me to listen to those midnight verses. (I wonder why he did that?) Moreover, for the return performance, my partner woke me yet again. (Karma? Or, was it only revenge?)

The next morning, we followed the preacher’s bicycle tracks for miles up the road until they crossed a bridge over a stream. We quit following them at that point, as it was obvious he traveled extensively at night, spreading his wilderness sermon far and wide.

That night, he returned again, with renewed energy and volume in his delivery, but I was ready to do something about it.

(Remember that halogen flashlight, the one that could turn bears into horses? Well, I devised a plan to use its blazing white light to full advantage.)

As he approached, I quietly unzipped the front of the tent, and when he was alongside the tent, I gave him the full halogen blast! He jerked on his bike as if he’d been pole-axed!! His head snapped up, his one hand clawed the air to fend off the impending blindness, but it was too late.

Losing control as he raised his hand, the gravel hooked his front tire, and off he shot at right angles to the road, launching gloriously into the crisp night air, shooting down the embankment, flying through a dense thicket of alders, to plunge into the knee deep water of the creek.

My partner wondered if the bicyclist might need some help. However, I assured him that anyone that could swear like that didn’t need any help with their cussing . . .

To prove my point, we heard some strangled cries, some renewed cussing that surpassed anything we’d heard to date, followed by a great deal of splashing water, the sound of many branches breaking, and then, by the halogen beam, we spotted him emerging from the gloom. Mounting his metallic steed, and with many squishy sounds, he rode off down the road, utterly speechless, but likely thoughtful.

We crawled back under the blankets, and were not awakened by a return performance later that night, or any other night.


Somehow, I’d found a solution to those midnight sermons.

Somehow, indeed.

All the best,

Lanny

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  • 3 weeks later...

This post falls into the category of things that haunt us, the lost opportunities, the unknowns that make us wish we'd have done something different, that we’d have paid more attention at the time, or that we’d have made a return trip . . .

I know of a spot that I have to get back to one day where they were running the material so fast they were pushing nuggets over the end of the sluice boxes, and all of that material ran under a road across jagged bedrock, so those nuggets will still be there.

That same outfit had a hopper that had a leak, and it used to ooze out material from one side. These guys were getting so much gold, they knew about the leak, and they knew they were pushing gold over the end of the sluices, but the season up north is short, and the material was incredibly rich, so they were running flat out to get as much as quickly as they could. Furthermore, because they were getting so much gold, they wound up not caring about what they’d lost.

From my own experience, I know the gold was left at the site after they pulled their equipment out as I panned a few spots, and talk about pickers! That country is known for coarse gold. I gathered up a couple of five-gallon buckets for my son to pan, and what a party he had running those buckets through a little river sluice. There was lots of dirt left at the site of that hopper too. But, once again, a person would have to know exactly where to look, and to the casual observer, they'd never have a clue as to what had taken place there in the past.
However, I’ll add a few more details about that abandoned area, and the wash-plant, as well as a bit about the crew and the deposition of gold in their mining cut.

After removing about forty feet of overburden (boulder clay: thick glacial clay salted with boulders), the ancient channel was finally exposed, with lots of orange material (orange is a good sign of the heavy mineralization that runs with the gold in ancient channels) in the bottom six feet of material that was sitting tight on bedrock. Moreover, getting to the bedrock had exposed a large section of tunnel where the old-timers had worked extensively, and as those Sourdoughs did all of that underground, back-breaking work by hand, it was a good sign that we might have a great chance to hit some good gold as well, and we sure did.

After the modern miners used the excavator to take the orange material out, and there was only bare bedrock left, I got invited into the pit to have a look at the side-wall of the channel, the area composing the ancient stream material that was still buried under all of the previously mentioned overburden. It was a sight I'll never forget.

The excavator operator (who was also the mine owner) walked me in from the north end of the cut, and he said, "I've never seen this before. Come take a look."

He walked me over to where the cleaned bedrock met the wall, and then he started pointing out nuggets in the wall! You just can't make this stuff up!!

About a foot off of the bedrock, and all along the length of the cut, we walked along flicking out multi-gram nuggets from the side wall into a pan!! I'd certainly never seen anything like it before, and I haven't seen anything remotely close to that amazing sight since.

The owner had to go to town for machinery parts, and the second-in-command wanted to yard as much through the wash-plant as quickly as possible, but not having been in the game as long as the owner, he overfed the plant, because when they shut it down, the twin sluices were yellow from top to bottom with nuggets!! That's another sight I haven't seen since, and one you should never see if you're running the plant properly. Furthermore, that's why the nuggets went over the end of the sluice with the discharge water, getting trapped on the broken bedrock as the water rushed under the road to fall into the waiting settling pond, and nobody ever tried to recover them as the whole outfit left at the end of the season and none of them returned (me included).

However, as I said earlier, they got so much gold everyone was happy regardless. Now, that’s the kind of gold mining problem I’d love to have in the future, the issue of pushing nuggets over the end of the sluice but not bothering to recover them because the overall take was so rich!

All the best,

Lanny

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Hi Fred, always great to hear from you, and thanks for the question.

The main reason, right now, is that I'm on good gold as well as gold in quantity where I'm at. In addition, the gold is much closer, which is always a good thing, six times closer in fact.

Another reason is the nature of the trip to get to that remote gold field: brutal roads, the need to dodge logging trucks that in no way can stop if I wander into their path or suddenly emerge from the choking dust (after a tight curve, or a dip or rise in the road, for instance) that constantly covers the roads in the summer, and then there's the numerous flat tires caused by the razor sharp bits of grader blade added to the road's surface from maintaining the roads. In addition there's the bears and the bugs: the deadly B's. 

However, the gold is very coarse in that area, and believe it or not, I will be making a return trip one day when I retire and get the opportunity to mount another expedition as I know of several places (other than the one I wrote about) where there's good gold to be found with the detectors, ones shown to me by my mining friends as they pried the pickers from the bedrock cracks with screwdrivers! (Now, that's low tech. gold gettin' equipment!) They showed me some great draws and gulches (screwdriver gold) where the old-timers worked by hand, places that are now overgrown, ones shallow to bedrock, and with what I've learned about detecting since I left that area, and with the advancements in detecting technology since I left the region, I'll have a good time chasing that sassy northern gold.

Oh, and on a side note, I saw the gold the river snipers (floating the water with snorkel, mask, and sniping tools) were getting from bedrock cracks, and that's something I'm much better at now too. (The truly great thing to keep that gold safe up there is that there's only a tiny resident population, perhaps 30 people in many hundreds of square miles.)

Hope the answer wasn't too long, and thanks for your question,

Lanny

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Can you smell the rice cooking?

I recall being far to the north in a historic gold field, and I had the opportunity to have a chat with a Sourdough (a seasoned miner from the area) about his claim. He took me to a spot one day and told me a most interesting tale.

However, before I relate his story, I’ll describe its location. It was far down in the bottom of a secluded valley. Steep, black-walled mountains rose on either side, and courageous growths of spruce and fur clung to the steep slopes, with birch, poplar and aspen peppering the evergreens lower down. Dark draws inhabited by deeper areas of gloom gave birth to swiftly flowing streams that emptied into the valley. From these gulches, the icy, ghostly breath of unseen currents of air rushed forth to randomly lift the hair, before chilling the neck and spine. Indeed, an eerie atmosphere pervaded that sullen spot of murky shadows where the long dead miners of some 150-years past had chased the gold to make their fortunes, or to lose their lives.

On a gentle slop above long rows and piles of cobble stacks, the remnants of a massive hand-workings, the miner’s cabin was situated. It was an ancient cabin, one in continual use since the original gold rush, the cabin perpetually maintained and rebuilt until it was later used by a member of the North West Mounted police as a retirement refuge. Later, it was acquired by Glen the miner. Heavy logs formed the base of the walls, with smaller logs progressing up the sides, and there were only two windows, one big enough to allow light to enter, and one small one which served as a lookout. The log ends were all beautifully axe cut to fit and lock together, and there was an addition on the back of the main cabin that housed a food storage and washing area. The doors were heavy and sturdily built as grizzly and black bears frequently visited the area. (I have a story somewhere about the attack on Glen’s cabin by an enraged grizzly, quite the hair-raising tale he told me of his experience that truly made my blood run cold.)

A path led down from the slope to a long draw that then led to a bedrock rise, with the draw, or gulch, continuing upward. On the other side of the bedrock rise a fast-flowing creek could be heard. The bedrock rise continued to climb as it joined the shoulder of the mountain. There was a trail that led up the non-creek side of that shoulder, and I headed off on foot to look the area over.

The first thing I noticed, as I looked down into the draw from the trail, were the sunken places. There were five large areas where the earth had slumped, with smaller areas running perpendicular to the gulch that were still at the original level. This of course spiked my curiosity.

When I returned from my hike, Glen the miner was at his cabin, and we had a chat.

He started in with a bit of history of the area. That the place had been extensively hand-mined I had already seen; that it was shallow to bedrock in many places was also obvious. What he filled me in on was that the early miners were after the easy, shallow gold, and they had done very well, with many ounces of coarse gold quickly gathered from the shallow diggings. But, as was the common case in the 1800’s, there was always the news of new gold rush farther to the north where the gold was equally shallow, easier to get to, so the miners that loved the quick gold soon left to chase other strikes. That left the deeper gold that required organized groups of people with the necessary capital to start up larger operations.

Then, he told me about the arrival of the Chinese miners in the area. They followed the gold rushes and came in after the other miners had had creamed the shallow gold and had either abandoned their claims or were looking to sell cheaply. The Chinese, he said, were not afraid of hard work, and moreover, many of them did not have a choice of whether they liked hard work or not due to being indentured laborers, a form of slavery so to speak, until they had paid off the Tong for their debt to the organization. Glen went on to explain how the Chinese used a lot of opium during their miserable existence, and he told me of bottle hunters that had come a few years before my arrival and of their efforts in trash dumps to recover the precious little bottles. He also told me of the tiny log huts the miners lived in, short-walled on purpose as they were easier to heat during the brutal winters. In addition, he told me of the superstitions the Chinese were bound to, mysterious ones that propelled their efforts.

Then, he took me on a walk.

The bedrock rise that I’ve already mentioned was where he took me, but he walked me over closer to the face where there was a bit of a fold, and that fold hid from view the entrance to a tunnel, but one that he had caved in with is heavy equipment as it led to a large area of unsafe underground workings, ones the Chinese had excavated by hand. I then told him about my upslope hike, and of seeing the collapsed areas, and he confirmed that all of that long draw was a continuation of the original Chinese workings. He elaborated that the Chinese had struck an ancient channel by cutting below it through the solid rock so they could hit the base of the channel where the coarse gold was trapped. A lot of trapped water had flowed when they punched through the last of the bedrock, but they had cut the tunnel on purpose so it would drain the ancient water down and away before they went to work.

The gold was coarse, and they took out a lot of good gold over several years, but then one day the horrific happened, the roof of the tunnel, off on one side excavation of the gulch, collapsed, killing several Chinese. They left the area . . . (This is not an isolated incident, and I have read about this in other gold rush accounts, bad Josh/Joss [bad luck] was something they didn’t mess with, and the area was forever cursed to them.)

When Glen first acquired the claim, he had gone into the tunnel mouth, and he’d taken samples from the floor of the tunnel. The buckets of dirt he’d recovered were full of pickers! To prove this, he gave a jar of the dirt for later panning, and it was indeed loaded with gold!!

So, his interesting tale had answered my questions about the sunken areas I’d seen on my walk, and I could see just how extensive the underground workings were that the Chinese had driven up that gulch from the size of the collapsed areas. Those determined miners had really got the job done, regardless of their motivations.

As we were leaving the tunnel mouth, Glen turned to me and said, “Can you smell the rice cooking?”

I said, “What?”

He said again, “Can you smell the rice cooking?”

I answered, “No, can you?”

He then told me that on certain days, when the wind was just right, he could smell the scent of rice cooking as it drifted down to the cabin from the gulch. He didn’t smile or joke in any way, and the gloomy setting of the area, with its accompanying tragedy, put nothing but a large punctuation mark on his story.

All the best,

Lanny

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  • 4 weeks later...

Gold Monster Outing

Went to the gold camp in the Rocky Mountains last week. The weather was gorgeous, all kinds of songbirds back, plus the flowers of the mountain meadows are in full bloom, purple crocus and shooting stars, yellow buttercups, multi-coloured Johnny Jump-ups, etc., etc.

At the camp as I was checking over the living quarters (camper and two travel trailers), a humming bird buzzed straight past my right ear! That snappy racket from those wings going a million miles an hour is unmistakable. So, we set out the humming bird feeders hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful and dazzling red to orange coloured throat of the Roufus variety before they head farther north, and we’ll keep an eye out for the beautiful iridescent green of the more common ones that stick around all season.

My wife unpacked her shiny new Minelab Gold Monster, and for those of you familiar with the machine, there’s not much reading to do, but I watched a whack of user videos before we hit the mountains so I could give my little darlin’ some tips and guidelines as she set out to learn how to use it.

I picked a spot for her to try her luck on, an old fairly level place in a valley where some placer miners once had their wash-plant. The claim is now abandoned, last worked by some modern-day Chinese miners, but they left the area under a gloomy cloud, and I doubt they’ll ever be back.

I gave my June Bride some general instructions on how to run the Gold Monster (I’d never used one before, but the YouTube and other user-posted videos were a great help. Furthermore, I’d like to give a shout-out to Bill Southern for his wonderful educational efforts.). But, we figured the Monster out quite quickly, and that’s why I’m grateful to Steve Herschbach for recommending I get my sweetheart one due to its ease of use, and kudos to Steve and Jonathan Porter for their write-ups on the machine which helped me quickly get a handle on the basics; their input was invaluable.

By eye-balling the old site, I could tell pretty close to where the Chinese had pulled out their wash-plant, so I used that information to gauge where I’d have my wife start to detect as there are always some “spill” areas that offer a better shot at finding a nugget or two. Having said that, it was easy to see they had bladed and bucketed the area carefully after they were done to gather any spilled material; those miners were no greenhorns.

I blocked off in a rough rectangle an area I thought might pay, and right away, my wife was hitting targets, but they were almost all ferrous, so she kept experimenting toggling back and forth between discriminate and all iron, learning the different sounds, learning how to make it easier to ID targets (to get them to sound off louder), learning how to read the little bar graph when it gave its indication of non-ferrous more than ferrous, as well as getting used to the sounds of shallow vs. deeper targets, and learning how to use the magnet wand to save time while sorting trash signals. (To elaborate, she’s a great panner, but a green, green rookie when it comes to nugget shooting.)

The thing about detecting an old wash-plant set-up is that it gets very easy to quickly tell where the repairs (welds, patches, etc.) took place, and the numerous bits of welding rod sure make for some interesting sounds, and curious readings on the graph! Having said that, the Monster’s discriminator sure came in handy, and yes, depth was lost, but by using the small round coil, target separation was much better, and I was impressed at how my wife was able to move slowly from target to target, separating their locations, as she dug out signals.

While she was test-driving the Monster, I was going for a comfortable cruise with my Gold Bug Pro. That is one hot machine, at least mine is. (I’ve heard detecting folklore that some machines leave the factory “hotter” than others, and I have no idea it that’s true or not, but the one I have is a firecracker for sure, super sensitive, and a true gold hound for sniffing out gold from tiny flakes to meaty nuggets.)

I started to hit non-ferrous targets in one slice of her search area, so I marked a few so she could check them out. Well, those miners had liked their cigarettes, and there were plenty of crumpled bits of foil from the wrappers as well as some other kind of lead foil with a gold-coloured outer covering that made for some increased heartbeat, but only turned out to be a bust.

After having dug some of those duds, she called me over. “Hey, what do you think of this signal?”. She was getting a great reading on the Monster, and it sounded sweet too. She worked the ground for a bit chasing the target around with her scoop (when a target runs from the scoop, it’s usually something heavy, as most ferrous trash seems to hop quickly into the scoop). Dropping the dirt from the scoop onto the coil, she moved things around and there sat a pretty little picker, about a quarter of a gram! Man, was she pumped!!

So, she kept on working that rectangle while I ranged farther afield with the Bug Pro, and I too found all kinds of cigarette foil, and that maddening, thick lead foil with gold coloring--craziest stuff I’ve ever seen, and I have no idea what it originally contained. I recovered a small aluminum parts tag, several electrical connectors, bits of lead, and pieces of broken brass likely from a bushing of some kind.

My wife gave another shout, and over I went. Her meter was pinning consistently in the sweet zone, the signal sound nice and crisp. Capturing the target, she threw the dirt in a gold pan. Next, she then used the Garret Carrot to chase the signal around the pan. She moved some dirt then cried out, “Look at this. Is this gold?” At first, it was hard to tell what it was due to a covering of grey clay, but using a bit of water soon revealed a sassy nugget! If I’d thought she was excited about her first find, it was nothing compared to her reaction on that one!

I can only come to this conclusion: The Minelab Gold Monster is a sweet machine that sure produces sweet results, because it’s so easy to use, and it makes my sweetheart happy (couldn’t resist punning on sweet, forgive me).

All the best,

Lanny

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