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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories


Lanny

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On 2/19/2019 at 11:02 AM, kiwijw said:

Thank you Lanny. Awesome. Looking forward to parts 4, 5 ,6....etc ?:laugh:

Very best of luck to you out there

JW :smile:

JW, always great to hear from you, and I always appreciate your posts on detecting.

I added a few pictures to the last post (Part 3) to give you a peek at a few things.

Thanks again for taking the time to let me know you enjoy the posts, and all the best,

Lanny

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Golden Bonanza Days, Part 1:

I got the call last season for the chance any nugget shooter dreams of.

A friend of mine owns and operates a large placer mining operation. They had been working an ancient channel deposit (60,000,000 years, plus or minus, but hey, what’s a million years here or there, right?) and as I wrote this account, they were in the final stages of moving all of their heavy equipment to anther site. So, I got a call that people usually only dream of ever getting.

I was invited to bring my family to nugget shoot a section of virgin bedrock. After sixty million years, it was finally exposed to the sun’s rays once again, and as the entire mining operation was shut down, with no active mining in progress for the changeover, my buddy wanted us to come and check the bedrock for him before they had to do the reclamation work and bury it once more for perhaps another sixty million years.

I couldn’t believe it! What a chance, perhaps the call of a lifetime . . .

I called my son, who I’ve been training how to detect sassy nuggets, and he said to count him in. My wife, who is a speed-panning wonder of target-rich scoop dirt, said she was in too. So, we packed our gear and headed for the mountains.

For whatever bizarre reasons the weather gods had last winter (2017-18), the weather was terrible right up until the first of May, and then it was like someone hit the sun-and-warmth switch for instant summer. The transformation was surreal and wonderful. Fresh pine heavily scented the valley. A wide variety of mountain song birds were back in force, the flowers were blooming on every slope, wild honey bees, heavily laden with pollen, buzzed a honey-hunter’s symphony. While high above, the hawks and eagles choreographed their ageless aerial ballet as they rode the invisible thermals of the cobalt blue expanse. In addition, red-throated, as well as iridescent green-breasted humming birds initiated impossible angles of changing flight as they darted from spot to spot while visiting the innumerable mountain blossoms. To say it was breath-taking is a feeble attempt to capture the impossible, and those of you that frequent the wild reaches of the Rocky Mountains already know of what I speak.

We set up our gear, and I unpacked the feisty Makro Gold Racer and connected my shiny new sniper coil. I was going to take the Racer for a hard run, as I was still getting used to it, and with all of the ancient cracks and crevices exposed, I believed it had a good chance to sniff out some gold. The other nugget shooter, my son, would be learning more lessons on the Gold Bug Pro. (For final clean-up, I always check the bedrock with my GPX 5000 after running the legs right off of the VLF’s.)

So, I set my son up with the Gold Bug Pro, outfitted with the 5X10 elliptical DD. I reviewed the basics of the detector with him (I love how quick the learning curve is on the Bug Pro), and off he went to a corner where the bedrock rose steeply, a jagged wall of bedrock rising close to 45 degrees up from the floor of the excavation, and that bedrock was iron hard (similar to some other bedrock we hunted later in the season) so there were lots of gutters, cracks and crevices visible that held intact material due to the hardness of the host rock. My son ground-balanced, adjusted his headphones, then made a few swings. He stopped dead right quick, then repeated a swing. With the numbers on the meter in the sweet zone (40-70 on the meter, if you’re familiar with the Bug Pro, usually depending on the size of the piece of gold), he quickly captured the target in his scoop and dropped it in one of our green plastic gold pans we’d already set out. A few more swings, and he dropped another scoop of target-rich dirt in the pan. Having got off to such a fast start, it looked like it was going to be a good day.

To be continued . . .

All the best,

Lanny

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13 hours ago, Lanny said:

May, and then it was like someone hit the sun-and-warmth switch for instant summer. The transformation was surreal and wonderful. Fresh pine heavily scented the valley. A wide variety of mountain song birds were back in force, the flowers were blooming on every slope, wild honey bees, heavily laden with pollen, buzzed a honey-hunter’s symphony. While high above, the hawks and eagles choreographed their ageless aerial ballet as they rode the invisible thermals of the cobalt blue expanse. In addition, red-throated, as well as iridescent green-breasted humming birds initiated impossible angles of changing flight as they darted from spot to spot while visiting the innumerable mountain blossoms. To say it was breath-taking is a feeble attempt to capture the impossible, and those of you that frequent the wild reaches of the Rocky Mountains already know of what I speak.

Quite the skill you have with that pen, Lanny!  And you keep us hanging in anticipation of the next installment.  Thanks.

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If an opportunity like that fall into my lap I would fast be unemployed and on my way to dig! :laugh:

Sounds like the start to a fantastic trip.

 

Shane

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On 2/20/2019 at 11:33 PM, kiwijw said:

You tease...how can you leave it there???? I can see we are in for a treat. Cheers Lanny & thanks for the time & effort you put in to sharing your epic journeys with us. I am now hanging off the edge of my chair for the continuation. :biggrin:?

Best of luck out there

JW :smile: 

Not meant to be a tease, but hope you can make it to the next instalment.? Thanks for taking a moment to let me know you enjoy the stories, much appreciated.

All the best,

Lanny

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On 2/21/2019 at 12:07 AM, phrunt said:

Thanks Lanny for taking the time to do your posts so we can ride along with you, you're living the dream.  I'd love to be doing what you're doing.  Good to hear the GBP doing well too, It sure is a simple detector to use.  Very much looking forward to hearing more of your stories.  I could read a book of them ?

 

Much appreciated, and I'm glad you're enjoying the gold-chasing journey. The opportunity to chase the gold, given the conditions I enjoy, is wonderful indeed. 

All the best, and thanks for dropping in,

Lanny

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