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Well we finally got thru obligatory rehab work, and we dryblowing work. Drove the backhoe to the next area and decided to scrape a little while we were there... Glory be!!! 10grams right off. Most were in the dirt above the cap. Did a repeat the second day with 16grams? Got most of the gear ready to go... piddling today...enjoyed Sunday with a couple of mates. Getting my camper all ready to go bush... I repaired some tears and old loose seams yesterday with a Speedy Stitcher... handy tool to have if you ever have to sew canvas....works like a charm Built a new battery/propane housing frame on the tongue so I can boondock with 2 propane and 2 deep cycle batteries on hand. Also got a Yagi antenna from Trent that should give me Internet... that will be crazy out where I’m going... I already took the water trailer with 250 gallons down day before yesterday. Hopefully this area will keep producing well for us. Picture of me below shows how I love dryblowing.

Just some stats for those who may wonder about such things. In the last year (July 2018 - July 2019) this website had just over 350,000 unique visitors (each person counted once, not every time they post). The top ten countries.... United States 55.5% Australia 13.93% United Kingdom 8.22% Canada 2.45% France 1.19% Germany 1.18% Italy 1.06% Netherlands 0.99% Turkey 0.92% Russia 0.71%

**** TRIP 2 **** The main purpose was actually to test ferrite balance in saturated ground, but I wasn't going to drive back to the first areas I spoke of. That is way too far for some simple testing. I have another area where I found my first gold patch. Strangely enough it was on a GPAA claim. Who would have thunk. Those claims are beaten down and squeezed dry, right? Me and a friend both laugh about this place. We very often go back to the general area to beat down the skunk. After getting out to the claim at midnight, I set up the detector. Surprisingly, ground balance was fine and so was the ferrite balance. So much for testing that. Next best goal for testing is to determine if the 10" coil gets gold missed by others. Well this place has been hit by every machine you can think of, including the VLF's. Well after checking the main hillside area, I had nothing. Only one boot tack I found that everyone missed. Then I headed down to the stream where I had found gold before. Lots of pieces had been found here. But the area had been worked hard by drywashers and detectors, too. My buddy with an SDC2300 basically cleaned this place out. Last time I was here, I got the skunk. It was starting to look the same this time. But then after hitting the sides of the wash, I got clear signal. And by the way my rule for this hunt was that I wasn't going to get down and dirty and make the gold appear by using the tricks of the trade like digging out areas and moving rocks. I wanted to see if got what other machines had missed, not what other techniques had missed. But nobody should have missed this signal. There actually seemed to be a couple signals. The first two signals were the biggest pieces. But I kept hearing more and more signals. I dug down another 4-5 inches through the schist and pulled out another 4pcs for a total of 6 (all of which in a 2'x2' area). I had hit this specific spot before and found gold about 10' away. But here I am with more. I am not really sure how the larger pieces were not heard with the GPX5000 I used previously down this wash. So I still have no conclusion on the ferrite ring other than I know I can use the other coil to lock in the ferrite balance, so I am not too concerned. Does this coil find what other machines cannot see, well that is hard to say. I know SDC,GPX and GPZ's have been over these areas. I think a lot of the gold on the hillside patch was gone over. I may have just been lucky on this spot. But it *is* strange that it was not far under the bush or hidden or difficult to reach. Anyways, not much to conclude with this test other than this coil operated smoothly at this location and still finds gold. I do really like the small pinpoint accuracy of this coil and how light it is. Not very big gold (total of 2 grams), but I am only showing it to give an idea of its capability in the states. It does seem to add an inch or two depth on the .1g pieces. This is what I would expect for a 10" coil.

This month in 1979 I bought my first metal detector a Bounty Hunter RB7, took me almost 3 years of pure frustration to get my first nugget,(pic below) after many 100s of hours, I know now I sure went over heaps of detectable gold, and still do, but not the heaps I went over then,...…...I hope...……... Below is some photos, I wish to share with DP members to celebrate, unfortunately I did not take many photos, straight into the crusher smelted down and off to the mint, have scanned what I could find from the old "shoe boxes". Plus a couple of recent ones, the specimen last is highly magnified, gold in limestone, and although no weight is probably the most valued by me, not just because it was my first piece (found with that RB7), but because of its uniqueness. Consider myself very privileged to live in this era, it has enriched my life not just in its monetary value, but given a challenge and still does that I suspect has no equal. MN I`ve gone and done it and not even close to the 30th of February.

And a very civil site it is! Thank you, Steve! fred

Yeah, Sorry I swore secrecy to details about this hunt, but since your asking.....? if we are talking about the same place it is where you found a specie as big a a beef short rib the first day you had the 19” on the ZED... There was some deeeep ground there that held some nice ones, but they couldn’t escape from the Beast .. I had forgotten the watch,... but didn’t you get a nice coin too? That place was hammered but even I found a one grammar with your 2300....,(whilst waiting on ZED brains to be delivered) We had a good camp and good grub there. And it is where I got my first, (of many) —-Australian swearing sessions ...for doing something stupid. I will never forget later when we were fishing at the hut and I caught the barra.... and you said very nonchalantly, “Well, your a hell of a lot better fisherman than you are a detectorist that’s for sure!!!” Hahahaha.... priceless ?

The population of the United States is 327 million vs 25 million for Australia. The percentage of visitors vs the population is: .06 of US population .2 of Australia population

17 x 12 Spiral, pings tiny .1 gram bits no worries. Pain in the butt digging them but sometimes they lead to bigger and better chunks as was the case for me today. 76 grams at 18 inches, any detector would have heard it, same with the 6 gram bit. 14 gram bit was a different story, 20 inches down and very quite but definitely a dig me signal. With the X running so quiet it was no worries. A bloody pleasure to use, a complete contrast to my stock 14” which is so touch and knock sensitive, it’s had a hard life so maybe just worn out but it never ran as quite as the X.

Another ounce and a half today with the X

That`s because we`ve got so much gold over here Mitchel. I was walking to the shops the other day and tripped over a 5 ouncer ?

New Zealand ranks at #13. Keep in mind these are total website viewer statistics, not forum statistics. The forum obviously has far fewer members and of those an even smaller number of active posters. Thanks for the civility comments. It is the cornerstone of the forum. There are no doubt some who avoid the forum due to what they would call "censorship" but I have found almost without fail that those are the very same people who enjoy disrupting forums so no loss in my opinion.

Please stop teasing me...it hurts so much!!! Have a great and continuing adventure, Paul! fred

Found these today in the same area, 1908 IH and a silver button of some sorts, think it came from a hat or something. Has a post in the back of it and is pretty thin. Was pretty deep and picked up on the halo and when I first dug I lost the signal then dug a bit more and found it. Probably had some iron pin/spring that rusted away.

a life well lived, with the gold found and memories made.

I tripped over that same one and when I was cussing and kicking it out of the way I almost broke my ankle when I hit another one that was stuck deeper in the ground...,. It must have been a 2 pounder... but I didn’t want to take time to dig it when the big ones are the ones really worth digging?

Out last night and got a nice 1892 S barber dime. Pk1, 5 tone, recovery 7, iron bias 3.

About 3 or 4 years ago I ran a post about a specimen I got at Tarnagulla at about 6" with pretty well no visible gold, and the sg for quartz said there was maybe 1½ ozs of gold in it, but because there was rock other than quartz, I really don`t know how much gold there actually is. At the time, I dropped it in acid and then promptly forgot about it till I came across it today. ? The main body of it is about half the size it started and there is now gold and gravel in the bottom of the jar. I`ve taken this photo of the biggest bit remaining, renewed the acid and dropped it back in. I wont forget it again (I hope). Sorry Mitchel, back to the dime ?

Only thing that matters is Kiwi performance tonight at Lords, if they take out the UK in cricket and become the 19 World International One Day Cricketers, first thing tomorrow morn is I`ll be begging Steve to make a mention of Kiwi presence on the 4M, maybe as a compromise to include you folks with the OZ stats, as say the Downunder stats. Pressures on I`ll be in the Lords crowd waving the biggest NZ flag right in the Barmy Armies face.

That's interesting but I am sure VPN's can skew those a little. I agree with Fred about civility of the forum which is why I think this is the best forum period.

Not too shabby for an Arizona weekend. (We don’t have the old stuff you others have got in the ground.) Three straight days of detecting yields an 1898 Barber Quarter, 1945 Mercury dime, 1951 Franklin 50 cent piece, Utah state tax token, 13 Wheat pennies, some other trinkets, and a 14k gold/platinum setting diamond ring. Not shown here was also a serial number stamped on a plaque from an 1880s sewing machine and a whole pile of other junk. I’m most excited about the Barber and the 50 cent silver. The quarter was about 6-7 inches down and on edge. It sounded good both ways, but swinging inconsistent numbers on the Equinox 800 in Field 1 with the 15 inch coil. I surmise the yard had been cleaned out before even though the owner thought it had not. That was one of it’s only few coins in 8 hours of detecting it—and the yard was massive. Conversely, the Merc., Franklin, and most of the Wheats came from the another small 8’ by 16 ‘ front yard that took only a couple of hours to detect. The diamond ring came from the old school house. Left by someone else unwilling to dig a repeatable number 12 target. Can’t wait to do it again, but going to need some muscle recovery time from all those lunges and precision digging.

HahHhaahha I have 4 of them now ...I bought the yanks when they left..lolo

Nah, still in original form, decided to leave it that way, do it when I find the rest of the beast it fell off...…..just gotta be there somewhere...……..Should get up there with the Z + X in August before it starts to heat up.

Lots of great answers. Unfortunately gold, lead, and aluminum overlap. In general, the smaller they are the lower the VDI number and the larger they are the higher the number. Women's rings tend to fall in the foil area below US nickel. Men's rings tend to read above US nickel up to zinc penny and possibly higher. I often block out zinc penny and higher and just dig everything under that. If really cherry picking I look for targets that hit hard on a single VDI number, no jumping around. To get more insight on the VDI scale and gold see this article.

Right on, MN your mention of stories has got me a wee primed, and Stricks given a wee bit of encouragement too, this one I`m sure I took photos of but I can`t find them, so you`ll have to use your imagination. Early days of the SD 2100, Mate decided we`d take his brand new Niva (Russian 4WD) for a days prospect. Jokingly before we took off I had a shot at the mates proud new purchase ( as any Toyota Troopy owner would naturally do) "Crikey wont want to get much this thing looks like a 6 pack would overload it." Anyway off we went, got stuck in a dry gully at base of a E/W ridge out in fringe country (mines, diggings miles away). Bit disappointed with the Niva getting stuck so easily, we left it stuck and decided to detect the quartzy ridge and creek at its base. Couple of hours later I`d got a massive signal and kicked a football sized lump of quartz which promptly rolled away a couple of metres downhill, signal gone back down over the quartz, signal back. Picked it up whoa, the weight was there, bugger all gold showing but when crushed she had a wee over 12oz in her. Was there more above, too right plus below there was, but I`m going to find those old photos before I tell. Strick that lump by the 2nd watch come from where I first took Nurse Paul in 2017, had been flogged for 30 years by every detector operator in OZ well nearly all of em, but the Z showed its magic and come up with the goods again. If you`ve your ears on Paul, could you please give your version of this story, I`ve told mine in another thread.

Mine was in HF and I recommend you let the experts do it. Hydrofluoric is a bad nasty. Not sure what % they use, it is a Chemical Specialty Shop in Oregon.

Klunker we should all suffer from so much gold under the coil that our detectors will not ground-balance...poor thing! fred

I decided to hit a hammered colonial site where the last several times there with the Nox 800 no significant non-ferrous items were found. Every couple trips I might find a cuff button. So was running the ORX with 9” round hf coin in coin fast 28khz, but switching to coin deep at 54 kHz., reactivity 3, sensitivity 94. Found 1792-1812 period American naval button ( undetermined variety as yet). With 13 5-pointed stars and Philadelphia back mark.Also found cuff link, outside of large 2-pc ball button. Thesewere all found within 45 minutes, and other targets were going to be found for sure. I’m totally impressed with the machine. So much so that last night I ordered a 9” XP X35 coil, because folks? The XP ORX is a keeper with a long future. Deepest target ( squarenail ) at 1 1/2. Punpointer lengths. (15”-16”)

Good one Phoenix. Nice nugget. Seems taking wife more often does the trick.? Well done. GoldEN

Hey Paul, I swear I didn't tell Brett anything about your love interest. Calling her a hoe is kinda cruel.

Mine lab will have a competitive response either with their own product or through one of the current coopetition companies (Coiltech, Nugget Finder). MineLab will also take action to protect their IP if needed.

Ah wasn’t thinking temps Andyy. Its been in the 90s here still too hot but better than snow for me. Yeah on a cool day and if your buddy would too. Even though its an 8” to 10” and different tech I’m still curious. If I was closer I’d help out with mine.

You need more gold, keep moving dirt!

That's what makes this the best hobby out there. Variety of finds and at any moment you could uncover a piece of history, a family heirloom, a precious coin, 22k of AU or a piece of canslaw. That must have been a roller coaster or emotions on that hunt. Congrats!

Crikey that`s Xn good, your on a roll Coota, do the Emu...... head down arse up and into it.

3

I can’t find it now ....someone either snapped it up or Steve booted it.,. Like i said ANY PI is miles ahead of your vlf

Oh yeah I remember that story wheres the beef rib ....... smashed???? Thats also the year you became a firm believer in the long handled sede pick and the hipstick...... lolol

So a guy can actually make money doing this stuff? I was 16 years old in 1979...that was the year I should have took up metal detecting...but hunting and fishing were the hot stuff back then..not to mention hormones getting in the way every now and then. I was surprised to see that Bounty Hunter has been around that long...I had no idea. Thanks for sharing the pictures as we all know you don't do that for obvious reasons. My favorite is the big lump by the 2nd watch...if only you had the modern cameras of today back then! strick

I have had the V3i for a few years. Don’t trust the little icons that suggest what the target may be. That’s just marketing. I have found one gold ring with the V3i, one gold pendant and a gold necklace. If you want to find gold rings you need to dig all low vdi targets. You may consider using mixed mode audio or some of the programs like mixed mode. The polar plot can be very helpful. Run a few tests over a gold ring and it will give you a idea what it might show. The best recommendation I can give for finding gold, is dig almost everything, reduce all discrimination and search areas that may have gold. The ring I found was a lost item that was in a semi know location. It took me 45 minutes, and rang up as 13 vdi. It was a great find and even better to return to the owner. Good luck

RU, you can bet I would, tis a magic journey that I am still soaking in it, mind you a wee bit slower.

Outstanding images,really find these types of stories interesting.........would you do it all over again ??

Condor and his trip/notes was the inspiration of my post. He too realized the easy gold is gone, but we go for the Adventure too. Thanks Condor for sparking my old memories. At least you can say.."I did it". Spring 2006 three buddies/I decided it was time to quit talking about it and just do "Australia" with a detector for gold. With many details left out, but a quick overview. Yes I made it home (America) and am alive. The venomous snakes, iguanas (4 foot poisonous lizard), attacking kangaroos, wild goats and monster sized spiders/centipedes could not stand up against the rancid ripe odor of an un-bathed light skinned Yankee running across the dehydrated desert flats with detector in hand. I just returned from an enjoyable 1st time trip to Western Australia and the richly red iron soils of the Outback areas of known golden fields Kalgoorlie/Leanora. Even though I caught some serious plane crud on the 16 hour flight from LAX to Sydney, AU. and it lasted hard the 1st week and a half before I got a little better...I still managed to have fun. The Outback is one of a beautiful and secluded primitive place this mother earth allows us to play with many sites, sounds and wonders to gather and ponder in the mind. I would love to return some day, but would do things a little more different and be set up for gold hunting more for the serious BUSH and not be seen for a week at a time. Most areas we detected had been hunted really hard (just like here in the US such as Rye Patch, NV.) and we would find the crumbs that others missed do to their lack of detector knowledge and skill. We did manage to find an occasional small site that was off the beaten path and get a few nuggets. The Minelab GP-3500 with a Commander 15” MONO elliptical coil ran flawlessly and found most of my nuggets. In fact all 4 of us were using GP-3500’s and were amazed at how well they ran in the much heard of highly mineralized Australian soil. I did manage to find 4 small patches that produced the majority of my gold.. In no way do I base the success of this trip on recovered gold, but as usual, I hoped for and expected more. Of the 4 detectorists (including myself), we found approx 110 nuggets and one 5 oz specimen. I managed 62 of those nuggets and the specimen. To give you a weight total, we had a combined wt of approx. 4 ounces and then the 5 ounce specimen. Of the 4 ounces of gold nuggets we all found, my total wt was just over 64 grams (2 ounces) for the 62 nuggets, so you get an idea of the size with an average of my nuggets being around 1 gram each. The largest nugget (not including the specimen) was 3.9 gram and there were 2 of those found. Yes I was hoping for a few larger nuggets and even expected that we each could find a 1/4 oz'er but that never happened. Does that mean the trip was a bust? Most certainly not and I assure you, it was an amazing trip that I'll fondly remember for the rest of my life. Moral of the story to add to Condors trip. Over 10+ years ago, 4 good American nugget hunters with the newest detector technologies did not find what we had expected and hoped for in the gold category. 4 of us Americans did something most dream about but never do and we'll remember the Australian Outback...and those girls wearing pasties, for the rest of our lives. I always wondered if there was a nugget under one of those pasties? Maybe go back some day to check. Thanks for caring. Gerry in Idaho Gerry's Detectors www.gerrysdetectors.com

Well Fred, I don't recall weather it really happened or it's just my imagination, but you know with me it's all the same.

No GB. This one I dropped it in hydrochloric acid. I don`t play around with hydrofluoric acid. Bad stuff, but there is the tiniest trace of hydrofluoric in the Ali Brite I mostly use.

That one could turn into a really nice doozy. Here is one I had etched and it's value went 10X. Before pic and most folks would have said, good job. After etching, they are shocked. Don't forget it this go around.

Interesting read. I would say my gold hunting areas in Idaho are mostly mild, but I do have some hot areas. Eastern Oregon were I hunt is more mineralized than my South Idaho sites. The ground I swing in Northern Nevada is actually pretty mild, but I do know of a few hot areas. When I head to Montana, I feel the sites I hunt there have the hottest ground of all. Yes I feel MT is hotter than the areas I swing in Arizona too.

I'm in Northern California and yes, that is my experience up here. Our soil is all over the place, to the point that VLF's can be pretty much useless in certain areas due to mineralization. I ended up getting a PI and the difference was unbelievable. The PI won't see small gold nearly as good as the VLF but at least you're looking for gold and not digging up hot rocks and ghost signals!

I did a little concentrated hunting in the wash yesterday just to see. We dont have much mineralization here....... but i kind of get it. In the wash the sand has a lot more air gap especially as the water moves in and out..... making the sand of course soft/fluffy. Black sand and iron tend to concentrate there as well. This machine seems to be sensitive to really light up those minerals/iron in that area as they MOVE with the water. So i can see how targets might just disappear as the coil is overwhelmed with the sand AND salt water. Much like targets that disappear in the hole.

Just depends on the power lines and each country has different standards. I am coming to understand that in the U.S. there is a lot of stuff leaking lots of EMI that you will not find in other countries.

The best indicator for gold is.......... GOLD!I follow the gold to more gold! There are many many different types of indicator's you need to learn the geology of your area and figure out why the gold comes from were it dose. Then you can use this knowledge to either follow the geological feature or identify similar feature's. The indicator could be a fault, quarts reef, iron stone, jasper, chert, grey whack, change in rock type, intrusion, anomoly on a fault like a knee zone, ect ect ect. For example: I was detecting up a gully in the middle of no where, when I started to get a fair few small piece's in a run in the narrow gully. I just kept detecting up the gully and after about 200m the gold run cut out. But about 50m after my last piece I noticed a diorite intrusion cut across the gully, so I immediately realised that the intrusion is the indicator. But it was getting late and I had a looooonnng walk back to camp so I decided that I needed to return the next day. I ended up with 73g in small bits for the day out of the gully bottom. That night I looked over my Topo's and a couple of specialist satellite images in relation to where I marked the diorite intrusion on my gps software. I immediately noticed a anomaly on my specialist image that was right near my last nugget in the gully. So I decided that I would have to have a look at this anomaly that runs parallel to the diorite intrusion but just upstream from my last nugget. So the next day I returned to investigate the area again. I went straight to my last nugget location and then hopped out of the gully bottom up on to the steep hill side. And immediately noticed a narrow arsenic stained quartz reef going up the hill and I also noticed that the soil was slightly different more of a red tinge to it near the reef and on my gps it was exactly on the anomaly that I noticed the night before. I decided to detect both sides of the gully where the anomaly is and on my first pass after about 30 seconds swinging .......waaaaww. I got a good strong target in the side of the bank. After removing about 500mm of over burden I hit bed rock, and the now very loud signal was still in the bottom of my hole in the rock. So I opened up the hole to make digging the rock easier, after I opened up the hole I could see the arsenic stained quartz reef right where the signal was, so I started to get exited, and started smashing into the rock after about 20 minutes of digging into the rock out poped my first bit of leader gold a bit of rock the size of my fist with about 20g of gold in it after crushing. I re-scanned the hole, beauty there was still a very strong signal in the hole and a few smaller ones around the edges. So I kept on digging and after 2 full days busting the rock and removing over burden along the strike of the leader I ended up with 17oz after crushing. The next thing I did was project the anomaly on my gps and I started working the area near the anomaly. I picked up good alluvial and elluvial gold following it for nearly its whole length, which was over 5km in length. What put the gold there? It was the diorite intrusion. The diorite when it intruded the older sedimentry rock caused it to fracture in lines parallel to the intrusion, which allowed the gold bearing fluids to deposit the gold where it was.