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I got out for a couple hrs yesterday with forum member Beatup's brother. It's summer in Sunny Yuma, approaching 100 degrees around 9:00am so we started right at sunup. We were 30 minutes into a desert wash that had produced good gold for him this past winter. We split up at the first junction of washes I went left, he went right. I had taken about 10 steps and froze mid-stride as an 18" DiamondBack rattler slithered through my legs from behind me. He paid me no mind, and gathered himself up under a jumble of rocks 10 ft away. He never rattled, hissed or made any aggressive motion, early morning temps around 70 degrees. All I can figure is he was under a small boulder and as I passed he decided we were heading in the same direction, the gravel wash being his own territory. The fact that he was decidedly moving on his way and didn't stop and rattle probably saved me a pair of underwear. As dear old Fred Mason would say, "don't kill them, you're the trespasser" and I rarely do. I have snake chaps, but generally have excuses not to wear them, oh well. The good news, I found a 1.5 gram piece and brother of Beatup found a whopping 5 grammer. As old Sgt Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues used to say "remember, let's be careful out there".

Pics of the last few days detecting session when I’ve been able to get out and about. Sure enough the weather improves then I get stuck with other jobs so things have been a bit limiting at times. I hit up an old favourite and had a ball pinging bits and pieces on what I thought was flogged ground, one was really deep. The stand out signal for the day was the loud one I got sitting right on top already wrapped up under glass. 🙂 This is the second time I’ve found someone else’s gold, with another one years ago with Paul K from this forum when he was out visiting us from the States. Nice super deep chunkster and the lost test nugget. Yesterday, seeing how I was having so much success on old patches I thought were done to death, I took a punt and went to another long defunct spot further out of town. Time was limited but the pickers soon started rolling in. 🙂 With todays high gold price I am not going to sneeze at finding gold like this, especially when you consider how many people are stuck not being able to go detecting at all. 😞 These pieces were ultra deep for their size but were clean and obvious above the ground signal, the key was to go low and slow and not rush, as soon as I heard a slight pitch change I would slow down even more and try and centre the coil right over the target, once I got the height, speed and centering right the targets just popped out of the threshold. The hardest thing was to force myself to go slow and not try to cover too much ground too quickly. I have so many crumbing spots to revisit with this new Rona mind set . 😷 😎 JP A sign of the times, gold and hand sanitiser 🙂

Went out to the horse ranch in Helena with my dear friend today, to do a little horse maintenance, and some detecting in the pastures. She was using the newly arrived Vanquish 440, and I was using the Nox 800. First time I have detected with someone else, and it was her first time detecting ever. It was super fun! We didn’t find anything truly noteworthy, but did unearth a piece of flattened irrigation pipe that had been buried for some time. And my friend found her first relic; and old padlock. Not super old, but she was excited and that made me smile! Afterwards, I hit a new parking strip in the neighborhood with the Vanquish, and found several coins in short order. Lincoln memorial pennies, and three clad dimes. I really like the ease of use of the Vanquish. Pretty much a turn on and go machine. Good times!

Been drywashing for years and this is my understanding; Of course you can't drywash with out permission from a claim owner, if area un claimed and/or open to prospecting generally no problem as drywashing is considered prospecting. Drywashing falls under "casual use" , both puffers and forced air vibrastatic units, so long as the mining taking place and the drywasher is being fed by had tools. No jack hammers, back hoes etc., this for sure would require a plan of operation. BLM and National Forests lands OK so long as area is not designated a; "Wilderness Area". Generally BLM more understanding than forest service Don't create what is considered a significant disturbance ; no cutting down trees, bushes cactus etc. (dig around them) or you'll need a POO. Keeping my excavation no bigger than 10'x10' seems to keep me out of trouble. When I run that material I reclaim by back filling then open up another 10'x10" Oh and had a LEO tell me once if I left my hole over night, I would need to cut the steep sides at a 45 degree angle or put a fence around the hole........ desert tortoises Hope this helps

Just got an email about this. https://www.minersden.com.au/theminelabshow Facebook on Thursday night Oz time. Might be an interesting watch. Hopefully they stick a copy of it on YouTube for those that don’t do Facy. Anyone know who might be making an appearance? JP? That Brandon fella? I would expect you to be on there Steve H but you keep pi$$ing off the marketing dept 🤣

I was getting bored with digging stove lids, shovel heads and kerosene tins so I figured I would dig one more target and proceed to a different location. So I did.

There is no love lost between me and Minelab marketing, that’s for sure. The engineers are stand up blokes though.

Part of a field that is usually swampy has dried out a bit and I was able to see what was there without sinking to my knees. Found Susan B Dollar (most hated coin I think), British One Penny which was an odd find this side of the pond and a small white gold earing 12-14k .044g. Oddly the One Penny is worth the most 🙂 Rest is the usual clad.

I finally got out this past weekend for a gold hunt. The weather has really been messing with me, as far as being able to get up to where I hunt. I finally got to use my new 15" Evo and I have to say, I really like it. I was only detecting for 5 minutes when I got this nice sounding target, that had a double worble, and I knew it was a nugget. Weather was great Saturday, but Sunday morning it was raining with high winds. Then it started snowing, so I got the heck off of the mountain. I was told by a friend who lives down in the area to be careful because a 800-850 lb grizzly in the upper gulch where I camp and hunt has been very active trying to find food after winter. Luckily I have good camp prep habits with all food and trash put in cab of truck in ziplock bags. I only found the one nugget in the trip cut short, but I had a great time being back on the mountain.

I have used the Max a bit and packed many hours into my Pro. The Pro is slightly better on small jewelry. I can see that just about any mid range and now even the under $400 machines can pick up turf gold. Rings tend to be shallow in parks and if you don't mind working through the can slaw or digging the slaw you will just increase your odds of finding gold.. Higher frequency machines just give you more spread on the #'s in the low and mid range conductors. I think Garrett made a good choice on frequency for the Max as it hits silver better than the other 2 machines in the model line. I do find the AT Pro and Max tricky to work through heavy iron riddled areas and if your not careful it is easy to set the iron disc too high and mask out objects.

Sadly I have the found the best option for this is to leave my fem at home. This came after suggesting that she could nag the rocks instead of me as they'd be more sympathetic listeners.

I was given several options by the artist who did the HF and photography work. Sell outright, have it returned and pay for his beautiful work or sell on commission. I was in no hurry for a sale and a commission would produce the best net return. However it sold almost immediately. The proceeds will pay for this years mining ventures.

Just to make sure Bashin understands, the {0,1,2} TID's are the very small nuggets ('pickers'?), meaning those in the neighborhood of 0.1 g (or less). Bigger pieces will give higher TID's. There are two factors here -- the size distribution of the original virgin material and the efficiency of the dredge to remove them. Large pieces (again, if they were there at all) may have been rejected by the screening process. Small pieces (which the dredge was mainly concerned with) may have escaped due to either improper operation or just the limiting efficiency of the dredge itself. Wish I had options like yours in my neighborhood, Bashin. The good news is that there appears to be plenty of ground to cover!

Did a quick stint at the park this morning and found a Battle of Verdun coin/medallion dated 1916. As you can see from the pics I nicked it with the digging tool. 🤮 I'd like some advice on how to avoid this in the future. I know part of it is just experience, but there must be some techniques or mechanics that will help to mitigate this. I've included an image of a better conditioned coin too. Found a bunch of clad coins along with this. The Vanquish is a sweet little detector. Won't replace my Nox 800, but it is really fun to use! I think I will get the bigger coil for it...

I've been closer than I wanted to be to quite a few rattle snakes that never rattled. The're probably a new type that should be called non-rattle snakes or rattleless snakes. It would be kinda nice if they would all just rattle to let us know they're there. Encounters like your's usually result in folks wearing their snake gators more often. Glad everything worked out OK for you. I was out for a couple hours this morning hunting an old wagon road outside Phoenix. Just a couple of relics, one with a Pat. Date Nov. 17, 1883. Would rather have dug a couple of nuggets. 🙂

Bugger the photos, MN stop beating about the bush is the COORDs of find we want from KL...………...……… I`ll flog Nurse Pauls return ticket once he`s over here shortly, be first one at COORDs...……......

On ya, Steve them there ML marketing xters are out on a limb a few more and it`ll break, and even humpties men wont get em up again...…… But lets hope those engineers keep on pushing out their world top tech.

He is set up to safely use and experienced with hydrofluoric acid (seemingly benign but very dangerous stuff). He has also developed a way to remove the chalkyness from the quartz after the acid treatment. It takes many days of careful observation and an artistic eye to get the most out of a specimen. I don't have the patience or he talent. Don't try this at home without adult supervision.

Actually I had a concern about the use of the Vanquish by a total beginner , because the Vanquish audio is a little more complex than other detectors like the deus , simplex , tesoro and so on … This ML audio ( like the Equinox , Explorer , etc .. ) is a little subtle and in addition multitone so I was wondering about this for a newbie use … But from your post it looks like your friend has quickly learnt the Vanquish and is happy with it . Good news , because I have suggested a few days ago a Vanquish 340 to a friend who is also a beginner.... So normally he should not complain ..🙂

I think you are doing good in your coin fields.I would start by digging some iffy hits if you are starting to run out of good signals.That is how I got my gold coins. With the nox play with settings to see what does best.Get a hit and play with the recovery setting. Do a noise cancel since silent EMI can cause depth loss. You can bring 2 machines and compare a signal.If you have nox try 50 tones .That move helped me a lot. You may have different results.Good luck.

Miller, You don't mention where you are located, but if you have a club near by you might consider contacting them. They LOVE to find bullets for Police Agencies. In fact most clubs have trained teams which work with their local law enforcement agencies to locate all types of evidence. Just a thought, as there is success in numbers, depending on your time restraint. GaryC/Oregon Coast

Even though I got a lot of silver coins where a old pier use to be. The iron audio of the AT Gold would wear you out in heavy iron. I much prefer the soft sounds of the Nox.You have to use what you feel comfortable with.I like the AT when the targets are more spread out and bottle caps in the mix.

A bullet on or near surface should be no problem for the DD coil and just stock coin and jewelry program. If you are new to the machine messing with the settings much is not something I would recommend for an easy target that you should basically be able to eyeball unless somebody has stepped on it and driven it into the ground. Toss a similar bullet in the grass and practice on it to get an idea of responses. Good luck!

Ahh so your a postal delivery/chew toy worker. All makes sense now :)

I recover old bullets fairly often. I use the <Coins & Jewelry> program. Generally I use ground filter 3, and Preamp gain of 2 or 3. I use a 6 x 10 DD Eclipse coil, unless there's lots of iron trash. I also use the <Best Data>. Jim

The pack I use sits snugly in the battery housing area....no padding needed. The orientation of the pack is important (see photo). Just hook up the battery and then gently slide in the battery pack.......the pack doesn’t move around at all 👍

i was delivering mail to a house last monday 5/4/20 i was to busy what kind of dog was licking my leg as i was putting the mail in the mail box .The owner yelled be nice to the dog i looked down and it was a pit bull ! LOL

Going to try that, I have some super fine xxxx steel wool I use on pewter. Thanks!

Ok that doesn't make a lot of sense because the AT Max has the lowest operating frequency of the three AT series detectors (13.6 khz for the Max vs. 15 khz for the Pro vs.18 khz for the Gold) which would make it the least sensitive to gold overall. It is like taking a flat head screwdriver and saying it works better on a phillips screw because it has a bigger handle rather than just using the right phillips head driver for the job. In other words there are other tools more suited to the job of detecting small gold jewelry than just trying to use a detector with jacked up gain. Perhaps it works better than the Pro for that task but the right tool might be the Gold.

Good One Klunker, I have probably walked away from similar after digging so much rubbish. Talking to acquaintances some years ago while driving thru the bush, we came across them detecting, they had picked up 32 Ozs from a big rubbish area.

Hey I wanted to thank everyone for the input. I'm looking forward to getting back out there and hunting some more. I'm also looking forward to them easing up restrictions on park access, and beach access here in California! HH

Ran the RnB that wasn't at full charge as I had it on my ATP since last winter. Battery ran strong at full power for bit longer than 20 hours. Downside is it doesn't report back the life to the battery indicator but no biggie as I still have the internal. May give the AA rechargeable BlackUbe's a go and see how long they run. In either case they should save wear and tear on the internal battery.

I sent it home with a fellow so he play with it. Quite talented this fellow.

Now that time has passed and we have had lots of reporting on the AT Max, I’d say the consensus on the AT Max has been mixed at best, with many people deciding they still prefer the AT Pro instead. There are also some who seem satisfied with the AT Max, but as new detector releases go it was far from a home run win for Garrett. Basically they took a stable detector platform and jacked the gain up to the edge of instability.

Awesome post Doc. That is pretty much exactly what I do. But I still like the saying 'Gold is where you find it' as it has encouraged me to think outside of the box and I have found heaps because of it. What I am always trying to do is keep my detector in the most productive ground for as much time as possible. Research, knowledge and plain old hard work all add up to gold in the poke.

ML = Minelab Maybe??

Mark G. your Equinox shaft and coil look spotless aside from the depth marks. Mine looks like it has been dipped in a mud bath or painted with earth colored spray paint. I can't remember the last time the lower part of my Nox looked that clean even after cleaning it! Jeff

By the way, since you are searching an area with automotive parts, listen out for some screaming signals on the Nox in the mid to high 30s that may seem a little large and are deep. They could be chrome/chrome plated parts and when cleaned up can be worth a lot if they are in good condition. I dug out a 1920s Ford Model T hub cap (the little ones about the size of a baby food jar) yesterday that was hitting hard between 34 and 37 with little or no iron response. I got pretty excited digging it out since the site I was on has had lots of activity since the mid 1800s. That is pretty old for the Denver area. I was a little bummed when I could see it wasn't silver at the bottom of the hole but when I realized what it was my mood changed quickly. This grease cap was 14" deep and it took me quite awhile to dig it out of really rocky dirt with a Lesche hand shovel. The photo is after unfolding it (looked like a crushed aluminum can) and cleaning it up a bit. Jeff

In general with any VLF, the higher the mineralization, the less depth you will get. People talking about 10” depths are in low mineral ground. I never see a 10” dime in my ground. 8” maybe if I am lucky in a milder loamy turf type dirt, but 5-6” in more the norm in my rocky/sandy hard pack ground on a dime. In general, in sparse targets, lower recovery speed will give you more depth. However, as targets get denser and/or mineralization increases, you benefit from increased recovery speed. How do you know which recovery speed is best for your ground? Never by picking numbers based off reading anything on the internet, but by experimenting on found targets in your ground. Go detecting, get a target, and before digging, increase and lower recovery speed to see what setting gives the best signal. Do this a lot until you find what setting works best for your location. The setting for sparse target areas in general should be lower than the setting for a dense target area, but again actual testing should determine that, not these typed words. If you discover otherwise, use what works best! Using canned settings of any type is for novice detectorists. If you know your detector you have to let your detector tell you the proper settings to use, because proper settings vary by location. This requires effort, which is why people prefer canned settings. If you take the time, make the effort, you can determine what settings truly work best on your ground by varying and comparing settings on found targets before digging. Anything else is just flying blind. As far as struggling to make good finds... if that happens to me I find better locations to hunt. The secret is not the detector, it’s the location. As much as I like my Equinox there are a dozen detectors I could use and do about as well. It’s more about putting myself on good locations that makes my finds then what particular detector I use. I have been in parks that I swear should give up some good coins and they don’t. I go somewhere else and do better. Detectors can’t put in the ground what is not there. Finally, silver coins and Indian head pennys can be very hard to find in some towns! Some places have seen decades of expert detecting and finding coins like that can be a challenge for anybody. I sure don’t tell myself I am going to see an Indian head penny any time soon!

Well yesterday was fun, firstly we have finally had a cold front from the south come through and cool things down which means perfect central QLD metal detecting weather and secondly at one past Midnight they opened up our General Permission areas to detecting again for those living within a 50 KM range, so yippee.😎 I had a plan and stuck to it with only tiny bits coming in initially but then things improved with a decent little specimen. Pic of one of the holes I got a nugget out of, see the nice tightly packed gravel layer in the background sitting above the deco? With the first location done and dusted (I always seem to be able to scrounge a few bits off here before I get too bored) I then went to my main location which has been very good to me over the years. The ground is extremely variable and noisy so requires all your equipment to be working in sync with your mind set. They ground has Extremely high X, the X signal is so bad here I have to ferrite balance with the coil in the air because the Tracker gets all bent out of shape when it’s exposed to the variable ground signal, saturation signal and conductive (salt) signal). Fortunately we haven’t rain for months so the conductive signal is largely in the back ground, this means I have to really concentrate on the swing speed and the height of the coil to avoid the nasties. Going low and slow I was able to listen through the surface signals for the subtle wider more mellow responses which are hopefully the non-ferrous gold targets. There is a fair bit of surface thrash in this location with a little gold mixed in to keep things interesting, so I dig the odd mellow sounding loud response just in case. When I first found this place about 18 months ago a VERY loud mellowish surface signal pulled me up enough to investigate and only an inch or so down this popped out. 🤩😜😇 So as you can imagine having a success like that always finds you looking for an excuse to go over the area more thoroughly, in those subsequent trips I’ve manage to widen the gold producing area a lot but haven’t managed to repeat the sluggster experience....yet!!😁 Finally towards the end of the session I got a really nice deepish sounding signal that had to be gold, removing the surface layer the signal didn’t improve that much a sure sign that the target was in-situ. Down about 9 inches out pops a really water worn sub 2 gram piece putting a bit of icing on the session and explained why the signal was so, although mellow, very dominant at the start. All in all it was a fun morning with wages to boot. When I got back I dollied up all the small scrappy stuff and the specimen and gave it the bush button potato treatment, keeping the flat water worn piece for the skite jar. When melted our Clermont gold is spectacularly bright running around 97% pure. 😎 JP Gold haul for the session

Yup, Equinox or Vanquish.

Some of my finds this year .....

It would be nice to have a series of pictures of it as it bloomed. How long did yours take?