Summer passes too quickly in Alaska. August has the last hot days of the year, but the weather usually turns rainy. By September snow will start to appear on the mountain tops, and by the end of October snow arrives at sea level. I am trying to plan my fall operations, but the weather is always a question. I am afraid that the rains and high water of September will turn to snow and cold weather quickly this year, leaving only a short dredging season.

The current plan is to work at Mills Creek first, and then possibly at Crow Creek later, depending on weather and gold. My mining buddy Jeff Reed decided to move his 4" subsurface dredge up to Mills Creek and start working. He had marked out a stretch of creek that had very productive sniping (extracting gold with simple hand tools) last year and wanted to hit some of those same areas with a dredge. The gorge I had marked out for myself upstream of Jeff's ground was still full of whitewater, and it made me rethink my position. Here Jeff was starting mining, and I was still waiting for the water to go down. I decided to look for an area further upstream that would be more suitable for dredging at higher water levels, as I want to do some dredging before it gets cold this year. I can then go after the gorge when the weather gets cold and the water level drops.

Jeff's 4" Subsurface Dredge at Mills Creek

The pictures above show Jeff's dredge. It is based on a new 4" subsurface sluice box by Keene Engineering, bolted between a small set of marlex floats. A 4HP Honda pump provides plenty of power for the dredge and air compressor. The entire unit, with 15' of suction hose and suction nozzle weighs just under 100 lbs. These units are nice for remote sites, as they weigh less and use less fuel than the equivalent surface dredge. The trade-off is some loss of fine or flaky gold, but I have found it to be an acceptable trade for the areas I work.

I hiked up the canyon to where the valley starts to open up, and located a very nice stretch of creek on a wide, sweeping bend below a waterfall. I had found gold in this location last year, so made the decision to move my markers up to this site. It is far enough upstream that I will have to abandon my normal campsite (pictured at the top of the page) and move upstream. The area is set in a beautiful alpine meadow, so I do not mind making this move, although the road up to this area will require some clearing. It is amazing how fast alders grow in Alaska's long daylight hours.

Views from camp down to creek and looking up valley

I will be camping on a hill overlooking my future dredge site, so it will be a short walk down to the worksite each day. I plan to set my dredge up in the lower portion of the on the inside curve (the upper left hand corner of the picture on the left). I'll proceed up the creek, generally hugging the inside of the curve. Bedrock is quite shallow, with no more than 1-2 feet of material in much of this area.

Satisfied with my new plan, I headed down to see how Jeff was doing. He had about 3 pennyweight (20 pennyweight per troy ounce) of nice gold as I came by, and had the rest of the evening and the next day left to dredge. I had to work the next day, however, so headed on back to Anchorage. When Jeff came back to work the following day, he had 2-1/4 ounces of very nice gold gold to show off, with quite a few nuggets weighing over a pennyweight each. His dredge had worked well and he got into a small, but hot stretch of crevices in the bedrock. His showing of gold certainly has me anxious to move my dredge up to Mills Creek the next weekend!

Jeff with weekend's gold

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

A very interesting weekend, and not altogether unanticipated. The weather this spring has been unusually cool, and very late snows have left large quantities of snow at lower elevations. What I feared might happen was that the weather would turn warmer, and all that snow would melt quickly. Well, the weather has turned sunny, with temperatures in the 60's. This is nice, as the snow is going away, but it has brought my dredging operation to a sudden halt.

I headed down into the canyon at Crow Creek Mine, and looking down at the waters below, I knew I had problems ahead. The water had come up to over twice the volume of the previous week, and the clarity of the water had decreased considerably. I proceeded down the creek, and saw my dredge sitting in fast water, and with a decided tilt to one side.

High water, and sinking dredge!

I normally do not worry about rising water all that much. I often leave my dredge floating and tied off in the creek. I did make a mistake the last weekend, however, and I can attribute it to wishful thinking that the water would stay low for awhile longer yet.

I usually tie my dredge off in the pool I have created by working the dredge, which keeps it out of extreme currents if the water does come up. You can see in the photos above that although the water above and below the dredge is boiling, it is relatively calm around the dredge. I then tie the dredge off to a couple of points upstream, and allow the dredge to float up with the rising water.

The mistake I made was to leave my hose coiled in the bottom of the dredge hole. In normal situations this is okay, but not a good idea if the water is possibly going to rise. I usually worry that the currents from rising water may sweep the hose downstream, thereby pulling the dredge to one side and possibly causing a problem. When I anticipate that this may be a problem, I usually tie the nozzle high above the creek along a rope. When the water is evacuated from the hose, it also floats and acts as another anchor line.

I left the hose in the dredge hole, but what happened was something I had never foreseen. When the water came up, the front of the hole gave way. Rocks and gravel poured into the hole and buried the suction hose. The dredge was then anchored to the bottom of the creek! The water continued to rise, and the front end of the dredge was pulled below the surface of the water.

Several things saved my dredge from sinking. First, I plug all the drain holes in the top of the floats. Each of the four marlex float modules supporting the dredge has an open hole in the top. These holes keep the floats from expanding and contracting due to temperature and altitude variations. They also act as drains for water that may enter the floats, though this is most often through the holes themselves. I use boat style drain plugs, the type with a little brass flip on top, to plug the holes. This helps keep water out. The floatation modules on this dredge are more than ample, so even if a module fills with water, the dredge will still float, but if two fill, the unit will most likely sink.

I also run my anchor lines high, and the right hand photo shows that the leading anchor line runs steeply upward, helping to exert extra upward pull on the front of the dredge. This helps in situations such as these.

Finally, I got lucky. If the water had come up higher, it simply would have submerged the dredge to the point where it would have sunk. The float plugs are good, but not perfectly watertight, and so the unit will sink eventually.

I surveyed the situation, and decided that I was done for this spring. If the water was this high at 8AM, then it would just get worse as the day warmed. I could continue dredging, but the visibility was declining rapidly, and the current would be much harder to deal with. The diversion dam I had built the weekend before was totally submerged. Since I am doing this for fun, and since the gold will be there in the fall, I pulled the dredge out of the creek. I'll pack it out in the next couple of weeks, when the snow melts a little more.

5.81 ounces of gold from Crow Creek

And so, an abrupt halt to the spring dredging at Crow Creek. The final take for the seven days spent (five days dredging) was 5.8 ounces. This works out to 1.16 oz. per dredging day and 0.83 oz. per day for the trip as a whole. The 25% I pay to Crow Creek Mine comes to 1.45 oz., so I will be left with 4.35 oz. for my efforts. This equates to 0.87 oz. per dredging day and 0.62 oz. per day for the trip as a whole. Not a bonanza, but not bad considering that I did not get in full days in several cases.

The gold breaks down into 10% larger than 1/8 inch, with the largest nugget weighing 27.2 grains (1.13 dwt.). The less than 1/8" (8 mesh) but larger than 1/14" (14 mesh) size is typically used for gold nugget jewelry and equaled 33% of the gold. The gold less than 1/14" (14 mesh) is generally too small for jewelry use and can be considered fine gold from a resale point of view. This equaled 57% of the gold, or more than half the total weight.

So what does a flooded out gold dredger do? He goes metal detecting! Sunday morning I took my White's Goldmaster 3 to Crow Creek to look for nuggets for a few hours. The snow is still covering most areas, but cut banks are exposed and so providing a few detecting opportunities. Most of these areas have been scanned on the surface before, but I was not in the mood for serious digging, so I set about scanning the surface for missed nuggets.

I was not having much luck, so crossed over the creek to try some exposed banks I saw. This bank has old tailings perched over the gold poor "blue layer" of material. This is a thick layer of clay-rich material that overlays bedrock. It is relatively fine-grained and mixed with small rocks. It does contain gold, but usually only dust and fine particles. It is overlain in turn by a "brown layer" of streambed material that is a rich yellow-brown color, and mixed with larger round rocks. This is the layer that produces the larger nuggets. The old mining operations worked most of the brown layers and quit when they hit the blue layer. The top of the bluff in this photo is the top of the blue layer. Often gold can be found directly on top of the blue layer where it was left by the washing action of the old mining operations. I have found gold in the past on some of these exposed bluffs where the gold on top of the layer erodes out and slides down the face of the bluff.

Detector on steep bank & 1 grain nugget found with White's Goldmaster

Meanwhile, my friend Will Holden was upstream a short distance trying his new Minelab SD 2200D detector. This is a very powerful detector that lists for $3495, so you do not see very many of them. It excels at punching through very mineralized soil to find larger nuggets, but is not very hot on small nuggets. It would not have found the small nugget the Goldmaster located with no problem. Still, it's exceptional depth on large nuggets in mineralized ground makes it a machine I am thinking about purchasing.

Will started yelling and waving at me. I hurried up, and saw one of the happiest people on the planet at that moment. Will had turned on the detector and immediately found a piece of iron trash. The second target was quite strong, and turned out to be a nice two pennyweight nugget (1/10th ounce) found 50 feet from the trail in a heavily searched area. His feeling was other detectors would have found it, and that everyone had simply missed it. It is the largest nugget Will had ever found so far, and his hand literally shook from his excitement as I took the photo below.

Will's nugget, found with Minelab SD 2200D

I searched awhile longer and dug numerous fragments of shell casings and lead pieces from bullets fired into the hill in the past. Spring cleaning chores called me home early, but I will return next weekend for a more serious detecting expedition. So ends my weekend of mining, with one small nugget to show, worth about one cent. Such is the life of a gold miner!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

I am a big fan of the Fisher F75 from a different perspective than most. I am a prospector and have done very well finding gold nuggets with the F75. The very powerful all metal mode combined with the simultaneous on screen target id numbers have allowed me to quickly and efficiently hunt trashy tailing piles in search of large gold nuggets. The light weight and superb balance make the F75 a pleasure to use for long hours in rough terrain. It also was my detector of choice for my one and only trip to the UK that I have done so far, and it served me well there.

I spent a month in 2013 metal detecting on Jack Wade Creek near Chicken, Alaska. I kept my great results there quiet pending a return trip there in 2014. That trip has now been made but that is another story already told in detail on my forum at Steve's 2014 Alaska Gold Adventure. Now I can finally reveal the details of the 2013 expedition.

As I explained in the previous entry Making Lemonade Out of Lemons I had decided to take four metal detectors to Alaska with me, with the Minelab GPX 5000 as my main unit, supplemented by the Fisher Gold Bug 2 for tiny stuff and Gold Bug Pro for trashy areas. As I also explain there, the Fisher F75 was redundant, but in the end I could not bear to leave it behind.

I started out early one morning with my big gun pulse induction metal detector, but got onto a tailing pile that had ferrous trash scattered down one side, and I was just not in the mood for it that morning. I went back to my truck and got out my trusty F75. I run the F75 in all metal because it has instant target response; there are no worries about recovery times in all metal. The coil picks up every variation not only in targets but in the ground allowing me to monitor what is going on at all times. Knowing what the ground is doing is important in keeping the ground balance properly adjusted for maximum results.

The key thing I like about the F75 in all metal however is that the meter always runs in discrimination mode and places a nice, large target number on screen while in all metal. The audio alerts me to a potential target, which I then analyze more carefully while watching the target numbers. All metal goes deeper than discrimination modes, so no on screen number means a very deep target beyond discrimination range. This alone makes running in all metal desired when prospecting because running in discrimination mode would miss all those extra deep signals.

Steve's Fisher F75 metal detector

In all metal I dig them until a target number shows up. Deep targets or small targets in mineralized ground will often read ferrous, so I watch the numbers and if they even once jump to non-ferrous, I dig. Only targets that give a 100% strong ferrous reading over multiple sweeps can be safely passed. Though I will throw in my caveat that no discrimination system is 100% accurate and there is always a risk of passing a good target. When in doubt, dig it out!

I do often employ pulse induction detectors and do very often just dig everything. I advocate that when time and conditions allow. The reality is this is not always practical for many reasons. Maybe it is just limited time and overwhelming amounts of junk. Better to increase the odds by using discrimination than bogging down digging 100 nails in a small area. In my case it often boils down to fatigue or flat out not being in the mood to dig junk.

So it was on this particular morning, and therefore my F75 came out and I got to work sorting through the trash working my way up the side of the tailing pile. I crested the top and got a strong reading and looked down. There was a shallow dig hole with leaves in it, obviously from some hunter there in prior years. I figured the guy had recovered a trash item and kicked it back in the hole so I cussed him quietly under my breath. I hate it when people do that

Then the target numbers caught my eye. They were all over the place. A crumpled piece of flat steel might give numbers like that though. Still, I was curious and figured I would retrieve the trash this person left in the field. I gave the old dig hole a big scoop, and out pops a big gold nugget!!

I seem to have a talent for finding ugly gold nuggets, and this one was perhaps the ugliest I have ever found. It looked more like a rock burnt in a fire than a gold nugget when I dug it up, though the glint of gold is unmistakable. This gold however was very pale and in fact later analysis revealed it to be roughly half gold and half silver and other metals.

2.37 ounce gold specimen from Jack Wade Creek, Alaska found by Steve with Fisher F75

Top and bottom views of the Jack Wade specimen

It is a little known fact that gold alloys tend to have very poor conductivity ratings. Gold is very conductive, and silver is a superb conductor. You would think adding silver to gold would improve the conductivity, but in fact just the opposite happens, and the conductivity lowers dramatically. Gold/silver alloys are closer to lead in conductivity than that of the pure component metals, explaining why bullets read identically to most gold nuggets. This nugget has a very pale gold, much paler than most gold on Wade Creek. I found another pale gold nugget like it later and was told locally that it is suspected that the source of this gold is somewhere up Gilliland Creek, an upper tributary of Jack Wade Creek.

I did later sell the specimen, and the buyer performed an X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) assay of the specimen revealing that it is 53% gold and 44% silver, a little iron, and a smattering of platinum group metals. The platinum group metals are extremely interesting, as it would indicate the possibility that the gold is related to an ultramafic bedrock source? Some of the rock enclosed in the specimen is decidedly darker than normal, another clue that the source might be unusual. Technically something with this much silver in it would be called electrum rather than gold. Electrum is a high silver content gold alloy.

X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) Assay of 2.37 oz "Ugly Nugget"

This ugly nugget is a detectorists worst nightmare, because the 50-50 alloy mix and the rock content give it a much lower conductivity reading than would be the norm. I surmise what happened is this earlier operator got a poor signal and gave a quick scoop to get the coil closer to the target. The signal did not improve, as would be expected with most gold nuggets, so the operator decided it was trash and moved on. The rest of the hill being covered with junk no doubt contributed to this decision.

It was my insistence on investigating everything except 100% ferrous readings that made the difference. The readings on this target were not solid as one would expect from a pretty strong signal but all over the place. Most people would say that indicates a trash target but I have seen many gold nuggets do the same thing in mineralized ground. The result is I dug a shallow 2.37 ounce gold nugget that somebody else walked away from. Sadly for them one more scoop would have revealed the nugget for what it was. Hopefully this is a reminder to the reader that far too often detectorists look for excuses not to dig. How many good finds get left behind because we do not want to take that extra minute or two to dig a target?

This nugget is far from a premium find, but I have already sold it for over twice the cost of a new Fisher F75. That detector was a real money maker for me as that was far from the only gold I ever found with it. Good thing I decided not to leave home without it!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

In 2007 I was sent a prototype of the White's PulseScan TDI to test, and I was so impressed that I decided to put the new model into service at my "pay-to-mine" operation at Moore Creek, Alaska as soon as it was available. Moore Creek has mixed hot rocks that severely impede the performance of regular metal detectors. I lobbied for and got four of the very first units off the production line in the spring of 2008 and those detectors were provided to visitors at Moore Creek that had no detector of their own or who needed a backup.

These people by nature often have little or no detecting experience. I was happy to find some stock settings for the TDI that worked well at Moore Creek. I could basically set the detector for somebody and as long as they did not touch the controls it worked well. Just turn the detector on and go.

Still, experience counts for much and novices have a tough time finding gold nuggets, just due to lack of basic detecting skills. We had found in the past that regardless of the detector used we were happy if novices could just find any gold at all metal detecting during their visit. So I was very pleased that many new detectorists at Moore Creek found their very first nuggets metal detecting with the White's TDI. The unit is not only very capable but also quite easy to operate and so really the only task left to the novices was to get over a nugget.

Mike and Karl were pretty typical of many of our visitors. Never really done any metal detecting for gold and no detectors of their own. I sent them out with the TDI and they each found by far the largest gold they had ever found in their lives. The small stuff at Moore Creek is larger than many people will ever find and so I had the opportunity to create some real life experiences for a lot of people. It really is a good feeling seeing people make their first finds and knowing you made it happen.

Mike's gold specimen weighed in at 0.28 ounce and Karl got two, 0.12 and 0.25 ounce respectively.

Mike B. & Karl E. of Anchorage, Alaska with Moore Creek TDI finds

Close up of Mike and Karl's gold specimens

I was doing some bulldozing at the mine to stir up some nuggets for our visitors. I got to one little knob of gravel and after I flattened it out I thought "that looks like a good spot". I had not done any detecting in a couple weeks and figured it was about time. So when I got the dozer back to camp I got a TDI out and headed to the location. A guy had just come into camp as I was leaving and so I told him to head up the same way.

I got to the spot and started detecting. First down one row and up the other. After about ten minutes I got a nice signal, and dug up a great 0.31 ounce specimen. It is a little section of a quartz vein with a nearly solid gold core of gold running through the middle.

0.31 ounce Gold Specimen found with White's TDI

I turned off the detector and headed back to camp. The other guy was now just arriving and asked me what was wrong. I told him nothing was wrong, but that I'd got my nugget and so was done. You should have seen the look on his face! Poor guy had been looking for gold for days and I walk right out and find a nugget in ten minutes.

We had an 82 year old gentleman in camp that week who was not having much luck detecting so I gave the specimen to him to take home to Florida.

So what were the settings, etc. we used with the White's TDI at Moore Creek? The Pulse Delay was always at 10, the most sensitive setting for gold, and we were always able to run the maximum Gain of 12. The Ground Balance was tight as we have both a positive and negative hot rock at Moore Creek. A bit one way and the positive rocks signaled and a bit the other way and the negative rocks signaled. Negative hot rocks are by far the more prevalent. In general a setting of about 9 eliminated nearly all the hot rocks. But no matter how much I tweaked there were faint hits on some hot rocks. This is not surprising as the Minelab PI detectors also hit the hot rocks at Moore Creek. The ground is a weird mix of fairly neutral soil made up of the underlying decomposed shale bedrock with basalt and monzonite hot rocks eroded from the nearby hills.

However, I determined a couple things with the TDI that really helped with the new people. First, virtually all gold at Moore Creek gives a high tone, even multi-ounce pieces. I believe this is because of the generally high silver content combined with the specimen nature of the gold. Surprisingly, when silver is added to gold it lowers the conductivity instead of increasing it, and so low purity gold is more likely to give low conductor high tone responses on the TDI. You can figure with 99% certainty that a low tone is an iron target or hot rock at Moore Creek. I ended up with the novices ground balancing to kill the high tone hot rock responses and did not worry about low tone hot rocks. Then I set the very unique to the TDI Target Conductivity switch to eliminate low tones and only sound off on low conductivity high tone targets. This made the TDI a real no-brainer to run. Dead quiet, no false signals at all. Then get any high tone at all, and it was always a bullet or shell casing (rare at Moore Creek), some small ferrous trash that reads low conductive, or gold. The ferrous trash that reads low conductive tends to be shallow easy to dig stuff. Being set up this way almost totally eliminates the PI tendency to have a person digging deep, tiring pits only to find a big piece of steel junk.

The only problem I had was people fiddling with or accidently knocking a control out of adjustment. The setting was so perfect I actually considered just gluing the controls in place to prevent people from messing with them! Another problem happens when you loan people stuff to use - it not only gets used it gets abused. Luckily the TDI is able to take a licking and keep on ticking, just like the old ads. This TDI got strapped on the back of an ATV and then the driver forgot about it as he roared through the mud holes and brush. Having too much fun I guess! Not only did the unit get covered in mud he managed to bend the middle rod section. A little careful work with a water hose and a little bending and the detector worked just fine. I eventually ordered a new rod section to replace the bent one.

White's TDI Covered with mud!

I ran the 7.5" coil a bit and found a 1 pennyweight nugget with it. I was surprised at how stable the smaller coil was, as I expected it would be more prone to hitting hot rocks, but instead it seemed to be more immune to the hot rocks than the larger coil. At Moore Creek though the stock 12" coil is the better way to go not so much for extra depth but for ground coverage, which really is the name of the game at the mine. The person that covers the most ground digging the most targets has the best shot at finding the gold at Moore Creek. But for many nugget hunting tasks I think I would very much like using the smaller coil.

Here is Moore Creek visitor Pete W from Paducah, Kentucky. Pete hunted hard with the TDI but was having little luck. I was out with him at one point and was sitting nearby when he got a signal. He started to dig with his scoop but the target was deep, and so I came over with my pick to help. I scooped a pretty deep hole, but when he checked the target was still in the ground. The TDI got this one at respectable depth. So I dug some more and out popped a really good looking nugget! A very nice piece weighing 0.27 ounce that put a huge smile on Pete's face.

Pete W. and TDI gold

Close up of Pete's nugget found with TDI

And here is a great photo of Moore Creek visitor Jens S from Hupstedt, Germany with nuggets he found with the TDI. The larger nugget is 0.62 ounce and the smaller 0.37 ounce. Jens found the smaller nugget first within ten minutes of turning the TDI on for the first time. Jens really liked dredging and highbanking more than metal detecting and so spent most of his time at Moore Creek doing just that. From what I saw though he was a natural with a metal detector and so who knows how he would have done if he had concentrated on that more. He went home with a lot of gold anyway and a very happy visitor to our country, with an experience most will never have.

Jens with 0.37 oz and 0.62 oz gold specimens found with White's TDI

You would be surprised how little detecting I did while at Moore Creek. Running a pay-to-mine operation is a full time job and then some. Still, I did have my chances to get out now and then and having the new TDI around certainly gave me reason.

A couple of our visitors, Keith M and Bob D and I decided to hit some tailing piles downstream and across Moore Creek, making them hard to get to and so less hunted by others. We loaded our detectors and waders up on ATVs and headed down to the general location. After crossing the stream we hiked down to the lowest tailing pile which I've been eying from afar the last couple years. It has a lot of brush on it, and I figured a nugget might be lurking unfound in that brush.

The tailing piles are very steep, and so I hip mounted the White's TDI to keep the weight off my arm while side-hilling. The only issue I found in the brush was a tendency for controls to get knocked off their settings and so I was alert for changes in the detector's response. I found a good ground balance setting that minimized the response from both the positive and negative hot rocks. This ended up being about 8 on this tailing pile. I ran at the gold sensitive 10uS setting and was able to run the gain up to max. I set for a quiet, faint threshold. I do run the Target Conductivity switch on All myself as I prefer to hear the hot rocks and sort them out myself. I do not mind digging a few rocks if need be but usually they have a consistent sound I can learn. In this instance though the TDI was running real nice. There seemed to be less of the bad hot rocks on this side of the valley.

Bob, Keith, and I spaced ourselves around the tailing pile and proceeded to hunt. I started low on one end, hunted around that end, and then worked up the hill into the brush. They were both running Minelabs. Minelabs can be set to run pretty close to each other, but we discovered that the TDI does not play well with Minelab detectors. The TDI does not pick up the Minelabs at all, but the Minelabs go nuts with a TDI anywhere near, and they cannot tune the TDI out at all. So I took pains to stay as far away from both Keith and Bob as possible. I ended up in a little spruce tree thicket on one end of the pile.

Soon I got a nice, clear, high tone signal. A bit of digging revealed a nice 1.93 ounce gold quartz specimen down in the roots! It was a typical Moore Creek "oreo cookie" nugget with a solid gold core sandwiched between two thin layers of quartz. But very solid in the middle - this chunk had a very nice heft. Not only did it make my day (week? month?) but actually paid for that TDI in a single find. It certainly gave me a real warm fuzzy about the TDI being able to make a find like that with it.

We hunted most of the rest of the day and although we found many targets my nugget proved to be the only find of the day. That happens so often it does make me wonder at times. I have seen myself and others bang into a great find like that early on, and then find nothing the rest of the day so often that when it happens now I joke about it. The feeling is if you get a great one like that right off the bat you may as well quit for the day. But of course nobody ever does.

1.93 oz gold nugget found by Steve Herschbach with White's TDI

Here is the rest of the story on the nugget. I have a rule at Moore Creek that any gold our crew finds while we have paying customers in camp goes to the customers. So at the end of the week we had a drawing. Everyone got 5 tickets, and for every ounce of gold a person had found we took away one of their tickets. We wanted to handicap the hot detectorists. Although we had 15 visitors in camp, it was Bob who was with Keith and I when the nugget that got found that won it. Which was nice as he is one of our regular visitors and had not had much luck detecting. There was some pretty serious karma at work that week! Just a reminder, gold was running around $700 per ounce in 2008, so I gave away a $1400 nugget. I did this a lot at Moore Creek and in fact no visitor ever went home without gold. I always found enough hunting on the side to be able and make sure people who got skunked got a going away present. I think I found and gave away about a pound of gold, which must set some kind of record.

I was figuring there is no way anyone is going to beat my 1.93 ounce nugget for awhile. After all, not many nuggets get found over an ounce, and this one is almost two ounces. Well, I figured wrong. After all our clients left for the summer I invited a couple friends up to the mine to hang out while we shut the mine down for the winter. Husband and wife detecting team Bernie and Chris came to Moore Creek for the first time. Both are expert with VLF detectors having found pounds of gold between them with the White's MXT. Pulse induction detecting was new to them however and at Moore Creek I convinced them to set the trusty MXT aside in favor of PI detectors. Well, no worries about these two running new detectors. Bernie and Chris scored some real nice gold. In fact, Chis got the best find of the week with the TDI, and really gorgeous 2.07 ounce gold in quartz specimen. It is actually one of the more attractive pieces I saw found at Moore Creek. Instead of the usual solid layer of gold wafered between quartz this specimens has gold laced evenly and very attractively throughout the quartz. Chris not only beat me for overall weight by a bit but for sure in the specimen good looks department.

2.07 ounce gold specimen found by Chris P with White's TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

This story is a compilation of various posts made on the internet at the time and finally added to my journal. I wanted to add a lot of missing detail, and in the process it sure brought back a lot of great memories. The Moore Creek gig will go down as the best time of my life. Not only was a lot of gold found, but many great new friends and fabulous adventures were made there. The mine now belongs to other people and the pay-to-mine operation has long since ended, but the memories will be cherished as long as I live.

The White's PulseScan TDI is a detector I still own. It has some interesting features no other detector has and in some ways is an underappreciated machine. I like the easy hip mount capability and the unique Target Conductivity switch in particular. The main problem I see is people using it in locations where a VLF is a better choice, and then complaining the TDI is no better than a VLF. Stuff like that makes me shake my head. If a location is suitable for a VLF by all means use a VLF. Pulse induction detectors like the White's TDI are for locations where the ground or the hot rocks are such that a VLF operator wants to quit in frustration. Ground Balancing PI (GBPI) detectors are meant solely to handle extreme ground or hot rock conditions, and it those conditions do not exist, then the entire reason for using the PI detector also does not exist. In low mineral ground the only real advantage GBPI detectors have is in their ability to run very large coils, and that can aid in finding deep large targets. But if no deep large targets exist to be found a VLF is often the better choice in low mineral ground, especially given the superior ability of a VLF to sort out trash targets. As always it is about using the proper tool for the job, and a location like Moore Creek is a perfect spot for a detector like the White's TDI. You can find more details on the TDI on this website at the White's PulseScan TDI page.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2008 Herschbach Enterprises

It is winter in Alaska! Maybe not by the calendar, but certainly by the snow on the ground and the ice on the water. Jeff Reed and I decided to make one last mining trip for the season. Snow is falling at low elevations now, but only a few inches have accumulated on the ground. We decided to take a gamble and see if we could drive back into our claims at Mills Creek. There was a chance, however, that we would find too much snow on the road to get back in. The only way to know was to drive down and find out. We decided to take both our trucks, just in case one of us got stuck. We headed out early under cloudy skis. On the way through Portage we passed a cow moose and her calf breaking ice in a pond next to the highway.

I met Jeff at the gravel pit next to the highway where our access road starts out. We decided to take it easy driving in. There was only two or three inches of snow on the road, but that can be enough to cause problems on steep hills. We did not think it wise to be too aggressive getting in, as we might not make it up a couple of the hills coming back out. The drive in, however, proved to be no problem. We arrived at my campsite on the claims just above tree line to find a winter wonderland.

Our plan was to take advantage of the low water conditions to snipe for gold on shallow bedrock. Our claims have quite a bit of exposed bedrock, and relatively coarse gold. Sniping consists of the use of simple hand tools to recover pockets of gold, usually from bedrock cracks and crevices. This is more commonly done above water, but can also be done underwater with the aid of a wetsuit (down south) or drysuits in Alaska. A prospector outfitted with a suit, mask, and snorkel can examine bedrock underwater in search of concentrations of gold. The gold is then recovered using simple tools, such as small pry bars and suction guns. The best (perhaps only) book exclusively on the subject is Underwater Sniping for Gold by Sam Radding & Jim Garlock.

Moose crossing pond, and Steve with Kirby

Gearing up for underwater sniping in Alaska is kind of like preparing for battle. Jeff got into his AMDS drysuit while I donned my Harvey's drysuit. We have tried every kind of kneepad imaginable over the years, but never found anything that really stays put in fast water. I finally came up with my own solution years ago, which is to wear an oversized pair of work pants. I sew carpet to the knees with fishing line. The trick is to get a pair of pants with wide enough legs that you can easily slide them on over the drysuit. This may mean a rather large waist size, so I usually use a bungee cord for a belt. I have been using miners moss for the kneepads lately. It does not last quite as long as the regular sluice box carpeting I used to use, but is soft and cushy on my knees. This solution not only protects the knees of the suit, but the entire lower half of the suit. Jeff has adopted the idea, but is a bit more stylish in that he uses a weight belt for his pants!

Next comes the hoods with under caps. A good neoprene drysuit hood, like that made by Harvey's, is all that is needed, but we both use Henderson Ice Caps also. The ice cap is a thin under (or over) neoprene hood used in addition to the regular hood that covers your face completely, except for the eyes and a small opening for the mouth. Once a mask, snorkel, and gloves are put on, the only part of your body touching the water is your lips. The gloves can be five-fingered for some people, but three-fingered mitts are warmer in extreme conditions. I coat the entire working area of my gloves with a thin coat of Aqua Seal brand sealant. A little of this stuff goes a long way. Too thick an application will result in a glove that is stiff and tiring to use.

Jeff & Steve suit up

Our sniping kits are similar. I use a cheap nylon rucksack to carry the gear. I have an 18" chisel-edged pry bar and a large screwdriver for prying crevices. I also have a small screwdriver, some very large crevice tweezers, a set of fine point tweezers, and a snuffer bottle. The main tool is a suction bulb. These are similar to the snuffer bottle idea, but with a squeeze bulb and a larger intake tube. I sometimes bring along a larger unit made out of a modified grease gun, but find the little bulb unit gets the most use. Finally, I include a 10" gold pan and a large plastic vial in my kit.

The process of sniping is actually simple, and can be a lot of fun. You can recover quite a bit of gold by sniping in itself, but it serves an even more important role as a prospecting method to locate future dredging ground. In areas where dredging is prohibited, sniping may offer the only way to recover gold from some streams and rivers.

The picture shows the area we were in. There is bedrock outcropping on both banks and in the creek. I usually leave everything in my rucksack on my back, except for the 18" pry bar. I jump in the water and thoroughly examine all the bedrock I can get at. If there is a bit of sand and gravel on the bedrock, it can be scraped aside and "fanned" away by waving a hand at it rapidly underwater. Any interesting crevices, no matter how small, should be investigated with the pry bar. Other tools can be pulled out as needed. When any gold is located, the snuffer bottle or suction bulb is used to recover it.

I spent quite a bit of time in the area around the falls, finding a bit of gold here and there, but no major concentrations. Jeff wandered on down the creek, and I followed a little later. He had his head stuck in a pool behind a rock, and indicated he was finding some nice gold.

I kept scouting around, finding an occasional flake, but a good crevice eluded me. It is possible to find single crevices that will produce a few pennyweights of gold, and sometimes a hot set of crevices can produce an ounce or more of gold. This area is at the upper reaches of the coarse gold deposits on Mills Creek, however, and the gold is a bit sparse.

I looked up the creek, and Jeff still had his head in the same pool. I knew something was up... he would not stay put unless the gold was good. I came up, and with a big smile he dumped what he had so far in his pan. A few pennyweights of chunky gold looked back up at me from his pan, and I must admit I was a bit jealous. I had only little flakes to show in return. Jeff indicated the pocket was working out, though, and pretty soon he headed downstream.

Mills Creek freezing up, and Jeff's gold

We continued on, but neither of us got into any other hot pockets. Jeff saw a couple of spots he wants to come back and check next summer. My main goal is to put my dredge on the corner where Jeff located the best gold of the day. It is in the area I am actively working, just upstream of my last dredging location. There may be more gold under the deeper overburden, or it may simply be a single pocket of gold, now worked out. I'll have to wait for next summer to find out.

So ends my gold mining for 1999. Overall, it was not one of my more productive summers for total gold found, but for fun it was tops, as I think my entries for the summer show. A determined dredger can work through the winter, but frankly I am not so gung-ho as to fight the cold for a few ounces of gold. Better to wait for summer to return again.

Jeff ended up with about 1/4 ounce of nice nuggets for the day. I had a fairly pitiful showing of small flakes and a half pennyweight nugget. I would have liked to finish the year with a bit more of a bang, but so it goes. This is two trips in a row that Jeff has kicked my fanny in gold production, so I can't wait for next year and a chance to show him up in return. The gold will wait under snow and ice for us until then!

Steve's Gold from Crow Creek & Mills Creek 1999
Largest Nugget 5.4 Pennyweight

P.S. I get a lot of comments on the color of the gold in my photos. Please keep in mind these are digital photos, and have often been lightened (as in the photos above) or darkened. Most gold around Anchorage is about 85% pure, and had a nice yellow color, but is much paler than much of the California gold I have seen. Crow Creek Mine gold is of lower purity, usually 70-75%, and so has a lighter color than the Mills Creek gold on the right. I have some gold from Crow Creek that has enough silver in it to qualify as "white gold" or more properly, electrum.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

My father, two friends, and I flew northwest to the Interior Alaska town of McGrath Friday morning. I have permission to hunt several creeks in the area, but have had a hard time getting there the last couple summers. Bad weather or scheduling has kept me away. Everything finally came together this year, so off we went. My father is a classic Alaska bush pilot with a Cessna 206, so I'm luckier than most when it comes to access.

The destination for this trip was Ganes Creek, owned by Doug Clark and Dan Wiltz. Ganes Creek has produced over 250,000 ounces of gold, and some of the largest gold nuggets ever found in Alaska. Some very large nuggets have been found here with metal detectors, and I have wanted to visit the creek for years. After reaching the mine and settling in, Doug pointed us to some old tailing piles. A friend of his, who knew little of detecting, had found a half-ounce nugget in the vicinity, so it seemed a good place to start.

I had brought my Minelab SD2200D along, but found the ground to have low mineralization. Bedrock around McGrath is mainly slate/shale. There are lots of igneous cobbles in the overburden, but nothing real hot. Easy detecting ground. The main problem with the tailings was lots of iron trash. I decided to give my Fisher Gold Bug 2 with 14'' coil a try. Since we were hoping for large nuggets, I put it in Iron ID mode, which I normally have not used before. I did find that the machine chattered a lot until I turned the threshold knob down. It appears the threshold control does affect the machine in the iron id mode, although you cannot actually hear the threshold.

Tailing Piles Along Ganes Creek

Everyone else was using the Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ, all outfitted with the 11'' DD coil. Again, due to iron trash, they all ran the discriminate mode instead of all-metal. The Lobo is one of the rare nugget detectors with a full range discriminator. This proved valuable this trip. The control is adjustable, and it is very important that it be set no higher than needed to tune out nails and other small iron items. We ended up finding all the nuggets on this trip while employing iron discrimination.

Our theory was simple. There were large nuggets in the area, and we wanted them. Tuning up for the little ones was not the idea. In fact, no one wanted to waste time trying to recover small nuggets and digging lots of worthless iron trash would definitely be a waste of time.

I started chasing gold in the early seventies. I've dredged and detected all over Alaska, but spent most of my time in areas where large nuggets are rare. I've always wanted to find a big one, something over an ounce, but it has eluded me. I have made numerous detecting trips to large nugget locales, and detected literally pounds of gold over the years. I have no problem finding 5-7 pennyweight nuggets, but nothing larger has come my way.

I finally dredged a .98 ounce nugget in 1998 at Crow Creek Mine, but even then felt like I had not really done it. .98 ounce is close enough to generally say I found a 1 ounce nugget, and I do. But I still did not feel I had hit the big one. So I went ahead and decided to back off on spending so much time dredging, to spend the time chasing hot areas to detect for large gold.

A trip to the Wrangell Mountains last year netted me an 8 dwt nugget, my largest with a detector. Then off to the Fortymile last fall. That expedition turned up a 3/4 ounce nugget. Things were looking up. So this adventure was a part of my new game plan. Big nuggets the goal... heck with the little ones!

Bud, Steve, Brian, and Jeff

My father is always game to go mining, but does not have my passion or patience for it. I bought him a Lobo last year, as the automatic ground balance is right up his alley. The machine is very forgiving. Still, he has sloppy habits, mainly a very poor swing. He is only near the ground directly in front of his feet. I've tried to get him to do better, to no avail. We've searched lots of tailing piles before, with little success. We all start detecting, and in less than 15 minutes Dad gets a beep and kicks the ground. In a very surprised voice, he exclaims, ''I'll be damned... I found a gold nugget!'' There lay a nice 13.1 dwt piece, his largest ever.

That got us fired up!. It was the end of the day, but in short order I found a 7.5 dwt nugget, a 1.1 dwt nugget, and .7 dwt nugget. Jeff hit a 2.6 dwt piece.

We got some sleep, figuring to strike it rich the second day. But it was not as hot as we had thought. About noon I finally found a quartzy 14 dwt nugget. Since these are nuggets lost by the original operations, many of them have lots of quartz. The nuggets with higher gold content were generally caught. I found a 1.8 dwt, and Jeff hit a 1.3 dwt piece, but nobody else had any luck by 2PM.

It was sunny and about 90 degrees. We are not used to such temperatures in Alaska, and everyone of us was suffering. Dad, Brian, and Jeff rolled up and announced it was time to head back to camp for a break. ''Leave me here; I want to keep hunting'' was my reply. Jeff decided to keep hunting. Dad and Brian gave in and decided to stay, but sat down to rest. Jeff and I hit the tailings again, and in maybe 20 minutes Jeff found a nice solid 17 dwt nugget. This rejuvenated the troops and the hunt was back on!

Jeff With 17 dwt Nugget Found With Tesoro Lobo

We wandered down back trails through the tailing piles, and Jeff finds another 5.6 dwt nugget. Some time later we were detecting some tailings next to the creek, and I hit a nice 15 dwt piece. Jeff and I are pretty happy at this point, but Dad and Brian had no gold for the day. Brian had not found any gold at all yet, and this can be very hard on someone relatively new to nugget detecting. It was nothing but bad luck, as he basically was doing everything right. He simply had not put the coil over a nugget yet.

After dinner Brian, Jeff, and I headed for the tailings off the end of the runway. After less than an hour, the mosquitoes were bothering me enough that I headed back out to the runway. Nobody was in sight, so I wandered down the shoulder of the runway swinging my detector. The runway is made out of flattened tailings, so I figured it was worth a shot. Besides, there were fewer mosquitoes in the open! One hundred feet down the runway I get a beep and a 1.7 dwt quartz pebble with a couple chunks of gold in it. I met Brian and Jeff back at camp; they had found no gold. My father returned from exploring up the creek. He also found no gold.

Steve With 14 dwt Nugget Found With Gold Bug 2

The third and final full day started with rain. We did some exploring upstream, but with no success. The mosquitoes were out in force, so Jeff and I donned headnets and searched more tailing piles. Dad explored up a side creek, while Brian indicated he wanted to search in the camp vicinity.

The rain let up, but not the mosquitoes. They liked the cooler, damper conditions. Jeff and I searched tailings without luck for some time. We finally wandered back to the runway. Jeff finally picked up a couple nuggets on the runway shoulder near where I found the one the day before. I then hit a nice one also.

Jeff was hot to get with it, but I convinced him we should go find our partners and tell them about the new finds. I was anxious for Brian to find a nugget. As we got to camp, up wanders Brian with a big grin. He had obviously found gold. A beautiful 7.8 dwt nugget that everyone agreed was the best looking nugget found. Solid gold with just a spot of quartz, and a bit of twisted wire appearance. The find really raised Brian's spirits, and he was raring to go now.

Brian's 7.8 dwt Gold Nugget

My father was way up a side creek exploring, so we hooked up with the Doug and his crew and did a little instructional detecting. They were getting the idea that maybe these things were good for something after all. My father wandered up as the group headed up the creek. He said he was too tired to go with us, but when I mentioned we had found some nuggets on the end of the runway, he decided to head that way. Jeff could hardly stand it, but we wanted to spend the time with the miners in appreciation of the opportunity they had given us.

We finally explained we wanted to go try the end of the runway, and headed that way. We asked Dad how he had done. He says, ''Well, I found one. It's ugly, but kind of heavy. Maybe it weighs an ounce''. He pulls a palm-sized nugget out of his pocket. Our eyes grew wide and we explained to him that the nugget was at least 2-3 ounces. It had a lot of quartz, so it was hard to tell. It turned out to weigh 3.5 ounce. Unfortunately, it appeared to have been run over by a bulldozer. One edge was a clean break with ragged edges of gold hanging out. It is hard to tell, but I'm guessing it is one half of a 7 ounce nugget.

Bud excavating a target - is it a bullet or a gold nugget?

  
Gold nuggets Bud found with Tesoro Lobo ST at Ganes Creek

We figured the other half was waiting to be found. It was also our last full day, as we were flying back around noon the next day, so we detected late into the evening. All told, we found about 15 nuggets in the runway material, mostly in one area. Brian found a second nugget weighing 2.4 dwt. I ended up with five nice nuggets ranging from 1.3 to 7.5 dwt. Jeff found six from .9 to 4.5 dwt. But we did not find the other half of that big nugget.

It was late, so off to bed. Everyone had gold; Brian’s was the biggest he had ever found, Jeff’s was his largest, and my father had hit the jackpot. I was happy, but my largest nugget was a tie for the one I detected in the Fortymile, and still not larger than that .98 ounce nugget I had dredged. Jeff was also been hoping for something over an ounce, but at this point time was running out.

I slept poorly that night, waking constantly. I woke a 4AM, and after an hour awake decided to get up. It was light (all night this time of year) and time passes slowly staring at the ceiling. I figured I might as well do a little detecting while I waited for everyone else to get up around 7AM.

I wandered off up the creek, mainly wanting to get far enough away so as not to disturb anyone. I went to the first big tailing pile I came to, and covered it pretty well. Nothing at all. So I wandered up the road a bit, and came to a wide set of tailings that appeared to have been pushed up in a pile by a bulldozer. From the looks of it a sluice had been set up, and the bulldozer was pushing tailings to one side.

I started scanning along, and near the top of the pile got a strong signal. I dug it up, and peeking out of the soil lay a little gold potato! I gazed at it in disbelief, and picked it up. It was caked in dark soil, but I knew I had finally found the big one I had been looking for all these years!

  
4.95 ounce nugget found by Steve at Ganes Creek

It was still only about 6AM, so I looked an hour longer. I did find another 2.9 dwt nugget a few feet away, but that seemed to be it for this pile of dirt. About 7AM I headed back to camp. Dad and Brian were up, but Jeff was still snoozing away. We got him up, and I did show and tell with the nugget. After washing it up, it came up at 4.95 ounces on the scale. Literally the find of a lifetime, as no other nugget will mean as much to me as this one does.

I showed the guys where I had found the nugget, took some photos, and started packing up to leave. I decided I was perfectly content to kick back and relax. The rest of my crew searched my magic tailing pile for a while, but did not find anything. Maybe my find was luckier than I know. In any case, they headed back to the end of the airstrip to search, but only Jeff found a nugget, 1.5 dwt and the last of the trip.

Time to go home, so we packed up and flew back to Anchorage. I’m back to work now, and it is hard to believe I found that nugget just yesterday morning. In retrospect, what was so wild about the whole thing was that I had essentially given up on finding the big one this trip as we were basically out of time. Talk about the early bird catching the worm!

I found every nugget but one with my Gold Bug 2 set in Iron ID mode. It ignored most trash except for old rusted cans and larger steel items, such as oversized bolts. I dug a pocketful of bullets and shell casings, but they were not so common as to be annoying. I did run my batteries dead at one point, and spares were at camp, so I fired up the SD2200D and found one nugget with it. A nice 1/4 oz nugget at about a foot. But I soon grew frustrated digging trash, sometimes at extreme depth. I have been getting pretty good at reading targets with the SD, but it is nowhere near as good at discrimination as other detectors. I was happy to put new batteries in the Bug and get back to using it.

18.5 Ounces of Nuggets Detected Ganes Creek, Alaska

For the low mineral ground we were in, and the desired goal... pennyweight plus nuggets, any good discriminating detector will do the job. My Gold Bug 2 worked well and the Lobo did a great job for the other guys, and is a hard machine to beat for all-around detecting. But all in all, the name of the game on this trip was ''keep your coil low, and keep it moving''!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2001 Herschbach Enterprises

This discovery was made earlier in 2016 but I did not get around to publishing details about it until now. I was detecting near some small hydraulic pits in California and wandering around in the area below one of the pits. At first I thought I was on virgin ground but the ground slowly revealed itself as a tailing outwash area from the pit above. The material is now so overgrown with trees and covered with a thick layer of duff (pine needles, bark, branches) that it gives the appearance of unmined ground.

I got a massive boomer signal on the GPZ and I honestly thought it was a can. A quick dig with my pick revealed instead a large chunk of gold and quartz. The first sight of the nearly 9 ounce piece about stunned me but I soon determined that what I had found was mostly quartz, but still, a pretty nice find. There are around a couple ounces of gold embedded throughout the white quartz. In theory this is the largest "gold nugget" I have ever found, but obviously the fact it is mostly quartz takes a little of the shine off that. Still, absolutely no complaints from this kid on making this find!

The large specimen was obviously washed through whatever sluice and riffle system the oldtimers were employing, and washed down to end up resting on top of the tailing outwash fan. At one time it was just sitting there in plain view, although it would have taken a sharp eye to have spotted the gold if a person was just walking by. Then a forest grew on the tailings and a century of pine needles and branches fell and obscured the piece.

Steve at location where 8.75 ounce gold specimen was found

I of course had visions of even more finds to be made in this apparently overlooked location, but very diligent hunting for quite a few hours turned up nothing but some trash and one little bit of rock with gold in it.

In Australia specimens like this are usually just crushed (dollied) and the gold panned out. We have a better market for specimen gold and so this could be sold as is. Unfortunately the mass of quartz hides most of the contained gold so this is not a prime specimen. It would be better with less quartz showing more of the gold. If the quartz were pure white it also would be more valuable but it has darker mineral inclusions. Still, I have considered slicing it up to see if any good cabochon material can be obtained for jewelry purposes. I have also considered just soaking it in Whink as an experiment to see how many months it would take for very weak hydrofluoric acid to completely dissolve the quartz, leaving loose crystalline gold. For now doing nothing has been the easy option.

Close up of 8.75 ounce gold specimen found by Steve Herschbach

I would like to say the Minelab GPZ 7000 had something to do with my finding this specimen, but the truth is I think there is enough lumpy gold in it that nearly any decent detector would have found it. The GPZ 7000 is remarkably sensitive to specimen gold containing finely dispersed gold, but that is not a problem with this specimen. The warning for some however is that as a shallow and very loud response it is easy to assume a trash target like a can. Always be aware that there are still large gold nuggets and specimens out there at very shallow depths, and the faint "zip-zip" sound so many ears are trained to find can initially be thrown off by what seems to be a junk signal. I seriously thought I was excavating a can so that I could properly dispose of it! I get irritated by all the aluminum cans I see discarded when I am out detecting and end up packing them all out. I wish I could say the same for all the steel cans and trash I find, but that simply is not practical, though I haul out what I can.

The California Mother Lode country is criss-crossed with gold-bearing quartz veins large and small. Most were too small to be developed into mines and many were small enough to be completely overlooked. Even quartz veins that for the most part are barren may have one small section that is rich in gold. What this means is that chunks of quartz like this can be found almost anywhere in Mother Lode country.

Clark, William B., “Gold Districts of California;” Bulletin 193, California Division of Mines and Geology Sacramento, California, 1970

This article originated as a post on the DetectorProspector Forum. Additional details may might be found there in follow up posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2015 Herschbach Enterprises

Alaskans love Hawaii. At least, my wife and I sure do. Winters in Alaska can be long, and my wife gets to missing sunny weather. I miss metal detecting for half the year! So a mid-winter break in the beautiful islands of Hawaii is a much welcome respite from the cold weather.

I’ve been to Hawaii before and done well there with my metal detectors. I usually focus on detecting in the water, and my machine of choice after using many brands and models is the White’s Surf PI Pro. Hawaii has some of the worst conditions you can throw at a metal detector, with extremely mineralized volcanic rocks and salt water combining to make water detecting there tough indeed. Most any machine works well on the white sands, but when you get into sand mixed with volcanic rock every detector I’ve ever tried wants to generate false signals. The Surf PI is not immune to this false signaling on volcanic rocks, but it has so far offered me the best combination of power and ease of operation (and price!) of all the detectors I have tried for saltwater detecting in Hawaii. And so it was the machine I planned on using the most on this trip.

Then White’s introduced the new Matrix M6 model, and I received one just before my departure to Hawaii. I like having two detectors for trips like this since a detector failure of any sort can be disappointing without a backup. It just so happened I wanted to try looking for small jewelry items like chains and earrings in the drier beach sands and it seemed the Matrix M6 would fit the bill nicely. I already have an extensive background with the closest relative of the M6 – the White’s MXT. The MXT has very good sensitivity to small gold items, and I own lots of accessory coils for the MXT. I was certain the 14 kHz M6 would share in the small gold capabilities of the MXT, and so it seemed a perfect opportunity to try out the new model. I packed the machine up, along with the 6” Shooter DD and 10” elliptical DD Eclipse coils made by White’s.

I have commented before on the features of the M6 and so will stick to how it worked in the field for this report. I decided to use the M6 initially with the 10” elliptical DD coil, which I felt would provide good depth and smooth operation on a saltwater beach. My hunting grounds were the drier sands above the active wave zone. The sand is wet below the surface, but not literally running with saltwater. I am a big believer in pulse induction machines like the Surf PI Pro for wet salt sands and so did not bother doing any detecting in the water with the Matrix M6. Playing in the surf is a lot safer with a totally waterproof detector anyway.

Steve with White's Surf PI Pro ready to jump in the water

The first thing I did was experiment with the sensitivity settings and ground tracking. I was pleased to find that the M6 ran just fine in the normal track or fixed modes at high sensitivity levels, and that I did not have to resort to using the “Beach” mode unless I went down onto the wet sand below the surf line. The Beach setting is designed to allow a single frequency machine like the M6 to operate in wet salt sand without false signaling, but it usually comes at a cost of sensitivity on small gold targets. The Beach setting did allow the M6 to run quiet as can be in the wet salt sand, but when I got up above the surf line it was not needed. I was able to run as high as a sensitivity of “10” with the DD coil and the M6 ran quiet as can be. Only when I set the sensitivity up into the cross-hatched “redline” area above a setting of 10 did I start getting a bit of low level falsing from the sand. Even then the machine worked just fine, and it was a decision between running “maxed out” and a bit noisy or at a still very high sensitivity level but with quiet operation. I did spend hours doing both and ultimately came to the decision that the whole point of the M6 was to have a nice, quiet operating detector. One of the selling points of the M6 is quiet operation and so I think turning that sensitivity control up to where the machine just starts to generate a bit of noise and then backing off is in line with its intended design goals and operation.

I have always been a fan of leaving my detectors at a fixed ground balance setting, as opposed to running them in track mode all the time. Automatic ground balancing is a great thing, and those that want to be on the safe side should just leave a detector in automatic at all times. But I think I get better response with less fading on small or very deep targets with a fixed ground balance setting, and less shifting of VDI numbers on found targets. So I like to let the tracking run a minute or two and then switch to the “Fixed” or “Off” position. This is what I did on the M6, and so ended up at a sensitivity of 10 and in the “Lock Off” position on the Auto Trac control.

For beach detecting setting the discrimination control was easy. I set it to the far left so that all targets would respond. I generally dig it all on beaches, only passing on iron targets at some beaches if there is enough junk to warrant it. But with a new detector digging it all is a good idea anyway to learn the machine and its responses. Besides, I really wanted to see how the new seven tone audio worked on the M6, and so going by tones only seemed like a good idea.

This left the final setting. The trigger switch on the Matrix M6 causes the detector to operate as a standard single tone detector in the default center position, or in a seven tone audio mode in the forward locked position. You can run in either mode and toggle to the other to check found targets both ways. Squeezing the trigger activates the pinpoint/depth reading mode. For dig it all beach hunting I might as well have just set the M6 for a single tone, but I wanted to learn the tones and see how the machine responded in the multi-tone mode and so set the trigger switch forward.

So to sum up, sensitivity at 10, discriminate at far left (off), and trigger forward for seven tone audio. Set the tracking on for about a minute of operation over clean ground and then switch to off. In reality it only takes a few seconds for the tracking to find the proper ground balance level. If you are unsure of ground balancing and what it does, leave the tracking on. It does not get much easier than this!

I could make this long story even longer and go on at length about my detecting. The fact is I spent most of my detecting time with the Surf PI Pro, as I have learned the best finds will usually be made in the water. But I did use the Matrix M6 a lot and I dug hundreds of targets over many hours of detecting. I like to dig everything initially to learn about how a detector reacts to different targets, so I dug the good along with the bad. I was focusing on small signals, and so dug countless little bits of foil and other small pieces of aluminum. I dug pull tabs and bottle caps. I dug a bunch of junk, and I dug up over a hundred coins. And I finally dug a diamond earring and a diamond ring!

The only problem is the diamond earring turned out not to be real. The 14K white gold diamond ring was the real thing and a nice find indeed. Even the earring was a great find however, a testament to the ability of the White’s Matrix M6 to find small items on a beach or elsewhere.

White's M6 and Surf PI Pro along with beach detecting finds

And so here are my observations gleaned from all this detecting and digging. First, the M6 is an excellent beach detector. It worked well and at high sensitivity levels with no need to resort to the beach setting unless the sand was actually dripping wet. I was hitting coins at 8” or more with ease. I was unable to do direct comparisons but I will not be surprised if the M6 turns out to be one of the better single frequency beach detectors. It will no doubt be bettered by some multi-frequency or pulse induction detectors, but it did an excellent job in my opinion. The sensitivity to small items is superb, as my digging of small aluminum proved, along with the backings off a couple of earring posts, which are very small items. The signal on my little fake diamond earring post was strong and loud at a couple inches. Do expect to give up some of this sensitivity if using the beach mode in wet salt sand, however.

Compared to my trusty MXT it is my feeling that the Matrix M6 gets the same depth you get from the MXT in target id modes. I also think the MXT gets extra depth and sensitivity in the threshold based all-metal modes, like the Prospecting Mode, or the mixed mode Relic Mode if you are listening for the less obvious all-metal signals. But the fact is that most people do not dig everything using threshold based all-metal modes. I think many hunters will like the silent operation of the Matrix M6 and the performance it offers for most types of coin and jewelry detecting. I also think extreme performance people like nugget hunters or relic hunters will be advised to spend the extra $100 for the MXT and its extra versatility.

Target VDI numbers on the Matrix M6 were very jumpy at high sensitivity levels on the beach sands. This is where I found a real advantage to the seven tone system. Each tone takes in a wide range of VDI numbers, and so listening to the audio was much better than watching the meter when it came to target identification. There would be either a single tone, or maybe some mixing of adjacent tones for borderline targets. In simplest terms high tones means coins except nickels, medium tones mean nickels, aluminum, and hopefully gold, and low tones iron or hot rocks. There are two low tones, three medium tones, and two high tones as follows:

-95 = 57 Hz (Very Low) Hot Rock
-94 to -6 = 128 Hz (Low) Iron Junk
-5 to 7 = 145 Hz (Med Low) Gold Earrings, Chains - Foil
8 to 26 = 182 Hz (Medium) Women's Gold Rings/Nickel - Small Pull Tabs
27 to 49 = 259 Hz (Med Hi) Men's Gold Rings - Large Pull Tabs
50 to 70 = 411 Hz (High) Zinc Penny/Indian Head Penny - Screw Caps
71 to 95 = 900 Hz (Very High) Copper Penny/Dime/Quarter/Dollar

White's M6 meter and where tone breaks occur (added red lines)

In practice it tends to boil down to high, medium, and low, but the extra tones add extra ability to discern what you are likely digging without referring to the meter. The tones work better than the meter, or at least they did under these tough detecting conditions.

I used both the 10” elliptical DD Eclipse and 6” elliptical DD Eclipse “Shooter” coil. The 6” coil hit tiny items a bit better than the 10” DD coil, but overall the 10” coil seemed the better coil for me. It covered ground better and still had more than enough sensitivity to small items. The fake diamond earring post was found with the 10” coil. The 6” Shooter was able to run all the way up into the cross-hatched max sensitivity area and still run dead quiet, however. If you want the best sensitivity possible to small items and clean running in bad ground, use the Shooter coil.

The M6 may be one of the more powerful yet easy to operate detectors ever designed. I think a person might be well advised to simply go with the “listen-to-it-all” concept behind multi-tone detecting when using the White’s Matrix M6. The idea is to hear all targets, and hunt strictly by ear. Targets are never “masked” or ignored due to discrimination settings, and a decision to dig is made based on how the target sounds. A meter is almost extraneous to this kind of hunting, and in fact a good way to learn how to hunt this way is to tape over the meter and force yourself to hunt by the sounds alone.

If you go with this theory of detecting, then tuning the M6 becomes the simplest task you can imagine on a detector. The discriminate control stays at the far left. Only in extreme iron conditions might you turn it up, and many would advise even then it be left off. If the machine seems noisy from too many signals lower the volume level on your headphones so that the sounds become a threshold of sort. Then just listen to the sounds and dig items until you begin to have a feel for what sounds “good” and what does not. Moving slow and a small coil will help in trashy locations. The M6 is very forgiving on sweep speeds.

Earring and diamond ring on pinky finger found with Matrix M6, rest of finds in water with Surf PI Pro

For those who do not like the tones, there is the single tone mode. Using this mode is extremely simple. Just set the discrimination control to the level you wish, and dig whatever beeps. If you want more ability to discern targets in the single tone mode you will have to rely on the meter. One thing I did note is that small targets gave a more solid hit in single tone mode than multi-tone mode, and so it a person was trying to use the M6 for nugget detecting or any other “push it to the edge” detecting of small items I think the single tone mode may offer a slight advantage. But this may be more a perception thing than reality as the same items signal in both modes. They just sound a tad better in single tone mode to my ear.

I use lots of different detecting strategies depending on what I am looking for, the amount of time available, and yes, my mood at the time. I do think that for the best performance “listen to it all” tone detecting offers the best ability to discern good targets from bad with the least chance of targets being masked by discrimination settings. A gutsy move would be for someone to make a machine like the M6 without a discrimination control or meter. My suggestion is that the Matrix M6 be used as if this were the case. Key switch forward (seven tone), discrimination to zero, and forget the meter. Just listen to the tones and dig what sounds good. But you can use other strategies with the M6, like cranking the discrimination control all the way to max. This is a good setting for those times when my patience with digging trash is at a minimum, as about the only things that will signal at this setting is a coin.

Let's wrap this up. In summary I think the White’s Matrix M6 offers top end performance in about the simplest to operate form possible. The detector will not outperform detectors costing hundreds of dollars more, nor do I think it was intended to. I do think White’s has succeeded in offering MXT level discrimination performance but with more tones and quiet operation to those who were wishing for it. Considering the price, the performance, and the incredible coil selection, the White’s Matrix M6 is worth serious consideration. It offers solid performance and simple operation at a very reasonable price.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2006 Herschbach Enterprises

My friends George and Gary worked on me for a couple years to convince me to make a trip to the UK to hunt Celtic gold coins at http://www.colchestertreasurehunting.co.uk/ The guy next to the Welcome to Colchester sign is Gary, one of the pioneers and current record holder for gold coins found with this outfit. I finally committed in 2009 for a trip in October 2010. 

There is a pay to hunt operation in Colchester where deals are made with farmers to allow detectorists access to the fields to hunt for relics and coins. There are various rooming schemes and we went with the "full ride" version which is like an all inclusive vacation will all the trimmings. There are more fields to hunt then you will have time. It runs about $1500 a week plus airfare which from Anchorage was about another $1500. We booked a two week stay.

The group consisted of me, George, Gary, Todd, and Todd's brother. The flight from Anchorage to Heathrow was uneventful if a bit long. The overseas flights are quite comfortable though, with coach being more like First Class on a domestic flight. All the things you would normally pay extra for, like meals and in-flight entertainment, are included in the ticket price. Just like the good old days.

George Hunting the Stubble

We made the flights to Heathrow and were picked up at the airport. Settling in consisted of tossing our gear in our rooms and then heading right out for our first hunt. It was raining and the field we hunted had been plowed recently. It was thick mud, more like clay than dirt, sticking to the bottom of boots and search coils. It mattered little at the time in the excitement of finally being there with detectors on. All I found was a few buttons and other items but at least I was detecting.

The reason for going when we did was to get good weather but it did not work out that way. It rained for over a week. The farmers do not plow in the rain as all it does is make a muddy mess. We hunted fields harvested but not plowed (stubble) or fields that were plowed earlier. The plowed fields were sticky mud that made our feet weigh pounds as the mud built up on our boots. The stubble has no mud but you are swinging through 6" - 8" of cut off grain stalks. We ended up fighting conditions for the greater part of the trip.

St Mary's Church Little Bromley built in 11th century

Each day we got up early, got fed, and headed out. We picked a hunt site, and were driven there. We hunted until lunch, and the driver brought us a warm meal in the field. Get a bite, and then hunt until dark. Ten hour hunting days, with Chris taking care of all the details. The main goal is to maximize detecting time, and we did just that. People ask what kind of sightseeing I did while I was there and the answer is only what I saw while detecting or driving to a detecting location. The operator has permission to hunt fields all around Colchester but most are no more than a 15 -20 minute drive. Many were near old churches, like the one in the picture above. The churches were very much the center of life in those days and so being near one is a good bet on there having been activity in the area for thousands of years.

There are very few rules. Rule number one - fill your holes! This is a must to keep in good graces with the farmers. Keep all your trash to keep it from getting plowed under to be dug again in the future. I always hunt with a trash pouch. Rule number two - stick to the chosen fields. The deal with the farmers means the one whose field you are on gets paid by the operator for you being there. The next field over, even if you hunted it the day before, if it belongs to a different farmer then do not go there. The group decides where to hunt, and once the decision is made, stick with it. You can hunt the same fields morning and afternoon, or switch after lunch. Rule number three - declare all your finds. Some people try and skirt the rules by not declaring their find, so they can keep it immediately, and so they do not have to share a cut with the farmer, if any. This is the worst offense of all, and will get you banned for life from the operation. The rules are the rules and there is no patience for offenders.

Lunch in the field - the rains just let up!

You need a good VLF that can reject iron, and dig the rest. The rest is copper, lead, bronze, silver, and for the lucky few gold. Aluminum is not something found often. Everything is old. My first coin was a 1700 copper, the oldest coin I'd ever found. No big deal I am told - new stuff! And so it went. Good finds are 12th - 16th century silver coins or around 3rd century Roman copper coins. The most desired are the BC Celtic gold coins.

I used a Fisher F75 Special Edition and a White’s MXT Pro with Bigfoot coil. I saw lots of MXTs and quite a few Minelab E-TRACs in addition to many other good VLF units. I had an E-TRAC along also but never did fire it up. For what it is worth whenever I invest the time and money in something like this I never go without at least two detectors and two headphone sets. I ran the F75 most of the trip mainly because the very long hours of metal detecting favored the F75s light weight and balance.

Steve and Gary's White's MXTs with Bigfoot coils

I came hoping to find a gold coin but try as I might it did not happen. The next best thing is a silver “hammered” coin, a coin made literally by taking a piece of silver and pounding it with a hammer between a set of dies. Hammered silver or “hammies”. People got excited when one was found but they are not all that rare. Lots are found but the real finds are the ones in excellent condition, and they are rare. Most of the ones I found were damaged in some way. It was common practice in the old days to make change by cutting a coin into halves or quarters so finding half a coin is more the norm than not.

When the weather let up things improved considerably. The fields dried out, the farmers started plowing, and gold coins started to be found. Not so much for our group however. We heard about others finding gold, but despite being in a group of experienced, hard working detectorists, the gold eluded us. It was not until near the end of the two weeks that George managed to find the much sought after Celtic gold. I also was nearby when Chicago Ron found his own Celtic gold, although far from his first.

Big smile from Chicago Ron with Celtic gold just found!

The size of the fields ranges from large to truly immense. In many cases I would just wander randomly around the huge areas. Sometimes Gary would point to where previous finds were made. Sometimes the fields, if looked at carefully, revealed clues. Gray areas in the midst of all the light brown soil indicated some kind of past building site, like a home or pub. A faint raised area might indicate an old road. Broken pottery, glass shards, and pipe stems are a sure sign of past habitation. Often, however, it is just a needle in the haystack hunt. People who cover lots of ground with their coils at the proper height and who efficiently recover targets have the edge. I really found it to be little different than nugget detecting, except you do not have to dig super deep holes. Almost everything is a spade dig or two down since most of the finds are small in size.

The fields are huge!

I did find an official “treasure” which means an item that is not a coin but is made of precious metal. It is a tiny bell, most likely one tied to a hawk but it could be a bell on any harness. Treasure is any find that is not a coin made of precious metals. A silver coin is not treasure, but my silver bell is. Coins, if found in a group are considered a horde, also treasure. You get to keep what you find, after everything is examined by the authorities and cataloged. This takes months so you have to wait some time before you get to show off your finds. Treasure may be claimed by the government, and if so it is bid on by museums. The high bidder gets the treasure, and the proceeds are split between the finder and the property owner. I like the system since it allows regular people to legally detect for items and gives the museums a steady supply of finds to choose from. In the United States most of what we were doing is against federal law with potentially severe consequences. The sad reality is people break the law and do it anyway, but it all happens under the radar. The British system makes far more sense.

Steve and Fisher F75 hunting in jolly old England

The bottom line is I hunted for two weeks and made many great finds, the oldest finds I have ever made by over a thousand years. Amazing stuff and a great time. Here are the photos and descriptions:

My official treasure find:

Silver medieval hawking bell - reported as treasure to the museum

The one day I hunted with the White's MXT Pro and Jimmy Sierra Bigfoot I got what I consider to be my best find, because it has a story. One of the best things about hunting with Chris is he has access to true experts. A day after this find this is the report we got back:

DIANAE CONS AVG antoninianus of Gallienus (253-268 AD.) found by Steve

This one is a DIANAE CONS AVG antoninianus of Gallienus (253-268 AD.) This is part of the so-called "Gallienus Zoo" series of animal reverses. This one appears to be either the gazelle http://www.stoa.org/gallery/album452/08_CR_GAZOO or possibly the left-facing stag elk variety http://www.stoa.org/gallery/album452/11_CR_GAZOO These two are just a couple of the many animals found paired with this reverse legend. The series invokes the aid of several gods - Apollo, Diana (this one) Jupiter, Liber (Bacchus) Neptune, Sol, etc, all with "CONS AVG" (protector of the emperor) and various animals on their reverses. This series dates to 267-8 AD. and was produced at the mint in Rome.

This is an interesting find as Britannia wasn't part of the Italian Roman Empire at the time this was struck. Britannia was part of the break-away Gallic Roman Empire at that time, so this piece evidently was in circulation for a few years until after the re-uniting of the Empire under Aurelian (c. 272-275) to have traveled to Britain. Among Aurelian's reforms was a revamping of the silvered Æ coinage which had become barely better than bronze with a tiny percentage of silver under Gallienus and Claudius Gothicus, his successor.

Books will call Gallienus' antoniniani "billon" - and so they were at the beginning of his relatively long reign which, in the beginning, was shared with his father, the unfortunate Valerian I. After his father's capture by the Sasanid Persians c. 260, the antoninianus went through a swift series of debasements under Gallienus to become a coin containing so little silver it needed to be silvered to keep up the pretense of being a double-denarius. Although officially silvered, Gallienus' later antoniniani are seldom encountered with any of their silvering remaining, and things may have finally become so bad that even the pretense of silvering may have been dropped at the end of his reign. An occasional subject for contemporary copies as well, this one seems to be official.

I'll refer you to this page in my website. http://www.stoa.org/gallery/album452 The organization I work for - Ancient Coins for Education, Inc, or ACE - recently received the donation of a fairly well-developed private collection of Gallienus' zoo coins. Since the donor asked that we do our best to keep the group together, it is currently an adjunct exhibit to our travelling museum. This is what the collection contained when it was donated. We have since added a couple of types the original collector was missing.

Mark

Truly a great adventure. I did not get my gold coin but I beat my oldest coin finds by OVER A THOUSAND YEARS! Pretty amazing and best of all two weeks with friends. Thanks to the operation owner and his wife for sharing their home with us for two weeks, and all the great meals. Hopefully I can do it again someday.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2010 Herschbach Enterprises

Note October 2018 - See my return to Colchester to try once more for Celtic gold!

One of my favorite places in Alaska is Bonanza Creek near Chisana in the Wrangell - St. Elias mountains. This location is accessible only by air and is about 250 air miles east of Anchorage. The elevation of around 5000 feet makes for a very short season. Snow persists into June and starts falling again in September. One reason I talked my father into visiting this site in the early 1970's was that it is very remote, and mining in the area concentrated on finding the richest deposits. Material that is very good by today's standards was left as too poor at the time. The gold was reported to be large, and it seemed reasonable that some good gold had been overlooked.

I've known the claim owners for a long time, and have done very well metal detecting on this creek over the years. My original supposition was correct, and much rich ground remains. The ground is heavily mineralized, but even so I have done well with a variety of VLF detectors here, including the Compass Gold Scanner, Fisher Gold Bugs, White's Goldmasters, and Minelab XT17000, XT18000, and Goldstriker. My family and I have found thousands of nuggets here over the years.

Old mine workings above Bonanza Creek

I purchased a Minelab SD2200D specifically to try this locale again. The last trip to Bonanza Creek gave me the impression the area was getting hunted out, but I suspected more nuggets could be found with the SD. When I say hunted out, I mean of larger nuggets. The area is still full of smaller nuggets. But it was getting hard to find any nuggets over a pennyweight.

The largest nugget I had found here so far weighed 6.8 dwt, found with my old Compass Gold Scanner. My sister actually beat me out, having found a 7 dwt nugget with the original Fisher Gold Bug model. The history of the area indicated larger nuggets could be found, but they have eluded us so far. As we went back over the years with more sensitive detectors, larger quantities of smaller nuggets were found, but the big nuggets were found early on.

My father, Bud Herschbach, is an Alaskan Bush pilot, having flown here since the 1960's. He currently owns a Cessna 206, a very capable plane with a large load capacity, yet the ability to land on small unimproved runways. My father, Jeff Reed, and I departed Anchorage in fair weather and headed for Northway to meet the claim owner to get the keys to his cabin.

After leaving Northway we made our way through the mountains to Chisana. The mountain strip we land on is something that would amaze most people. The approach is made flying up a small valley. A turn is made up a side creek and a landing is made uphill directly into the side of a mountain. It is something that must be done correctly the first time, as a missed approach means a nearly impossible climb out against the face of the mountain. The landing strip is just some bare dirt in the tundra, and very short at that. It is the kind of landing that has a person clutching their seat and hoping nothing goes wrong.

As usual Dad aced the landing, however, and we parked the plane. We loaded our gear up and walked over the hill towards Little Eldorado Creek and camp. Upon arrival we found all in good order, although a bear had forced entry into one of the cabins. We straightened things up and settled in.

Since we had hunted the area with detectors carefully over the years, Jeff and I wanted to try something new. The current owner has done well dredging the claims, and we figured we might do well to snipe the many exposed bedrock areas in the creeks with drysuits, masks, and snorkels. So our first morning Jeff and I suited up and headed down Bonanza Creek to snipe for gold. Jeff had a cold and was feeling a bit under the weather, but we had visions of underwater crevices full of large gold nuggets to push us on. My father took his Tesoro Lobo and headed out on his own to look for gold.

Jeff sniping for gold in drysuit

Well, Jeff and I ended up disappointed. We spent a long day poking and prodding into crevices with our hand tools. We found quite a bit of gold, but none of the rich pockets we were anticipating. The old timers, and more recent dredgers had done their jobs well, and shallow exposed bedrock areas did not give us as much gold as we had been hoping. I got kind of discouraged and started skipping along over areas. Jeff, for all that he was not feeling well, was more persistent, but no hot crevices were revealed.

Jeff and I finally gave up and headed back to the cabins. Dad was waiting there for us, and we told him about our lack of results. We then asked how he had done, and he tells us he had ranged over quite a bit of ground, and had finally got a good signal with his detector. He then pulled out a very nice 3.1 pennyweight nugget laced with quartz to show us!

Needless to say, Jeff and I were very excited about his find. It was the largest nugget my father had ever found, making it even better yet. We decided that the area he had found it in was well worth our attention (naturally!) and excitedly made plans for the next days nugget hunt.

The weather was pretty poor the next morning, so we headed out under cloudy skies to search for gold. Jeff and I diligently searched bedrock along Bonanza Creek while Dad wandered on up ahead of us. There were lots of great looking bedrock exposures along the creek, but try as we might Jeff and I found little but nails. Jeff was using a Fisher Gold Bug 2 while I was using my new Minelab SD2200D. We finally caught up to my father in the area where he had found the nugget the day before.

Bedrock was exposed in the middle of the floodplain along one stretch, and this is where the 3.1 dwt. nugget had been found. We started detecting in the area and finding some small nuggets. Finally I looked across the creek and saw some bedrock exposed along the bank. I decided to cross over and give it a try.

I did a little scanning, and after a short while I got a strong signal. It sounded big enough to be a nail, so I had no big expectations. Imagine my surprise when an 8 pennyweight nugget popped out of the ground! It was the largest nugget I had ever found in this area, and I just stared at it a bit before I picked it up. There are few things in life as fun as finding a nice nugget with a metal detector, as far as I am concerned!!

Steve points to where 8 dwt nugget was found with Minelab SD2200D

Well, a lot of activity ensued along that bank, and a few more nuggets were found, but I had found the big one. We finally wandered back towards camp, and got caught got in a torrential downpour at the mouth of Little Eldorado Creek. We hid out under a rock ledge for awhile, and the rain let up. We then proceeded up to our old detecting grounds on some high bench deposits above Bonanza Creek.

The old miners found that there was a lot of gold in old stream deposits well above the current stream level of Bonanza Creek. These type of gold deposits well above the current creek level are referred to as "bench deposits". They built a ditch and flume system several thousand feet long to bring water from the upper creek to deposits on the valley wall farther downstream. Lumber had to be made from trees miles away, then transported into this high mountain location and assembled into a water transportation system crossing valleys and cliffs. The remnants of this old water transport system are truly awe-inspiring, and are something I dwell upon every time I visit this locale.

Once the water reached the high gold deposits, it was directed through large nozzles (giants) to wash the gravels into sluice boxes. Large areas of the hillside were stripped completely to bedrock, and much coarse gold was recovered. Today acres of bare bedrock exposed by these old mining operations exist well above the creek, and represent a perfect opportunity for the new age metal detector user.

Gold was lost in these old washing operations. As material was washed with the nozzles down the hill to sluice box recovery systems, an occasional nugget would get stuck in a crevice in the bedrock. These nuggets were few and far between, and without the aid of modern electronic detectors it would have been very hard to find these few lost nuggets. The old miner would literally had to have split open and scraped out every crevice to find the lost gold.

Metal detectors allow the modern day prospector to easily scan the old workings to find the scattered lost nuggets with ease. Jeff, my father, and I spread out and started looking for these lost nuggets. The main problem was that my family and I had already scanned the area and found the easy pickings in previous years. Still, with diligence one can always find more gold. My particular hope was that my new Minelab would find gold I had previously missed.

Well, we didn't miss much! I found a few nice pieces in nooks and crannies, but nothing outrageous. Jeff was finding some smaller nuggets with his Fisher Gold Bug 2, but no larger nuggets. He was able to hit lots of smaller nuggets that my SD2200D missed, but my larger nuggets were more what he was looking for.

We did locate an area literally in the ATV trail that was producing lots of little nuggets. So many, in fact, that my father and I decided to set up a sluice box and process the gravel rather than metal detect.

Bud Herschbach shoveling gold bearing dirt along edge of trail

The morning of the last day was nice and sunny. Dad and I went ahead and set up our sluicing operation. Jeff decided to keep metal detecting. We filled buckets with gravel and ran them through the sluice box. The material was incredibly rich, with more gold appearing in the sluice box after every bucket of material was run.

We grew tired of shoveling, and decided to clean up the sluice. Processing less than a yard of gravel produced nearly two ounces of gold! It just goes to show how rich some of the material was that the old miners were after. There is still gold where we were digging. Someday we will have to go back and get some more.

In summary, I was very happy with the Minelab SD2200D. It operated on this difficult ground very smoothly, ignoring the hot rocks and ground entirely. I ended up with some nice nuggets, including an 8 dwt piece. It's the largest one in the picture below. I only wish I had had more time, as we were cramming a lot of activity into three days. There is a lot of deeper ground here I need to search.

The second largest nugget, weighing 3.5 dwt, was found by my father with his Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ. It is the quartzy piece in the picture. All the other 1/2 dwt to 1 dwt pieces were found with my SD.

Jeff was using his Fisher Gold Bug 2. He found a lot of smaller nuggets, but was frustrated in not even finding a 1 dwt nugget. He is usually very hot with a detector, so I attribute this to simple bad luck more than anything.

Steve with gold found running sluice box, and some detected nuggets (largest 8 dwt)

My main feeling about the SD was not that it got overwhelmingly exceptional depth as compared to the VLF units, but that it was so much easier to operate in hot ground that more time could be spent simply covering ground. The VLF's require slow, careful work due to the background noise, which simply slows you down. Actually, I ended up impressed by what a good job we had done on previous trips with the VLF machines, as large swaths of ground that once produced many nuggets now seem completely cleaned out.

All in all a very nice trip, with about three ounces of gold found. Hopefully we will return someday soon!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

It has certainly been a busy year for me so far, with not near as much detecting time as I would like. Still, I have been getting out a little and thought it was time to share a few photos.

My first couple bits were found with the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 on some scouting runs. I am liking this detector as a grab and go unit for checking areas out quickly. I am not trying to hunt for max performance but instead looking to cover a lot of ground quickly to check things out. I have learned the GM1000 auto sensitivity actually suits me well for this. I just fire up the detector in all metal mode, full volume, and start with auto sensitivity set at Auto+1. Then I just start swinging. If noise intrudes (usually in salt areas) I will back down to Auto+0 (there are just two Auto settings available Auto and Auto+1).

Once the GM1000 gets out and about people will no doubt note the Auto settings are not the hottest. Which is why I like them. The GM1000 is a super hot machine already, so I am looking more for stability than anything else, and know it will pop hard on any small nuggets I get over. If I were pounding a patch hard I would use manual sensitivity and push it high, but that would introduce noise and require more careful hunting. For me however the GM1000 serves best as a lightweight quick and dirty way to check new areas - just grab and go.

I posted previously about finding a nugget using Auto sensitivity which is where I learned how useful the setting is. Here are two small nuggets located using Auto+1. Both nuggets banged hard, one at maybe an inch and the other at about three inches. I am not trying to promote or to push the use of this setting, I am simply reporting what I am doing and you can decide for yourself if it is useful for you.

Minelab Gold Monster 1000 out in northern Nevada

0.1 gram and 0.4 gram nuggets found with Minelab Gold Monster 1000 running in Auto+1 sensitivity

I did finally get a GPZ 19 coil for my GPZ 7000 and it was time to give it a go. I tried one area I had hunted before in case a larger deeper nugget was lurking. My first lesson with the GPZ 19 was not how large and deep a nugget it can find but how small and shallow! The only thing I had missed and left to find was this less than 0.1 gram nugget. It was practically on the surface and so gave a small warble when it got close to the coil winding. I was surprised and impressed the coil can find gold this small.

The next location is the one I scouted with the GM1000 and found the 0.4 gram nugget. The spot got my interest so I went back with the GPZ 7000 and 14" coil to hunt it. Turns out it was a nice little patch with some chunky gold! The ground was deep so I mounted up the GPZ 19 and hunted it again. I did come up with one nugget I missed before, whether from sloppy detecting or just a little too deep I do not know. It was a little 1.2 grammer at around a foot down. I continued hunting outside my area and came up with another at 1.3 grams.

Minelab GPZ 7000 outfitted with new GPZ 19" search coil

First nugget found with GPZ 19, amazingly small for such a large coil at less than 0.1 gram

I had removed the Minelab skid plate that came with the coil and replaced it with the closed Nugget Finder cover. I like this cover for uneven ground as it does not get hung up of rocks and sticks as much, but it does rapidly collect a pile of debris!

The GPZ 19 is perfect for collecting loose debris when equipped with full bottom scuff cover

The coil did false if banged on a rock and would require care in rocky ground, though I was running it as hot as ever so that contributes to it. I usually hunt grassy and sagebrush country and it does well here just gliding on the grass, though if the grass is deep it will ride up on it above the ground. Still, the larger size gave me this feeling that I had a little extra insurance in that regard and so I used it to hunt over low brush where it might reveal nuggets hidden when others went around the brush. False signals from banging a rock aside I do think the coil actually runs a bit smoother with my Insanely Hot settings.

Hip Stick rigged up for use with the GPZ 7000 and 19" search coil

The GPZ19 is slightly too heavy for me for general use in hilly terrain and too large for a lot of the sagebrush areas. It is just the ticket however for covering large open terrain and that is where it will see the most use with me in the future, or for pounding old deep patches. The extra pound was not quite as bad as I was expecting and in flatter ground just my regular bungee setup sufficed as long as the coil rode on the ground. I did try out the Hip Stick though and think it a better option for long hours with this coil.

24 grams gold, all found with GPZ 7000 & GPZ 19 coil except a couple small bits

Well, lots of info there I hope people can get some use out of. It's always nice to be out prospecting whether or not I find any gold - but gold does help! 24 grams or about 3/4 ounce with largest nugget 4.5 grams or just shy of three pennyweight.

This article originated as a post on the DetectorProspector Forum. There may be additional information there in follow up posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2017 Herschbach Enterprises

This outing was part of my testing of the Minelab Gold Monster 1000, a new high frequency (45 kHz) VLF detector for gold nugget detecting. The Gold Monster 1000 was designed for use in Africa and other third world countries and therefore has some unique design features. The key design goal is ease of operation, and the control set is kept minimal, with everything possible done automatically. The GM1000 is the first nugget detector I have ever used that even has an automatic sensitivity tracking function. All this adds up to the Gold Monster 1000 being an extremely easy detector for beginners to learn. Yet the latest twist of high gain, high frequency circuitry means the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 has enough power to satisfy long-time detectorists like myself.

Frankly, when I first saw the Gold Monster 1000 I thought it was an odd looking thing. The lack of normal threshold based operation in particular takes some getting used to for somebody who has an ear trained to listening to a threshold. The GM1000 is silent search, which is definitely disconcerting at first. However, the boosted audio and very good external speaker quickly won me over. The Gold Monster 1000 bangs out so loud on even the tiniest gold that this a machine you can use without headphones unless there is a lot of background noise.

The near automatic operation makes the machine great for quick grab and go detecting. Between the automatic ground tracking and automatic sensitivity I found I could get the GM1000 to handle almost anything I threw at it, including some wet alkali ground that would quickly shut down most detectors of this type. I found I liked covering ground more quickly with the Gold Monster than would normally be the case with manual tune detectors. It is a terrific detector for quick and dirty scout work.

Minelab Gold Monster 1000 on red Nevada soil dusted with salt particles - hot alkali ground!

The problem with a silent search machine while in manual ground balance mode is that without a threshold you can end up leaving some performance on the table. If a setting of eight generates a little ground feedback, and you decide to go with 7 to make the machine completely silent, there is nothing wrong with that per se. However, if the ground changes and gets milder you may have the ability to run at a higher level of sensitivity, and without a change in the audio to alert you to a change in the ground, you will just leave the setting where it is.

In my case if a setting of 7 is completely silent, I will bump to a setting of 8, and this almost always gives me that little ground feedback I want. If 7 is too noisy, I will drop to a setting of 6 and this will probably do the trick for me. The range between each setting seems about perfect for a person to settle on a range of three settings, too little, too much, and just right. For my areas 6 - 7 - 8 are the magic numbers. For worse ground the range may shift lower, to 5 - 6 - 7.

Nugget embedded in lump of dirt excavated from ground while using Minelab Gold Monster 1000

Try and picture this. At sensitivity 7 I am just scanning along, coil lightly on the ground, with soft ground feedback, waiting for that hard little signal that even the tiniest target will generate. Then all the sudden the machine goes dead quiet. I have entered less mineralized ground. One thumb tap to sensitivity 8, and I get my "false threshold" back.

Or, at a setting of 7 the machine gets noisier. Maybe a little alkali patch or more mineralized ground. A quick tap down to 6 reduces the feedback to my desired minimal level. What I am doing is letting the ground tracking do its job, and then just bumping the sensitivity up or down a notch to ride the ragged edge of best performance for the ground.

Quick guide to Minelab Gold Monster 1000 functions / controls

I for all intents and purposes always use the all metal deep seeking mode, and use the iron discrimination meter to decide whether the target is worth digging or not. The disc mode gives up significant depth, and items can be missed entirely whereas the all metal mode will always give a signal if at all possible. Personally I would only use the disc mode to shut down very troublesome hot rocks or for areas where the trash is so dense that analyzing each target would be too inefficient.

I much prefer the 10" coil over the 5" coil for doing anything but chasing the tiniest bits. The 10" elliptical coil really will hit gold nearly as tiny as can be had with the 5" coil, but with double the ground coverage and much better depth on larger nuggets. To sum up, I will normally always run the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 in all metal mode, let the ground tracking handle the ground, and bump the sensitivity up or down within whatever three number range seems to work best in any given area. For me and northern Nevada 6 -7 - 8 does the trick very well. I have an article that explains the settings in much more detail here.

Eleven gold nuggets found by Steve with GM1000 - 14.9 grains total, largest 4.4 grains, smallest at bottom 0.6 grain and 0.3 grain

I found it deceptively easy to find some sub-grain bits of gold (480 grains per Troy ounce) in areas I have previously hunted. I went from skeptical about this funny looking little detector to being quite pleased with it, and currently it is one of my favorite detectors. A warning however. The Minelab Gold Monster 1000 handles ground as well as a hot VLF can, but it is in no way a substitute for a pulse induction detector in the worst ground and hot rocks. Anyone expecting that of an inexpensive little VLF is expecting too much.

To sum up, I am having a terrific time with the GM1000 and am glad I got involved in the project. Thanks Minelab!

This article started as a post on the DetectorProsepctor Forum. More information might be found there in follow up posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2017 Herschbach Enterprises

This year has not been going exactly as I imagined it would. My stated goal for the year was to set a new record for days in the field detecting. So far however, it has been anything but that. No complaint - I have been devoting myself to visiting family and other things that took precedence over prospecting. Weather has also been a bit dodgy this spring leading me to sit out things a little waiting for better conditions.

What time I have had for prospecting has mainly been spent in northern Nevada. I am really taken with the desert and am very partial to the sagebrush and grassland country. It reminds me a lot of the time I spent in Australia with huge wide open spaces to wander. I enjoy the idea that gold can be found nearly anyplace, the exact opposite of Alaska, and I love just wandering from valley bottom to hill top because, well, you just never know. There is some old and interesting geology here that leaves nuggets in what might seem to be pretty unlikely locations. I did find one nice little patch that produced about half my gold this spring, but the rest were just strangely random isolated nuggets. I would find one and get all excited, then after several hours of methodically gridding the area wonder why that one nugget ended up there all alone. My largest nugget, at 3/4 oz, was just such a find. I wandered out of what looked to be the "good area" and just lucked into this nugget all by itself on a hillside far above the valley floor. Where did it come from? Why nothing else near it?

I like to wander around freely but due to the nature of the gold deposits I am relying heavily on the GPZ 7000 map screen and GPS track to attack areas in chunks. I just start someplace and then use the GPS mapping screen to fill in all the pixels as completely as I am able in a given area. My goal is to completely hunt that area and then write it off forever as being hunted. Each hunt area is dumped to X-Change building my master map of hunted areas. I am approaching it much like building a jigsaw puzzle, each planned hunt taking in a segment and filling it completely. I still like to wander around a lot but the main focus is long term - the many years I have ahead of me hunting these areas. I could just do what I have always done and hunt piecemeal but I decided it is time to switch gears and get more methodical about things. I figure there is a lot of that random "scattered gold" out there and that a slower long term goal to gather it up is a major part of my plan going forward. Using GPS mapping is key to getting good coverage while eliminating the chance I might waste time hunting and rehunting the same locations over the years.

The GPZ is also critical to this effort as I have great confidence in its ability to sniff out almost any gold that finds its way under the coil. Small gold, flat gold, wire gold, deep gold - the GPZ is my gold vacuum. All detectors miss gold, including the GPZ. But right now if I have to hunt an area once and once only, and have my best shot at finding what might be there, I do not know of a better option for me than the GPZ 7000. One detector, one coil, one pass over the ground ever - what are you going to use?

Steve's Minelab GPZ 7000 going deep for the gold!

If gold is found a person of course has the luxury of coming back with different coils and different detectors and trying to find gold missed before. The problem is finding that first nugget. If it does not get found, you just wander on, never knowing that maybe you just missed a great patch, for the lack of finding that first, most important nugget. I am convinced there are many undiscovered patches out there still. The patches with the big easy to find solid gold may be very rare now, but "weak" patches comprised of smaller, or deeper, and harder to find specimen type gold surely exist. They will be found by people hunting outside the commonly known popular areas. That is what I have been doing. Hunting locations where other prospectors are rarely if ever seen. I honestly think I have been a bit lucky as of late but the methodology is sound and it is what I will be doing for as long as I have left to swing a detector.

GPZ 7000 gold fresh out of the ground

I continue to follow the various posts around the world about the GPZ 7000 and people's experiences with it. Mine are pretty boring. I turn the machine on, maybe do a quick ground balance routine, and go detecting. I may not even go through the ground balance motions. I just turn it on and pick up from where I left off the previous day. I usually run in High Yield, Normal Ground, Gain of 12, Smoothing Off, Ground Tracking On. I leave most audio settings alone. The detector will often run noisy with these settings, especially in alkali locations. I may lower the threshold to 20 to knock out some excess noise, or just lower the overall volume level using my headphones. The GPZ lacks a master volume control that lowers all sounds at once, and so benefits from the use of an external booster with master volume control. The problem for me is that is one more battery operated gizmo, and so I often just use my headphones instead to gain the overall volume control I crave. I tend to run my detectors noisy but like it to be quiet/noisy not loud/noisy.

2.14 ounces of nice Nevada gold found by Steve with Minelab GPZ 7000

Beautiful 3/4 ounce gold nugget found in northern Nevada by Steve with GPZ 7000

When the ground responses get a bit much, as is the case with ground salt, I react more by slowing down and modifying my swing than changing detector settings. So far I would say about half the gold I found was pulled out of fairly high salt response ground with the attendant moaning/groaning or hee/haw responses the GPZ produces in that type of ground. That seems to be a show stopper for a lot of people but I don't pay much attention to it myself. I have this theory that killing those responses might kill my gold finding capability on this ground to a certain extent, as I know some of these locations have seen other detectors that ignored the salt. They also missed the gold. Coincidence? Maybe. I have plans for more experiments regarding this but have had a hard time tearing myself away from my limited detecting time to do more comparative tests. Later.

Anyway, I have quietly picked up just over a couple ounces of gold with my GPZ 7000 so far this spring. The largest nugget is 3/4 oz and there are several other nice pieces I am very happy with. Nice solid, clean gold, my kind of stuff. An odd mix from very worn appearing to rough. I am unfortunately getting waylaid again with things I must attend to before I can go prospecting again and so I decided I may as well post this update now. It could be weeks before I get out prospecting again. Until then, here are some happy pictures to enjoy!

This article started as a thread on the DetectorProspector Forum. Additional information may be found there in follow up posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2015 Herschbach Enterprises

I have done well in Hawaii with my Garrett ATX as told in my previous story at my previous story here. Most of the details of where and what I am doing, detector settings, etc. are all covered there so I will not repeat it all here.

My wife only had a week off for spring break so I had half the time to work with this go round. Still, I think I did all right. Now that I have my system down less time was wasted figuring things out. I used the Garrett ATX exclusively with the 8" mono coil. Discrimination was 3 and Sensitivity 7-8 with unit ground balanced underwater over basalt rocks.

I only worked in the water with mask and snorkel. I work right in the trough at the base of the beach slope a lot in 2'-4' waves and so I use 40 lbs of lead weight to help stay in place. Working overweighted in surf like this can be very dangerous if you do not have a very high comfort level. I have multiple SCUBA certifications up to and including my instructors certificate. Official disclaimer - I do not recommend working like this unless you are trained and know what you are doing.

Just swimming trunks with shirt. I use cheap knee brace pullovers you get in the pharmacy area in a general store as knee pads. Cheap rubber coated work gloves to protect my hands while digging. Surf shoes to protect my feet, and a good mask and snorkel. I hook the velcro strap on the ATX armrest around the handle of a clasp closure mesh goodie bag to hold stuff as I recover it. I bend bobby pins before dropping them in the bag or they slip through the mesh.

I hunt with mask and snorkel until I get a target. I look around for surfers and boogie boarders, evaluate the wave situation, and do a breath hold and duck to the bottom. I generally fan the bottom with my hand or excavate by hand to find the target, then stuff it in a goodie back hanging off my ATX armrest. Scoops are just one thing too many for me to handle in the surf and no good on hard surfaces anyway. I focus on the area where the sand is tapering into a hard coral or rock bottom that will catch and hold targets from sinking too deep.

Steve with Garrett ATX geared up to metal detect in the surf

My main change of strategy this trip was to not dig everything. The ATX makes a hi-lo tone or a lo-hi tone on targets. Lo-hi is high conductive stuff like copper pennies, dimes, quarters, and large iron junk. Or silver rings or very large mens gold rings. Hi-lo is almost all gold or platinum jewelry, zinc pennies, nickels, aluminum stuff, and small steel stuff like bobby pins and rusted bottle caps. I was getting lots of copper pennies, dimes and quarters plus some large junk the first couple days. Dimes and quarters may sound nice but when recovering them in surf at risk to life and limb they are a definite trash target as far as I am concerned, though I did get a large silver ring also. I decided that gold rings were the main goal and with the short week I had no time to waste, so switched to digging hi-lo tones only. I was happy with the results and would recommend this to anyone using an ATX who for similar reasons what to improve the dig to ring ratio. Be aware though certain high value targets like very large mens rings will be missed.

I recovered a couple earrings and that impressed me very much in an underwater scenario. The ATX hits gold about as small as is possible in salt water. There was one well made fake diamond ring in particular that would have been my best ever had it turned out real. I recover them underwater, can't really tell but they sure look good underwater, and do not know until I get back to my room and empty the goodie pouch if I have made a big find. I hope the whole rest of the hunt, only to be let down back at the room. Gold rings on the other hand I know immediately are good finds. I also found a couple more old Sheraton hotel big brass keys to add to my collection. These are rare now at the beach as they are large easy finds, but if the sand scours out one will still turn up now and then.

Coins, jewelry, and keys found by Steve detecting Hawaii surf

All the quarters, dimes, and copper pennies were recovered in the first two days. After that it was nickels and zinc pennies only and I toss the zincs in the garbage. Unless only a day or two old the salt water rots them away to junk. I had a nice pile of lead fishing weights I donated to the dive shop where I rented my weight belts. There was the usual junk as seen on the other page linked at the start of this post but this year I discarded it daily as I have done enough "here it all is" pictures.

All in all given that I had half the time to hunt my finds were on par with the last trip though the beach is depleting out. I considered going to other locations but by the time I drive somewhere else and back that is another hour or more that I could have been in the water. I do not hunt just Poipu beach but the next several beaches in a row so there is a large area I can walk to. There are always newer rings lost but it is the combination of many years of old rings and new rings that make it good, and as the old stuff depletes out then all there is to find is recent drops and the pickings get slimmer. Still, the location is far from worked out.

I only saw one other person with a detector, a local I saw last trip, who walks the beach at waters edge at low tide. He seems as concerned with being out for a walk as detecting as he covers ground real fast.

I like the ATX ability to easily adjust the rod length on the fly from very long to extra short. I did experience a little sand binding in the rods but took care to work the rods and flush them out before leaving the water each time and everything worked fine. I only charged batteries twice on the trip. The 8" mono with rod assembly is now my dedicated water coil, with the 12" x 10" used above water. The water use is rough on the rod and internal cable assembly and so I figure having a coil and rod just for that keeps the stock coil in better shape for normal use. I came away very happy once again with the Garrett ATX. It suits me very well for my style of water hunting.

The rings Steve found on this trip with the Garrett ATX

The four 14K rings weighed in at 21.9 grams total. The silver colored 10K white gold ring with five small diamonds weighed 4.1 grams. The excellent gold smelt calculator at http://coinapps.com/gold/scrap/calculator/ reveals that to add up to 14.47 grams or nearly 1/2 oz of pure gold or about $500 bucks if sent to a smelter. I plan on refinishing and selling the rings in the future instead of having them smelted as I have in the past though so they should bring a bit better value that way.

This article originated as a thread on the DetectorProspector Forum. Extra details may be found there in follow up posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2015 Herschbach Enterprises

I held off on posting about this one for a bit while I got around to some unfinished business. Since my move from Alaska I have been slow to get another safe deposit box set up. I have always had one for my gold and other important valuables. The problem with posting about this stuff on the internet is it can attract the wrong kind of attention. This is something I would encourage everyone to think about. Now that all my gold and other goodies are residing at Wells Fargo I feel a little more free to post about this.

Chris Ralph and I were prospecting in Northern California not too long ago. I was running the Nokta FORS Gold and concentrating on some areas littered with square nails, cable bits, rusted cans, and other ferrous junk. There were places the Nokta running in dual tone DI2 mode sounded like a machine gun from ferrous low tones. I would go along with the detector going "putt - putt - putt - putt - putt - beep - putt" and on hearing that beep, stop to dig a bullet or some other non-ferrous item.

The weather was a bit wet but not unpleasant; kind of brings the forest smells out and makes for softer walking. I was afraid we were going to get rained out but it keep just on the edge of really starting up. There was not much sign of detecting, no doubt due to all the trash. Chris was off hitting some bedrock with his detector while I wandered around in the trees and duff overlying the old tailing materials.

There was a bit of a mound around the base of a tree and I swept around it getting ferrous tones, when all of the sudden I get a strong non-ferrous beep. I looked down at the target id displayed on the end of the FORS Gold handle and it was showing 82. I thought "That's odd, a coin." I was still not tuned in one what the numbers meant exactly on the Nokta but on a typical 1-100 scale an 82 would be something like a penny or a dime. I have yet to find a really decent old coin since moving south, so I thought I was maybe going to dig some nice silver.

I gave a couple digs and was surprised to see nothing pop up. Hmmm... must be bigger, deeper. So I open the hole up and dig deeper, and this dirty gray lump pops out of the ground.

Dirty lump hides spectacular gold specimen

My exact thought "you have got to be kidding me!" It was a filthy lump but I knew instantly it was gold. I could not believe my good fortune. I got out my water bottle and washed it off a bit and saw gold and large chunks of white quartz - I had found something really special. After cleaning it ended up as 1.83 ounces of stunning gold and quartz that would do a museum proud. Just a really spectacular specimen, the best I have ever found. I won't claim that only the Nokta would have found it because any good detector would have. Yet I do think this is a case where a good discriminating VLF detector proved to be of benefit in approaching an area that might cause most pulse induction operators to wander off in another direction.

I cleaned the nugget by giving it a couple trips through my ultrasonic cleaner and picking the roots out with tweezers. An ultrasonic cleaner is perfect for these types of specimens with deeps pits and crevices. Other than that it has not been treated with acid or anything.

Anyway, this is a fabulous chunk of gold and quartz. One thing that strikes me repeatedly while detecting in Nevada and California is how much nicer the gold is that that I used to find in Alaska. The gold here is generally purer with a richer, more butter yellow color. Many Alaska nuggets are higher in silver content and therefore have paler gold. The quartz in the gold here also tends to be cleaner and whiter. A lot of Alaska gold quartz specimens are discolored with gray and brown quartz variations.

This does matter not just for appearance but for value. Large nuggets and specimen gold can command premiums over the value of the gold content, but that premium is based almost entirely on appearance. It a nutshell, the better a specimen looks, the more it’s worth. There are quite a few places in the western U.S. that produce extremely high quality specimen gold that can fetch premiums many times over the basic gold value.

Alaska, not so much. I have no doubt the quality of my finds had improved since leaving Alaska. This specimen easily eclipses anything I ever found in Alaska for overall beauty. Just a terrific find, one of my best ever!

This article was originally posted on the DetectorProspector Forum and additional commentary may be found there in follow up posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

This outing started as an expedition to test a new detector by a company I was unfamiliar with - the Nokta brand based in Istanbul, Turkey, and the new Nokta FORS Gold. I wrote up a very detailed review but this article focuses on the gold found and so all the detector review details have been kept minimal. If you wish to read it, you can view the full report at Detailed Review Of The Nokta FORS Gold Nugget Detector. There is quite a bit of additional commentary in the follow up posts that might interest people.

Summing up from the report referenced above, the Nokta FORS Gold is one of the better VLF nugget detectors I have ever used, and even better it is a very capable detector for just about any type of detecting. It appears to just be a variation on another Nokta model, the FORS CoRe (Coin Relic) and shares nearly all the same features. The CoRe features slightly different discrimination options plus a dedicated beach mode, whereas the Gold focuses more on nugget detecting features, but from what I am seeing both detectors can do just about anything very well.

The FORS Gold default settings are almost perfect for somebody with little or no detecting experience. It boots up in Boost Mode, which is a two tone mode with ferrous items giving a low tone and non-ferrous a high tone. Simply turn the detector on, hold the ground balance button on the end of the handle down, bounce the coil up and down for a few seconds, and go nugget detecting! It really can be that easy with the FORS Gold.

The Nokta FORS Gold can be used for almost any type of detecting, but where it shines is in its main use for nugget detecting. I have to admit I have been pretty much a pulse induction sort of guy in recent years, but I have been reminded once again recently that very good nugget finds may very possibly be best looked for in the trashiest of locations. People using PI detectors tend to shy away from heavy trash, yet mining camps and work areas were often right in the middle of the best gold bearing ground. There still is a serious need for detectors with exceptional trash handling capability, and that means VLF detectors. Yet those detectors also need to be able to handle the worst mineralized ground and hot rocks, an area where VLF detectors are weak.

The FORS Gold has a relatively straight forward all metal mode, which they label as the General Mode. There are some features however not offered by most of the competition all at the same time in a single detector. First, while in all metal mode the visual discrimination feature is still engaged via the LCD display on the end of the handle. This offers the ability to identify items while still in the powerful all metal mode. Better yet, the FORS Gold also offers up an optional automatic ground tracking mode in addition to the manual ground balance. Some detectors offer one or the other of these features but very few offer both the ability to visually identify targets while in all metal mode plus both manual and automatic ground tracking.

Nokta FORS Gold in the field

The FORS Gold can be ground balanced by simply pushing the button on the handle and bouncing the coil. But you can also override the setting obtained by doing so with the plus and minus rocker switch. In other words, full manual ground balance. The third method, full automatic ground tracking, is engaged with a rocker switch on the front of the control box, and so can always be set as on or off before even turning the detector on.

I and many others tend to recommend always using manual ground balance. However, if possible I always prefer having automatic ground tracking as an option that can be enabled or disabled. You see, I want all options at my disposal, even those I may use but rarely. Just by chance, a very good reason came up while I was out nugget detecting with the FORS Gold.

I ran into an area with some really pesky hot rocks. There are several ways of dealing with this. In a pure manual mode machine you try and find a compromise ground balance setting and probably lower gain or sensitivity levels. Then you just try and discern sharper nugget sounds from softer hot rock sounds. Obviously, this can require some extra expertise and a trained ear. Severe hot rocks can be trying for the best of detectorists.

When hot rocks and ground conditions get severe, automatic ground tracking may help. In some cases, it can be almost magical. So it was with an area I ran into. In all metal General Mode the threshold was all over the place as I ran across lots of small hot rocks. I switched to automatic ground tracking, and they basically disappeared. The machine went from being a bucking bronco to a mild mannered pony with the push of a button. In theory ground tracking can track out faint signals, but this can be minimized with proper coil control. Wide continuous sweeps. It certainly is no worse than the nuggets that will get missed thinking they are hot rocks, and in my opinion in this type of scenario automatic ground tracking can be critical to continued operation in conditions that would cause most people to quit in frustration.

With the FORS Gold you can also go to the Boost Mode, where many hot rocks will just read low tone as ferrous items. Boost also offers an adjustable iron mask feature that can be increased until the offending hot rocks do not signal at all. As always, there are tradeoffs in the form of possible missed gold, but it is very important to always concentrate on getting the most found gold possible, even if that means compromises to some degree to get it to happen. Nobody gets all the gold, the idea is to maximize the amount of gold you do get to the greatest degree possible given whatever tools you have at your disposal.

The visual target id feature can even be employed to deal with certain high reading hot rocks that refuse to yield to other solutions. The rocks may cluster around a certain target number, which can then be ignored. Again, not perfect, but another possible option to be used if need be.

Well, come on Steve, what about some gold?! It is hard not to like a detector when I take it someplace with nasty hot rocks, and it handles them with relative ease. It gets even better when I put it into Boost Mode and wander into a trashy location getting lots of low tones, and then dig a few nuggets right in the midst of the trash. I went where I never would have went with my PI and the FORS Gold found gold when in all honesty I was expecting to write this report telling you about the bullets I found. It is not easy to go find gold, and so I was really just expecting to find bullets and shell fragments and I was keeping them to show you what the FORS Gold could do for this report. I was going to explain how bullets read like gold and there you go. Seriously folks, I really just got lucky but the FORS Gold gets the credit.

My first nugget found with the FORS Gold - and yes, those are rain drops on the rain cover!

After three nice nuggets I was as happy as I could be, when I get another signal and dig up what I thought was some crumpled up foil. Then I realized I was looking at gold, and an exceptional 2 gram nugget revealed itself to closer inspection. I did something I almost never do and wrapped it in tissue to protect it until I could get it home and properly clean it. The Nokta FORS Gold helped me find one of the most delicate gold specimens I have ever found. I ended up with 3.3 grams total and enough information to finally file this review.

2 grams fresh out of the ground


3.3 grams gold found with Nokta FORS Gold

I went into this basically just wanting to see if Nokta, as a relatively unknown player in the U.S. market, was a company that was not selling junk. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least, and found the Nokta FORS Gold to be a top-of-the-line VLF nugget detector that can go head to head with the best units made by long -time players in the industry. That being the case I recommend people keep an eye on this company  in the future because if what I am seeing is any indication, Nokta is a company that is going places. I am happy I had a chance to familiarize myself with the company and its products and thank Dilek and everyone else at Nokta for the opportunity. It's hard not to like a detector that puts such beautiful gold in my pocket!

Close up of 2 gram specimen found with FORS Gold

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

I met up with forum member Condor on Thursday and as promised he took me for a heck of a hike in steep terrain. We got in and pitched camp and that was it for the day. Friday through Monday we shinnied up bedrock chutes and bushwacked through the hills trying to get to old mine workings. This high Sierra 1800's stuff is well grown over and I am learning just how impenetrable the vegetation can get here. Alaska it can get slow going but there is nothing that will actually stop you dead in your tracks. Looks like I need to get a mini chainsaw.

We basically detected in the morning and evening with a little siesta in the main heat of the day. Those old pits can be like big dry, dusty ovens. Only real issue was that Condor had a new SDC 2300 and a new charger system and batteries and there seemed to be issues with the batteries. I had my three pre-charged sets of rechargeables and a couple sets of alkaline batteries. Between what I had in extras plus what he could get charged off his solar panel we did just fine and had power to spare but he needs to sort out what is going on with his batteries. I found a set of my batteries easily got me through a day and maybe a little more so I see no need for me to deal with solar charging unless I am out for more than five days, which honestly I doubt I will be doing.

My Minelab SDC 2300 takes a break

A look at the ground

The gold was sparse and scattered but I did finally hit a mini patch of a few chunky nuggets on the edge of a small pit where material looks to have sluiced over a small bedrock outcrop. My largest was a couple pennyweight and I ended up with 11.2 grams or 7.1 dwt for four days of detecting. I'm happy with a couple grams a day average so I am pleased with the result. Condor got a bit less due to my hitting that little patch. Main thing was hooking back up with old friends, seeing new terrain, and getting my gear sorted out. My boots, sufficient for normal terrain, let me down in hours of near vertical. My toes kept cramming into the ends and I will not be surprised if I lose both big toenails. I have good Alaska mountain boots but they are probably too hot for most of this stuff so a new pair of boots may be in order. Other than that I was fairly happy with my setup.

My mini gold patch

11.2 grams or 7.1 pennyweight of nice chunky gold!

The SDCs once again proved their worth. Man, this ground was hot!! Serpentine bedrock, with patches of red soil on it that must have been at least 50% magnetite by content. The SDC would want to groan if moved too fast but that was easily remedied by simply doing what we are supposed to and going slow. Worse was when getting what appeared to be a faint signal, and then after scratching off the surface the ground would light up with many faint signals in the disturbed magnetite. It was like it was magnetically aligned resting undisturbed in place but once disturbed the ground responses became mixed. A VLF would be totally dead in this stuff. It actually was a bit like what Chris Ralph and I ran into in a couple very small places and in this case it was more widespread. That all said, I generally was able to easily hunt in sensitivity level "3" very effectively and smoothly, with only small foot or two square areas making me slow way down and see what was up.

Tons of bullets, piles of nails, and basically no sign of prior detecting to speak of. I can see why between the terrain and the ground conditions. It really was a kind of textbook case for having the SDC 2300.

Thanks Condor!! Great little trip, great hanging out with you and catching up on our lives. See you again soon!

This story was promoted from a DetectorProspector Forum thread where more information and discussion may be found.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

I spent a couple months in Alaska prospecting for gold in the summer of 2014. That adventure was chronicled as it happened here on the forum at Steve's 2014 Alaska Gold Adventure. It was a great trip and a great adventure, but when I told it I relayed the fact that it was actually part two of the story. Part one happened in 2013 and for reasons you will now discover I kept quiet about it until now.

Those interested in the logistics of making the trip to Alaska and details on where I stayed, etc. will find all that covered in the 2014 story so I will not repeat that stuff here.

2013 was a momentous year for me. My business partner and I had sold the business we started together in 1976 to our employees in 2010. My partner immediately retired but I stayed on a few years to oversee the transition. Things seemed to be going well enough that I announced my retirement to take place in the spring of 2013. My wife and I had purchased a new home in Reno, Nevada and so plans were made to sell our home in Alaska and move south.

At the same time, some partners and I had acquired some mining claims on Jack Wade Creek in the Fortymile country near Chicken. Alaska. My plan was to move my wife south then spend the summer gold dredging with my brother. The disaster struck. I screwed up the paperwork and the claims were lost. That mess was described online at Making Lemonade Out of Lemons and I even wrote an article for the ICMJ about it. I was not to be deterred however and made plans instead to go metal detecting for the summer. Unfortunately, my brother also had a change of plans and so was unable to make the trip with me. Just as well as I ended up having my hands full.

The house sale was in progress and time running out so I boxed and palleted everything we wanted to keep and shipped it south. Then I loaded my wife and dogs up in the car and drove them to Reno. Next I flew back to Alaska and had a last big garage sale. I sold everything I could by the afternoon and out a FREE sign on what was left. Worked great - the house was empty, I cleaned it up, and pretty much left it to the realtors at that point. Finally, on June 16th I jumped in my fully loaded truck and headed for the Fortymile!

On the way up just past the town of Palmer on the way to the town of Glenallen you pass Sheep Mountain in the Talkeetna Mountains. It is a very colorful, mineralized peak and it was a beautiful sunny day so I stopped and took this photo.

Sheep Mountain, Alaska

From the USGS ARDF file at http://mrdata.usgs.gov/ardf/show-ardf.php?ardf_num=AN080

Early Jurassic greenstone and minor interbedded sandstone and shale is intruded by numerous mafic dikes and at least one body of unmineralized Jurassic granite. Greenstone has been hydrothermally altered and contains at least 6 separate gypsiferous deposits in altered zones along joints and shear zones. Deposits composed of pods and stringers of gypsum, quartz, alunite, kaolin minerals, pyrite and serpentine minerals (Eckhart, 1953). The gypsum-bearing material averages 25 to 30 percent gypsum, with a maximum of 50 percent.

In addition also reported from same general area are: (1) small irregular quartz-calcite-epidote veins in greenstone containing chalcopyrite, malachite, azurite and possibly bornite and chalcocite (Berg and Cobb, 1967); (2) disseminated chalcopyrite in greenstone over 5 ft thick zone subparallel to bedding (Martin and Mertie, 1914); (3) trace gold in samples of pyritic greenstone (Berg and Cobb, 1967); and (4) minor anomalous concentrations of copper and gold associated with some of the alteration zones and nearby veins (MacKevett and Holloway, 1977).

Large area of south flank of Sheep Mountain is stained dark red from oxidation of pyrite in greenstone (Berg and Cobb, 1967). Oxidation of Cu minerals.

The gypsiferous material averages 25 to 30 percent gypsum, with a maximum of 50 percent. The six deposits indicated and inferred reserves contain about 659,000 short tons of gypsum material, of which about 50 tons of this material had been mined (Eckhart, 1953). In addition, about 55 tons of clay was mined for the manufacture of fire brick and boiler lining. Samples of pyritic greenstone assayed trace gold (Berg and Cobb, 1967), and nearby veins in alteration zones show concentrations of copper and gold (MacKevett and Holloway, 1977).

We did a talk radio show for many, many years at our company. The latest of several "radio personalities" to work with us on the show was Kurt Haider. He had expressed an interest in metal detecting so I invited him up to look for gold. I met him along the way just before we got to Glenallen and headed on to Tok for a bite to eat at Fast Eddie's. Then on to Chicken and finally Walker Fork Campground by evening. This is a very nice, well maintained BLM campground at the mouth of Jack Wade Creek where it dumps into the Walker Fork of the Fortymile River. The campground hosts this summer were a very nice couple named Pat and Sandy.

Walker Fork Campground

Steve's Camp at Walker Fork Campground

The next morning Kurt and I ran up the creek to find Bernie and Chris Pendergast. They were spending the summer camped along Jack Wade Creek prospecting and I was anxious to see how they had been doing. Not bad, they already had over an ounce of gold found before we arrived, and that got Kurt and I all fired up to go look for gold. I had told Kurt, a total newbie, that I had a sure thing. We were going to hit a bedrock area I had detected the previous summer and where I had found a lot of nice fat little nuggets. There was rubble and little piles of dirt, and I thought all it would take is moving the rubble and dirt aside and we were sure to find gold I had missed. We got started after lunch on a steep slope where it was easy to just rake material off and then check with a detector.

Kurt Looking For Gold With White's MXT Pro

The location turned out to not be very good, but Kurt did manage to find one little nugget, his first ever. He was real happy about that! We did not work at it all that long though with the late start, and Chris and Bernie had invited us over for moose stew. Chris is a fantastic cook so we enjoyed both the stew and a DVD packed full of Ganes Creek photos from the couples adventures there. Finally we called it a night and headed back to our camp.

Now time to get serious! Kurt and I grabbed the picks and rakes and spent the whole day tearing into some berms left behind by the miners bulldozers on the bedrock bench area. I just knew we were going to find gold for sure. We would both do hard labor for awhile, then I would put Kurt on the ground with my Gold Bug 2.

Working Bedrock With the Gold Bug 2

We worked a couple hours. Nothing. No big deal, just need to move a little more. Nothing. More digging and scraping. Nothing! I would have bet $100 we were not only going to find gold there but do pretty well. The spot had produced quite a few nuggets before and I had refused to believe we couple possibly had cleaned it out. But by the end of the day it was a total bust. We finally just wandered around a bit detecting and I lucked into a little 3 grain nugget. What a letdown. No big deal for me but I was really wanting Kurt to do well and this was not working out anything like I had thought it would.

The next and last day for Kurt we decided to hook up with Bernie and just give it a go like we normally do. And that means hitting the bushes and tailing piles wandering around looking for gold. Kurt had his MXT Pro and Bernie and I our GPX 5000 detectors, so we had a horsepower advantage for sure. Still, I was hopeful as we put Kurt on the best spot that Bernie knew of from his extra time before us.

Bernie Pendergast and His Trusty Minelab GPX 5000

Very first beep, Bernie digs up a 3 pennyweight nugget! Yeehaw, we are going to find gold!! We all hunt away, with Bernie and I checking in with Kurt periodically. Kurt, it seems, just was not destined to have any beginners luck at all; Bernie and I each found a couple 1-2 gram nuggets by the end of the day but Kurt came up dry.

I was feeling kind of bummed out but Kurt insisted he was having a huge adventure, and come to find out he rarely ever got out of town at all, so this really was a big adventure for him. I just wish he could have found more gold, but he was up early and headed back to town the next morning. I was on my own now, so I rigged my GPX 5000 up with my Nugget Finder 16" mono coil and hit the tailing piles. All day. For no gold. However, just by myself that is really no big deal at all. It happens all the time and I do not think anything of it. If anything, the pressure was off trying to help a friend find gold, so it was a relaxing day wandering around.

Saturday, June 22 started out sunny with a few clouds. There were some tailing piles across the creek I had been wanting to detect. I had hit them a bit the year before and just dug trash, but had not put in more than a couple hours at it. Still, they looked real good and I had been thinking about them all winter and decided it was time to give them a go. I started out with my GPX 5000 but immediately got into some old rusted metal, like decomposed and shredded can fragments. I just was not in the mood for it that morning, so went back to the truck and got out my Fisher F75. The F75 had done well for me in the past hunting trashy tailing piles and was along on the trip for that reason.

I got near the top of the pile with the F75 and on getting a signal looked down and saw a dig hole full of leaves. I try to recover all my trash and get frustrated when I find holes with junk in them. The signal though was flaky, not a distinct trash signal, so I figured I may as well see what the other person left in the hole. I gave a quick scoop with my pick, and gold pops out of the hole!

I am not sure if the person was using a VLF and the specimen gave a trash signal, so they left it after half digging it, or maybe they were using a Minelab, and the signal just sounded "too big" so they left it for trash. Too big indeed, they walked away from a 2.37 ounce gold specimen! To say I was stunned would be a vast understatement. The trip had only just begun. The best part of all was that my expectations for the trip were very low. I had been hoping that a month of camping and detecting would get me a couple ounces of gold. That would be more than enough to cover my expenses and make a few bucks. Yet here I was on the sixth day of my trip, and I had already exceeded that amount. This was just great on several different levels, not least in pretty much taking every bit of pressure off going forward.

Here is that specimen from a more detailed account of the find I told previously at Fisher F75 Strikes Gold in Alaska!

2.37 Ounce Gold Specimen Found With Fisher F75 Metal Detector on Jack Wade Creek, Alaska

I had to take a break and go show Chris and Bernie my good fortune. Then I switched back to the GPX 5000 and got with digging everything, including all those bits of rusted cans. Funny how a nice chunk of gold changes your perspective. That, and seeing what somebody else had left behind as trash.

I finished out the day finding three more nuggets, a 2.5 gram "cornflake" nugget, a 3.4 gram piece and and fat round 6.1 gram marble. First week, 2-3/4 ounce of gold, This was shaping up to be a really great adventure! To be continued......

Steve's Gold From Jack Wade Creek, First Week 2013

This adventure continues as a thread on the DetectorProspector forum with many more photos and details. View it all here.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

I slowly worked my way up the wash, swinging my new Garrett ATX pulse induction metal detector from side to side. I was on bedrock so hunting the best I could, taking extreme care to cover every inch of ground, and keeping the hot spot of the coil as close to the bedrock as possible. I took my time, and moved a rock or two when they kept me from getting the coil as close to the ground as I wanted to. I concentrated on the bottom of the wash but scanned areas along the side that looked inviting.

Hours of careful work had produced a handful of targets. Bullets, shell casings, nails, and bits of flat steel. I was new to the area, relying on friends to point me in the right direction. One of those friends had found a couple nuggets earlier when we were both farther down the gully, but he had wandered off somewhere up ahead of me. I worked along a bend in the wash, where the sand covering the bedrock was deeper. There was exposed hardpan material along the inner corner so I worked along that, digging another nail. Then I saw a bit of bedrock peeking out of the sand, and scanned it with the coil. Another loud signal, probably another piece of steel. I gouged out some soil and fractured bedrock, and out popped a gold nugget! My first Arizona gold, and my first gold nugget with the new Garrett ATX. I was elated and got out my camera to record the event.

The nugget was quite flat, more like a large flake of gold, and later weighed in at 0.7 grams. My expectations for this little trip had been about zero since I was absolutely new to the area and the detector, so I was very happy. I picked up the detector and gave it a couple more swings, and got another signal! This time I was pretty sure it was gold since it was less than two feet away from the first signal. I went ahead and exposed the bedrock crevice and carefully scraped and blew the material away until a small nugget was exposed to human eyes for the very first time.

My first Arizona gold nugget and first found with the new Garrett ATX

This nugget was even smaller than the first, weighing in at 0.39 grams. Again, a clean solid signal, no problem finding this little nugget. Now I had two nuggets in my bottle, and I gave the spot a good go looking for a third, but that was it for that stretch of creek. I continued my way up the wash, very happy with the day and the new Garrett ATX.

Small 0.4 gram gold nugget in crevice - second found with new Garrett ATX

I had recently acquired the detector but I was initially too busy to get out and go prospecting with it. I did a bunch of short day trips coin and jewelry detecting with the machine and posted my results in an earlier article. I finally got the time to go prospecting with the ATX and my first outing was a short day trip to an old hydraulic mine in the northern Sierras. With the drive there and back I only had a short amount of time detecting, and unfortunately did not find any gold. I did learn a few things however. First and foremost was that I forgot to bring along the sling that comes with the ATX. I went ahead and used the detector without, and by the end of the day decided a sling or harness is mandatory for using the ATX for more than a couple hours. Prospecting combines long hours with rough terrain and so is more physically demanding than most types of metal detecting. My forearm and hand was sore at the end of the day from using the ATX.

More detecting to come but lets pause and talk about setting up the ATX for gold detecting. The ATX is ridiculously easy to tune up for nugget detecting. A good way to start if unsure of the detectors settings is to hold the RETUNE/PINPOINT button down while turning the detector on. This resets everything to factory default. The ATX factory default settings are:

Mode: Motion
Discrimination: Zero discrimination (1st LED)
Sensitivity: 10
Threshold: 7
Volume: 10
Ground Balance: Neutral
Ground Track: OFF

With this starting point in the locations I have hunted so far I have been able to adjust the Sensitivity all the way up to the maximum setting of 13. In most locations it is not needed but as a matter of habit I then push the FREQ SCAN and let the ATX cycle for a minute to find the quietest operating frequency. If I intend to use my Garrett Pro Pointer I have it turned on and a couple feet away while the frequency scan is performed to help eliminate interference from the pinpointer when I am using it. If I have a buddy hunting nearby they also should be turned on an operating maybe 50 feet away while the scan is performed, to help eliminate any possible interference from their detector. I want to point out that I was in very close proximity to some high tension power lines on this trip. The ATX was able to tune out the electrical interference from these lines with no problem unless directly under them. I would be able to work there but only by backing the sensitivity down quite a bit.

I normally do a manual ground balance. Just push and release the SHIFT button, insuring that the red LED indicator comes on. This activates all the control secondary functions. Then press and hold the GND BAL button while pumping the coil up and down about 6 inches over the ground. The ground will initially signal (unless it is neutral ground) with louder signals indicating more mineralized ground. Then within 3-7 seconds the detector should go quiet, indicating that the ground balance is complete. Release the button. Finally, I adjust the threshold to be a barely discernible tone. Running without headphones and using the built in speaker I find this to be a notch above the factory default of 7 and so set my ATX at threshold 8. Now I am ready to go nugget detecting.

Garrett ATX standard 12" x 10" DD search coil

I have an 8" round mono coil for the Garrett ATX that I think may be a good choice for nugget detecting but so far I have used the 12" x 10" modified DD coil that comes with the detector. I did this on purpose to be able to report to people on how the coil that comes with the detector performs. I learned a couple very important things. First is that small nuggets give varying tone responses depending just where they are under the coil. A small nugget dead center under the coil will usually give the normal high/low audio indicating a low conductive target. That same nugget moved forward of center under the section of coil connecting the nose to the center coil circle will reverse in signal to low/high. In order to get consistent tones small targets must be centered under the coil. Most importantly, the signal on small nuggets weighing under a gram is greatly enhanced under the inner 5" x 4.5" coil area. Although this is a DD coil it is a new modified design with the inner windings split apart to form the small inner coil area. In some respects it acts like two coils; a large 12" x 10" outer coil and small 5" x 4.5" inner coil.

My advice when hunting for small gold nuggets using the stock coil is to focus on and treat the small 5" inner coil as the only coil on the ATX. Larger nuggets will take care of themselves and signal anywhere under the 12" x 10" coil though as a DD coil the field is centered more down the middle of the coil. The ability to find small nuggets is enhanced in the center coil area with best depth and tone response dead center in the middle of the coil. If hunting for larger than gram nuggets you can focus more on using the overall coil but again, if chasing small gold, focus your attention and act as if you have a 5" coil on the detector.

My air tests with the 8" mono reveal that it has the even coil response I would expect of a mono coil and overall better depth on half gram nuggets than what is in effect the 5" inner coil that comes stock with the ATX. There may be a situation where the 5" inner coil meets the 8" mono in performance on the smallest nuggets weighing only a grain or two but I have not had time yet to explore this possibility. The bottom line is that the ATX comes stock with what acts like two coils, a 12" coil for most targets and a 5" inner coil for tiny targets. The obvious caveat is that you are swinging the weight of a 12" coil when you use it as a 5" coil. And as I found, it is impossible to get the small 5" inner coil into pockets in bedrock or even laterally up against a large rock or the base of a bush. The outer 12" x 10" ring acts as a barrier. So I do very much recommend that for hunting small gold a prospector seriously consider adding the round 8" mono coil as an option. I plan on using it for future hunts now that I have experience with the standard coil. The good news for many people, especially those that might hunt for nuggets rarely, is that the ATX 12" x 10" DD coil is very versatile and can serve well finding small gold nuggets without investing more money in a specialty coil.

Garrett ATX with 8" mono coil

I have lots of questions regarding the stock coil versus the 8" mono as far as how the two differ in handling mineralized ground, hot rocks, electrical interference, and depth on both large and small gold nuggets. I have a lot left to learn still about the Garrett ATX but I will pass on what I learn as I learn it.

The stock coil is marginally sensitive to false signals when contacting rocks. This is a bit odd since it is an epoxy filled coil so in theory the coil windings cannot move to produce false signals when bumped. The signals do not occur consistently or often but in my case at least happened most often when the coil would catch a rock on the surface and roll the rock under the coil. It is possible that the coil cable, even though protected by being enclosed in the lower shaft assembly, is jiggling enough to produce the signals. Another area for more investigation. The open design of the stock coil provides lots of edges to catch on rocks and stubble. A solid bottom scuff cover would be a nice option although they have a tendency to collect debris. This would allow the coil to slide better on the ground, possibly reducing the false signals, and more importantly keeping the coil from hanging up. If I had a wish it would be for a solid elliptical mono for nugget detecting, perhaps a 10" x 6" more or less. The 8" mono with solid coil cover will be nice.

This all leads right back around again to arm strain. The ATX is a heavy metal detector at 6.9 lbs. Add to this the need to use carefully control the 12" coil while prospecting. I found the combination of the need to keep the coil close to the ground while avoiding having it false by rolling rocks under the coil or catch an edge on an obstruction to be very wearing. I have to constantly tweak, twist, and twiddle the position of the coil in relation to the ground. This is normal in nugget detecting. In my opinion superb coil control is one of the secrets that separates the pros from the amateurs. The ATX is simply too heavy for 8 - 12 hours of this activity daily, especially for days in a row. At least for this guy! There are no doubt some people for whom it will not be an issue. I have decided that for my nugget detecting with the ATX additional support is necessary.

The included sling is much better than I thought it would be. It hooks over one arm, drapes across the back of the neck, and drops over the opposite shoulder to support the ATX. I found the easiest option is to just slip the elastic loop at the end of the sling over the control pod and onto the handle of the ATX. With the rod length kept short it balances perfectly there, and is very easy to just slip back off when putting the detector down to dig. The only improvement I can see would be for extra padding under the area directly back of the neck where the sling splits to go around the arm. There is no padding there and it tends to dig a bit if used long hours with just a thin shirt.

I decided to go one step further however. I recently acquired a Minelab Pro-Swing 45 harness and bungee system. This new harness incorporates a plastic strut that transfers weight from the shoulder to the waist belt. This not only relieves shoulder strain but helps keep the harness belt from creeping up your back as the front of the harness is pulled down. I have other heavy detectors I thought might benefit from using this harness and so it was a happy coincidence I already had one on hand to use with the Garrett ATX.

The Pro-Swing comes with a clip and Velcro wrap you can position wherever you like on the detector. I keep as much weight as possible to the rear by keeping the shaft short, basically just using the lighter two lower sections and about 3 inches of the uppermost rod section. This makes a nice little spot between the upper rod locking rings to attach the clip. The bungee can be disconnected at both the detector end of the bungee by slipping it off the clip or off at the shoulder also, which I found I preferred. I now buy cheap LCD watches for all my detectors and leave on them since I normally do not wear a watch myself. I can keep track of time or set alarms for myself to tell me it is quitting time. I put my ATX watch on at the same location. Total aside here but every detector with a LCD readout should have a built in clock and alarm. Time flies when I am detecting!

 Garrett ATX and Minelab Pro-Swing 45 harness

It took a bit of fiddling to get the detector set right, which is very easy. Just take a guess at the correct bungee length and go detecting. It takes just a second to adjust the length by pulling down on the bungee end to release and pulling up again to lock. You feel very quickly if the setting is too long or too short and just adjust up a bit to get it right. For even terrain the system works like a dream. I just glided along with no weight on my arm, directing the detector back and forth. In rough terrain I adjust a tad short so I have to push the detector down a little, and can take pressure off the bungee to allow the detector to come up a bit when needed. Negative pressure, if you will. Only when hitting a high spot did I actually need to lift the detector. Bottom line for me when using the ATX for full days of nugget detecting this is the only way to go. I have experienced tendonitis from excessive detecting hours (is there such a thing?) and it is no laughing matter. It can put you temporarily out of business for a long time as these sorts of injuries take a lot of time to heal. Do not ignore arm pain when detecting!

Now back to the fun stuff. The Garrett ATX handles bad ground and most hot rocks with ease. I have detected several different locales now and basic ground balancing is all that I have needed to do. I doubt I will ever need the optional ground tracking but it is there if I do need it. In very uneven mineralization automatic ground tracking can smooth detector responses but it also can rob depth so should only be used when absolutely needed. Manually balancing to the ground should be sufficient.

I did encounter hot rocks. If few in number I basically ignore them as they are usually on the surface and a little kick takes care of them. If they are more numerous, or more intense, like the basalt cobbles I encountered at one location, it is possible to manually ground balance against the hot rock to eliminate it or reduce its effect. Just find one and then balance over both the rock and the surrounding ground. I try to find an average setting that works to eliminate the ground and hot rock signal and usually the ATX will do just that. The ground and the offending rock are both tuned out. More intense rocks may require tuning mostly to the ground and a bit for the rocks to alleviate issues from all but the worst rocks while keeping the ATX properly balanced to the ground. If required, back off the sensitivity as full sensitivity enhances ground and hot rock effects. I would not even have encountered the issue at the default ATX sensitivity setting of 10 but maxed out at 13 some hot rocks "lit up". Remember the goal is to get the smoothest possible audio out of the detector that allows very small or very deep nuggets to jump out. Fighting too much sensitivity is a common mistake. If the ATX is banging on hot rocks that cannot balance out, back the sensitivity down to compensate. In very rare cases advancing the pulse delay (Discrimination) setting on the ATX will allow for dealing with extreme situations. Finally, the DD coil may also be of help versus the mono coils if mono coils are being used, although I have not confirmed this as of yet.

The new Iron Check feature on the Garrett ATX is very effective. It is biased to not give false signals on gold targets so only works on shallower and larger targets. Still, I found it very helpful in confirming that loud shallow signals were indeed the ferrous targets I thought they were. It would only take a quick dig to confirm the ferrous identity but in areas with lots of surface trash this eliminates a lot of needless digging. Just push the button, wave the coil, and the ATX gives a "goose honk" on ferrous targets. Non-ferrous items like bullets or shell casing will read good but as always they could also be nuggets and so they need to be investigated. Many iron hot rocks will also read as ferrous so an option in some areas instead of other tricks may be to use the Iron Check to confirm suspected hot rocks.

I continued my hunt up the wash, concentrating on exposed bedrock. I got a very faint signal in a little pocket and dug in, this time exposing an even smaller nugget. This one only weighed 2.5 grains (480 grains per Troy ounce) or 0.16 grams. Now we are talking! I was impressed with the large coil on the ATX being able to find such a small piece of gold in mineralized bedrock. Again, a very clean, discernable signal, although weaker than the nuggets found before. Note here that I opted to use the speaker on the ATX this day and forgo the headphones. It was a very quiet place so I could hear the detector well enough, and there were snakes in the area (saw a hawk carry one off!) so it was nice being able to hear what was going on around me. Still, I am certain using headphones would have made this small signal jump out even more. It is always a good idea to use headphones when chasing small gold that produces the tiniest signals.

Small 0.16 Gram gold nugget found with Garrett ATX - can you see it?

Frankly, in the United States more often than not it is all about the small gold. Large nuggets are easy to find in many locations, like the area we were hunting. The bedrock is shallow and most of the large nuggets have been found except in rare places a coil has not been over yet. Going deeper will find no more gold since bedrock is so shallow. Small nuggets are hard to detect however and they are also far more plentiful than large nuggets. Many mining districts do not have any large gold at all so you either find the small nuggets or nothing at all. Garrett seems to have realized this and made significant progress in improving the small gold ability of the ATX compared to the now over ten year old Garrett Infinium. Now truthfully, in many locations a good, relatively inexpensive VLF detector is the best choice in the United States when chasing small gold. The problem is areas where there is either ground mineralization or hot rocks or both that seriously impede the ability of VLF detectors to operate efficiently. These are the locations where the ATX will shine.

Luck was with me this day. Again, I worked slowly and carefully up the wash, concentrating on places where I thought bedrock was shallow enough to detect. I got another faint signal from a crevice in exposed bedrock. This one was down in some pretty solid rock so it took a bit of hacking and prying to get it out. Out popped nugget number four, the smallest yet at 1.8 grains or 0.12 grams. One little nugget was maybe a fluke, but now two tiny gold nuggets with the Garrett ATX with stock 12" x 10" DD coil. Definitely impressive.

0.12 gram gold nugget found with Garrett ATX metal detector

After two days of nugget detecting I can say without doubt that the new Garrett ATX is a very capable nugget detector. It easily handles ground conditions that most prospectors will encounter in the United States. Most impressive for a pulse induction detector is the small gold sensitivity of the ATX out of the box with the stock coil and no tuning tricks. Basically all I did was bump the gain (sensitivity) up, ground balance, and go. The ATX retains all settings when powered down, so firing up again after a break is no more difficult than turning the detector back on. The waterproof design does add weight, but with the obvious benefits of being able to work in pouring down rain without fear that the detector will be damaged. Even the speaker is fully waterproof. I think the ATX has great potential for working in and around streams and rivers looking for gold lodged in underwater crevices and pockets. I have my suit ready and have the optional underwater headphones required to use the ATX with mask and snorkel. The included headphones allow the detector to be submerged but the actual working ear muff portion of the headset must be kept high and dry.

All in all Garrett has produced a very powerful and very versatile detector at an extremely attractive price. That is a lot of superlatives in one sentence but it is a fact. I have no doubt my ATX will pay for itself in the coming year. My only warning is that this is a professional grade pulse induction metal detector and not for people expecting VLF type discrimination capability. Yet with practice the ATX offers far more than just base level PI discrimination, which is all but non-existent. For basic dig-it-all nugget detecting however, the Garrett ATX is about as simple as it gets. A novice can be up and running in minutes with this detector. The team at Garrett deserves praise for bringing a unique detector to market, expanding the options available for all detectorists.

1.36 grams of gold nuggets found with Garrett ATX - smallest 0.12 & 0.16 Grams

Here it is, four gold nuggets found with the new Garrett ATX pulse induction metal detector. Total weight 1.36 grams, smallest nugget 0.12 grams. The dirty quarter found metal detecting is for scale. All found in mineralized ground with the stock 12" x 10" DD coil and no headphones (used built-in speaker). Again, I was impressed by the ability of the ATX straight out of the box to hit gold this small. I can't wait to see what I can do with headphones and the 8" mono coil.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2013 Herschbach Enterprises

I have all my various metal detecting requirements pretty well covered. I like to do a lot of different things with detectors so that takes a collection of models all with specific purposes. Most of these purposes have to do with gold in one form or another. One thing I have been lacking for some time however is a waterproof pulse induction detector. I have used several, most recently the White's Surf PI Pro and Garrett Infinium. The Infinium in particular served me well - see my previous story on the Garrett Infinium in Hawaii.

I really liked the Infinium but had two main issues with it. When I recently became aware of a new detector in the works I sent word to Brent Weaver, the engineer at Garrett working on the unit (I am sure with the help of others) to please, please, please work on the EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) and salt water stability issues. These two problems dogged my use of the Infinium, particularly in Hawaii. The Infinium is perhaps the best detector I ever used in Hawaii on one level - on another it drove me nuts. It was near impossible to get the detector to quiet down and run smoothly, so although it worked it was a tiring exercise. The Infinium is a classic first generation detector. Very good but very rough around the edges. Well, I am not going to take credit for harping on the subject for over ten years but for whatever reason Brent and company really appear to have got it right in the new Garrett ATX model. This detector screams next generation product. It is hands down one of the best pulse induction metal detectors I have ever used. I am amazed at how refined it is. The ATX in many ways acts and sounds more like a VLF than what I have come to expect from a PI detector. I suspect the Recon was the second generation and the ATX is now the third generation product as it is just so much better than the Infinium. Bravo and congratulations Brent and whoever works with you, job well done!!

The first thing that got me was the EMI rejection. This is not the frankly rather horrible process used on the Infinium. The Infinium has 32 discrete unmarked settings in a single turn knob. You are supposed to guess at 1/32 of a turn, wait and listen, turn another 1/32, wait and listen, and after doing this 32 times remember what unmarked setting was better than the rest and go back to it, except basically they all sort of were only a little better or worse. The ATX, push the tune button, wait a couple minutes while the detector cycles, and then the detector is quiet. Really quiet. VLF quiet. Better than some high gain VLF quiet. In my house, in the middle of the city - quiet. I have no idea what they did but oh my gosh this machine tunes out EMI and does it so well it is amazing. Want to use your Garrett pinpointer with the ATX? Turn the Pro Pointer on and toss it a couple feet away. Let the ATX cycle to find the best operating frequency. Now not only no EMI but you can use the Pro Pointer with the ATX on and get not a peep. No interference.

Now there has got to be a catch and urban locations where there is interference but so far I have been using the ATX around Reno like it is a VLF going coin detecting in parks and getting no interference.

Now add in a rock solid stable threshold. Good VLF stable. Minelab GPX 5000 stable. Clean and clear at stock settings, a little noise at higher than stock gain levels, again, in the middle of a city!

Garrett ATX Waterproof Pulse Induction metal detector

I am sure this is not at all what anyone expected from me. I was supposed to go out and go nugget detecting, right? Well, for personal reasons that was not an option when I got the ATX. I have been experimenting with coin detecting with ground balancing PI (GBPI) detectors in the past and have written several articles on the subject. I have found piles of coins with the Minelabs, Infinium, and TDI. Coins from depths VLFs cannot hit except in all metal mode, but with better discrimination than a VLF in all metal mode. But I had lots of issues with EMI in particular, and the relative crudeness of the detectors I was using - crudeness now only apparent because I am running the ATX.

Item three - a very well modulated audio target response. Shallow targets sound shallow, deep target sound deep, and lots of nuance to go around. There is a ton of information in the audio of the ATX, much like in a very good VLF for those that hunt by ear. All the sudden Garrett has dropped the best urban pulse induction detector in my hands that I have ever had. I went coin detecting!

One thing I found on moving to Reno was the ground is mineralized and pretty well detected. I was doing some coin detecting looking for my first Reno silver, but finding depth not what I expected at all. Coins deeper than about 6" were giving weak and erratic signals on the best VLF units made. I was finding coins, but more recent stuff, and nothing beyond about 6". The ground here is not very easy on VLF detectors and what is detectable has been hit pretty well over the years. But I knew it had to be there.

I took the ATX and used the old Infinium trick of concentrating on just low/high targets. The signals break depending on the ground balance setting, so it varies, but in general the tone break is right around zinc penny. Zinc penny and higher coins (silver, clad coins, nails) give a low/high tone. Zinc penny and lower (nickels, most trash, gold) give a high/low tone. The high/lows are very common since all aluminum and small ferrous trash gives a high/low tone, plus nickels, and gold jewelry. Low/high tones are much rarer, basically silver and clad coins and larger ferrous items like nails. The ratio of coins to trash basically depends on the amount of nails in the ground. Old cabin sites would be impossible to hunt. But many parks have few nails, and in the past my ration has run about 50/50 coins versus ferrous trash digging just good sounding low/high tone targets (or just low tone on the TDI). It helps immensely to dig isolated low/high tones as opposed to double blip type tones, which usually indicate a nail. Zinc and screw caps can go either way depending on the ground balance but usually are a much louder signal since they tend to be shallow.

The combination of EMI being non-existent, clean steady threshold, and well modulated audio made using the ATX more like using a VLF than using a PI in the Reno park setting. The big, big difference is the sounds are totally PI and must be learned from scratch but any decent VLF hunt by ear types should get the knack pretty quickly with the ATX. I know I did. Next thing you know I am digging wheat back pennies and my first silver dime in Reno. Only as 1954 silver but silver nonetheless.

My brief foray into coin hunting with the ATX had this result:

Nails and coins found park detecting with Garrett ATX - including silver dime!

Three clad quarters, three clad dimes, four copper pennies, two zinc pennies, 1954 dime, 1920 penny, 1942 penny, 1949 penny, 1956 penny, 14 nails, and a screw cap. There were a few large iron items I did not get out of the hole, so about a 50/50 trash to coin ration, plenty good for me. The old coins were all nice mellow low/high tones, the quarters and more recent stuff much louder shallower targets. I could have left them and just gone for the older deeper targets but they were too easy to retrieve and hard to resist so I got them. A few of the nails are square nails which makes me feel good about the age, as does that 1920 penny. I think I am going to nab some good silver soon!

One thing I learned was take a pair of pliers. The nails tend to come up one end or the other in the hole and if you can grab it with pliers you can pull it out and get rid of it so it is not there to be detected in the future. Otherwise they stick pretty hard in the hole. My holes are always filled and invisible when I get done so this can be a bit more work than nugget detecting, where I just blast a pit into the ground. We have to protect the hobby so use care in parks to never leave a mark.

Which leads to item number four. Superb pinpointing. The 12" coil pinpoints dead center, backed up by an honest to gosh no motion on demand pinpointing mode. The coins were in the middle of my plugs. Or one end of the nail. Excellent pinpointing capability, better than a VLF DD coil. This DD acts more like a mono than a DD, with the inner coil area doing the heavy lifting. For small targets treat the inner coil as the only coil for overlapping purposes as that is the hot zone for small gold nuggets, etc.

Garrett ATX outfitted with 8" round mono accessory coil

I am not trying to sell anyone on coin detecting with a PI. I repeat, I am not doing anything here but telling you what I am doing and my results. Urban PI detecting is not for the faint of heart or those who detest digging junk. Most of you reading, just don't go there. Those of you who see what I am up to, well, this is for you. More later as I get more time under my belt but for now I will say this. The Garrett ATX is the best urban PI I have ever used. For me it (urban PI detecting) just went from a curiosity sideshow thing to something I am going to pursue more in the future.

My main issue with the ATX is hand in hand with it being waterproof - it is a heavy detector. It weighs 6.9 lbs with the stock 12" coil and rechargeable batteries loaded ready to run. Big boys will have no issue but I am of slighter build and so can feel the weight. The good news is the sling included is simple and surprisingly effective. If like me weight is an issue do yourself a favor and use the included sling right off the bat. I went without awhile and once I tried the sling was pleasantly surprised. It just slips over your arm and over the handle, very easy to just slide off the handle when digging. Do keep the rod assembly short for best balance.

OK, the Infinium was the best waterproof GBPI I ever used but it had issues and I have been waiting for over ten years for something better, Frankly, I thought it would be somebody else, not Garrett, that would do the deed. So the ATX first and foremost in my mind is the potential successor to the Infinium that I have been waiting for. I had to get this baby in the water, and fast. So I made a run up to Lake Tahoe, where water meets black sand hot rock infested beaches. I had my water hunting gear from Alaska, chest waders and long handle scoop, so hit it day before yesterday, both on the beach and in the water. I got the usual beach suspects, various trash items, a handful of coins, two earrings (looked good but fake diamonds) and a 14K gold ring with five little 1/10th carat diamonds.

Gold and diamond ring found with Garrett ATX at Lake Tahoe

I could see the black sand lines in the sand. There were hot rocks aplenty, all of which I just ground balanced out with the simple push button method and then just locked. I do not generally use automatic ground tracking and have not needed to on the ATX yet in my limited experience. Again, no EMI. I ran gain up high for awhile and the machine was well behaved but it did introduce a bit of noise. I decided to opt for a quiet stable threshold which was a notch above the stock setting of 10 at the 11 setting. I think you are better off setting the ATX to run quiet so that even a peep is a target. Too much gain leads to false peeps so resist the urge to max it out.

 I am looking forward to getting out and doing some prospecting with the ATX but first and foremost for me it is a water detector. I have plenty of prospecting detectors, and the ATX is a bit heavier than I like for dry land use. I can't wait to get the ATX into the water in Hawaii and see how it does in locations I previously hunted with the Infinium. I think the Garrett ATX is really going to perform for me there.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2013 Herschbach Enterprises

Wow, what a dramatic turn of events. After many years of juggling permits and more types of paperwork than one can imagine I screwed up not once but twice and caused our mining claims to be lost! I'm not much for making excuses and bear the responsibility for the mess. Thankfully, I have good friends and partners and so a hanging did not occur. The error was part of a convoluted situation, but suffice it to say you had better get all the facts straight when messing with mining claims on areas closed to mineral entry. The feds are absolutely unforgiving of errors. The story was such that I wrote it up and had it published in the ICMJ Prospecting & Mining Journal.

I had big plans for the summer as detailed at Alaska Gold Dredging Adventure 2013 and with the claim now gone there was quite a bit of planning to roll back. I was able to cancel all the equipment on order and return the rest. I had to tell my partners there summer plans were also messed up but suggested various options we could undertake. Not to make light of a bad situation but things are working out. Time to make lemonade out of lemons!

I experienced a bit of depression over the whole mess and decided I was fed up with permits and paperwork for the time being. I went so far as to sell out of some other federal claims I was involved in to just get free of it all and spend a year regrouping. I still want to possibly do a dredging operation, but have put it off to 2014 at least while I look at various options. One thing I did decide was that perhaps I was thinking too small with a 6" dredge and so now am mulling over options for placing an 8" dredge someplace.

In the meantime I am just going to hang loose and go prospecting, with my main goal to stay mobile and to stick with methods that require no permitting, which generally means staying non-motorized. I am putting together a mobile tent camp and basic prospecting gear including sluice box, recirculating rocker box, and metal detectors. I am going to start in the Fortymile area near Chicken, then head for the Iditarod country, and finish up in the Nome area. I plan small side trips to the Petersville area and Kenai Peninsula if time and circumstances permit.

I do intend to use metal detectors for the bulk of my prospecting efforts and am relying on the four units above to put gold in my poke this summer.

Gold Bug 2 with 6.5" coil. This will be for scraping/detecting bedrock cleaning up the tiny bits.
Gold Bug Pro with 10" x 5" DD coil and 11" x 8" DD coils. General purpose tailings detecting.
F75 Special Edition with 13" DD coil and 11" DD coil. General purpose tailings detecting.
Minelab GPX 5000 with 8", 11", 16" and 18" mono coils. The "big gun"! For use anywhere there is not too much junk.

Fisher Gold Bug 2, Gold Bug Pro, F75 SE, & Minelab GPX 5000

The Gold Bug Pro and F75 are redundant. For most people the Gold Bug Pro is the way to go. But I get a tiny edge with the F75 on larger gold in tailing piles and I like the large target id that pops up on the screen while in all metal mode compared to the tiny indicator on the Gold Bug Pro. The Pro is a tad hotter on small gold than the F75. The bottom line is I could narrow it down to three machines by leaving the F75 behind but can't quite bring myself to do that. The machine has been too good to me so it goes along and I will be using it for much of my detecting.

I intend to split my time between hunting old ground to get some gold and doing some true blue sky prospecting looking for undiscovered gold patches. Patch prospecting is common in desert areas but I am unaware of anyone giving it s serious go in Alaska, so figure I may as well give it a shot. The terrain and ground cover do not favor this type of metal detector prospecting in Alaska and so most people stick with hunting old mine workings. The odds on patch hunting here are slim but the potential rewards are great.

I have my trusty sluice box, but have also finally acquired a rocker box. I have always wanted one, but did not want a wood homemade unit and have never seen a commercially made rocker i really wanted. Alan Trees recently started making a plastic rocker box which looks really good. I got one for $599 plus $100 shipping to Alaska. I want it for working areas away from water in non-motorized locations and so have paired it up with a 50 gallon tub to use as a water recirculation system.

I will fill out more details here later but that is the rough plan for now. I will be hitting the road for Chicken in mid-June and checking in every few weeks with updates

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2013 Herschbach Enterprises

2013 is a very big year for me. I have decided to retire from my day job and for the immediate future focus on prospecting and writing. I anticipated this for some time and have spent the last couple years trying different things looking for my best options for getting gold. I've decided for 2013 to focus on suction dredging for gold as my best option. My partners and I have ground up in the historic 40 Mile mining district of Alaska on Jack Wade Creek. The creek has been mined for over 100 years so there is no question there is gold there. The question is after all that mining how much can I get there with a suction dredge?

I would not get all that excited over the prospects except for some 100 year type flooding that occurred the summer before last. A lot of bank material which is composed of old tailings fell into and was reconcentrated by the creek. The tailings are not full of gold by any means, but the volume of gravel washed and reconcentrated was considerable. Chances are there are some decent prospects in the area. My last short trip in the fall was to drive up and look the creek over. I decided the stretch of creek below will be the target for a dredging operation in 2013. The long inside curve looks inviting and a stretch of steeper, fast water just downstream will act as a good tailings dump.

The gold in the area is heavy, thick, well worn stuff. Old gold reconcentrated from ancient river channels. Here is a couple ounces I found detecting in the area to give you an idea what the gold looks like. The largest nugget is 17.6 pennyweight (20 pennyweight in a Troy ounce). The stuff is deceptively heavy compared to the quartzy gold I am used to finding and adds up fast. There is a chance we will get into a good quantity of this stuff in deep pockets and crevices in bedrock that got missed in previous mining.

Gold from Jack Wade Creek - largest nugget 17.6 dwt

I am going to partner up with my brother and use a Keene 6218GHM 6" dredge for the main operation. We will generally work split shifts but double up if need be. Long daylight hours in Alaska means we can both get a full days work in each day. I am going to rig it with 30 feet of suction hose and outriggers to carry the extra forward weight of the motor and hose combo. The long hose is not for going deep, it is to allow the dredge to stay in one location while a large area is worked. We should be working well under 10 feet deep at most but that is another area a bit unanswered at the moment. I am hoping maybe 6 feet to bedrock on average but that is nothing more than an educated guess.

The 6218GHM comes with 20 feet of 6" suction hose. I ordered mine with an additional 10 feet of SH6 6" hose. It is important to do this at time of order to get one continuous piece of hose. It is possible to attach two pieces of hose together with a thin steel sleeve (part number SHC6) but this creates a clog point due to the sleeve catching and flipping long flat rocks. It is something I will avoid if possible but sometimes two pieces are preferable due to transportations issues, like stuffing the hose in a Super Cub. There are also cases where it may be desirable to have the flexibility of running 20 feet or 30 feet of hose, so again a splicer is an option.

Keene 6218GMH suction dredge

The PFA5OK outrigger kit consists of two extra marlex pontoons and frame extensions for side mounting the extra floats outboard of the motors. I think I would prefer the floats inline and ahead of the main float assembly as I am not sure I want to make the unit any wider. I have never used the system though and it is all set to go as a kit so it will probably get used as is. I can always modify it later if need be.

I expect we may get high water that keeps us from dredging at times so I have also ordered a Keene 175X12 power sluice with extended 12 ' sluice and 3" dredge attachment. I intend on adding more suction hose and a 3" HydroForce nozzle to vacuum shallow gold bearing gravel from an exposed bench location on the claim. The extra long sluice is not for gold recovery so much as getting sufficient clearance for dumping tailings.

The power sluice motor and pump also serves double duty as a backup unit for the 6" dredge. A 6" can run off a pair of the GX200 P180 pumps that run the highbanker so if a GX270 on the 6" goes down for any reason I can toss this on. Always good to have a backup pump if possible. I am still considering whether to get a frame and float set for the power sluice which would give us a floating 3" dredge for prospecting.

Keene 175X12 Power Sluice with 3" dredge attachment

I filed for the permits this summer while I was busy on other projects so have all that taken care of already. This is federal land and it took several months to get all my permits lined up due to heavy case loads these days so plan in advance on this stuff. The main issue was long term camping which took a bond in this particular case. The days of just going out and camping long term on "public land" are over and anything more than a couple weeks expect that you may need a permit.

So we will be mostly dredging, with some high banking, and also breaks for detecting in the area depending on our mood and weather, etc. We will start mid-June and run an open ended operation. If the gold is good we just keep going until we get froze out but we will probably burn out before then. It all really just depends on gold and weather more than anything.

I am starting pretty fresh equipment wise so will keep you all informed as I go as to thought processes and costs just in case anyone is actually thinking of doing something like this or at least just curious. Old hat for me but not something I have done tons of for awhile so a bit of a switch from detecting. I did get a couple solid weeks of nozzle time on a 4" this summer just to get back in the swing of things. That just made me miss a 6" more than anything. A 6" is a very good production unit for a one or two person operation. Anything smaller I use more for prospecting than mining. I considered an 8" for this operation but decided on a 6" for more flexibility in the future. If the summer pays well enough an 8" may be in the cards for down the road.

So far I am investing $6995 for the 6" and $2745 for the power sluice. The SH6 hose is $20.00 a foot so ten extra feet runs $200.00 and the PFA5OK outrigger kit is $450.00. In for over $10,000.00 so far and barely got started, but that is a big chunk of it. That will probably go in on a 5 year depreciation schedule though that is up to the accountant and new tax changes. I am not going to count claim costs and permitting costs directly as I have several partners in the claims so that all gets spread out over the years we own the claims. The main immediate overhead in that regard will be the 10% the partnership collects for claim expenses and cost recovery. Since I am funding the operation I will probably take another 10% myself to cover wear and tear on equipment and fuel costs. My brother and I will split the remaining 80%. All he needs to do is pony up for travel costs, food, and his drysuit.

Low water on Jack Wade Creek

While I am on the subject let's talk business for a moment. My prospecting is a for profit enterprise, one that has made me a surprising amount of money over the years. As such I run it as a business. I have a business license for Herschbach Enterprises and file a schedule C yearly. It has been a going concern under a couple different names for over 30 years now.

The key is to be serious about running things in a businesslike fashion. I have a business checking account and keep my business spending separate from my personal spending. I have been very low level the last few years but now that I am ramping up in 2013 I am cleaning up the books. I even went so far as to buy Quickbooks and am working on getting everything plugged into that now. Since I am retiring from my regular day job Herschbach Enterprises will now be my main source of income so I need to keep it neat and tidy in case the IRS comes knocking.

It is something rarely discussed, I assume because most people do this as a hobby. Even then if you do it right you can write off the expenses against the profits, but you cannot show a loss. I rarely show a loss myself though in a year where I make a lot of purchases and hold back on gold sales it can happen. However, with the price of gold as high as it is now it does not take much selling to end up showing a profit. In any case, if you are someone who is actually finding any quantity of gold it is something well worth learning about.

Business or Hobby? https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/business-or-hobby-answer-has-implications-for-deductions

Hobby Deductions. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/is-your-hobby-a-for-profit-endeavor

Placer Mining Business. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-mssp/placer.pdf

Kind of boring stuff but extremely important things that need to thought about and planned for if you want to do it right. Needless to say I am pretty excited about the coming summer though! Now I need to start thinking about which drysuit I want to use. More to come so check back from time to time for updates.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2013 Herschbach Enterprises

"I hunted hard and got gold every day but one for two weeks, but could not get over larger pieces. I went left when I should have went right. When it comes to getting the big ones the first couple rows you hit often tell the game. 14 nuggets this week got me not quite another ounce of gold, for a two week total of 36 nuggets and 2.86 ounces. Most of the gold was found with a Fisher F75 Special Edition, three nuggets were found with my Minelab GPX 5000 and eight small nuggets with the Fisher Gold Bug Pro. I can't help but admit I am shy of where I was hoping to be on gold, but that said had the best two weeks of fun times with good people I could have. Really, really good groups, and the people make the fun. Many thanks as always to the Clark family and crew for a fantastic experience."

Little did I know when I wrote the paragraphs above that I would have already made my last visit to the Ganes Creek Pay-To-Mine operation. It was quite a surprise when in the fall of 2012 it was announced that the last and final season at Ganes Creek had already happened and that the mine was closing its doors to the public. I can't say I did not see it coming but I thought there would be at least a "one last time" or "final season" sort of affair.

So much has been written about Ganes Creek in the last decade that I see no reason to delve into the details of hunting gold at Ganes Creek. Over 1700 ounces of gold nuggets and gold specimens were found by visitors since the mine opened to the public in 2002. It truly has been a once in a lifetime experience for many people and this last entry I will just devote to some random photos and notes.

Ganes Creek is actually a large commercial gold mining operation, with the pay-to-mine happening as a side business. Here is a shot of the main mining camp. The closest cabin is the combination washroom and rec area.

Main camp at Ganes Creek, Alaska

Ganes Creek valley is both wide and long, with many square miles of tailing piles left by decades of mining with bucket line dredges and bulldozer/dragline operations. Many locations were mined more than once. Here we have a view of the mine above the camp, with the camp just barely visible in the distance.

Ganes Creek upstream of camp (just barely visible at tip of dark area extending from right)

Each day the mine sends a bulldozer around to various locations to flatten out old tailings for detecting. Visitors wait until a large enough area is ready for everyone to have a decent shot at finding something.

Bulldozer prepping an area for the visitors to metal detect for gold

Tailing piles mowed down and flattened by bulldozers

Longtime visitor Bernie P excavating a target - will it be a nugget?

Depending on the time of year visitors may get to see parts of the commercial mining operations at work. Here we have the miner using a Denver Gold Saver to process buckets of concentrate from the main operation.

Denver Gold Saver employed as a cleanup device at Ganes Creek

Although the goal of the detector crowd is finding large nuggets, the bulk of the gold found while commercial mining is actually smaller in size. here is a cleanup from the Denver Gold Saver.

Gold recovered while commercial mining at Ganes Creek

Finally, all good things come to an end. At the end of each week visitors put their gold out for a group shot of both the gold and the people.

The total take for Week 3, 2012 at Ganes Creek, Alaska. Very large multi-ounce nuggets are getting hard to find.

The visitor group for Week 3, 2012 at Ganes Creek

The opening paragraph of this article explains that while I found gold almost every day, I was unable in a two week stay to find even one nugget over an ounce. This is one reason why the mine closed to the public. The t-shirt shot above has gold separated into piles and you can see many people are finding just a few small nuggets in a week. For many people this might be the most gold and even the only gold they have ever found, but the mine owners want to see everyone going home with more gold than what has happened in the last few seasons. Here is my gold from this two week visit, and a couple photos of the totals board. The board had a running total for a decade but was erased on this trip. Luckily I took a photo just before it got erased to document the amazing finds made over the years.

Steve's two weeks - 36 nuggets and 2.86 ounces total

Final look at the multi-year records before the board was erased - 1651 oz by end of 2011

First 3 weeks 2012 - 72 nuggets/18.45 oz (Wk1) 72 nuggets/17.6 oz (Wk2) and 74 nuggets/11.95 oz (Wk3)

That sums up my final visit to the Ganes Creek pay-to-mine operation. It was really something to see over the years, and I am proud I played a little part in making the whole thing possible. It does turn out however that that 2012 would not be the absolute last time a group of people hit the tailings at Ganes Creek looking for gold. In 2014 an exceptionally heavy flood season took out much of the valley and even the old machine shop - a real shame since the machine shop was an in place museum of sorts. The flooding caused a lot of issues at the mine and a group was privately invited up to inject a little cash for cleaning up the mess. You can get some details of that 2014 visitor group here.

With that, one last pretty picture of Ganes Creek Mine, Alaska. Click photo for larger version.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2012 Herschbach Enterprises

The July 2016 issue of the ICMJ magazine contains an article I wrote reprising my 2011 trip to Australia to hunt gold with Chris Ralph and Jonathan Porter. Subscribers can view the article online.

There was of course a lot more to say about the trip than was contained in the article, and in particular I have a lot more photos to share. I kept a diary while on the trip, and this thread is intended to provide a much more detailed look at the trip. I will keep posting on this thread in a serial fashion similar to what I did with my Alaska gold adventures with my diary providing daily details.

It all started in 2010 at the old AMDS Adventure Forum when I made this post on a thread:

"Hi murph,

You know, for many years it was my dream to go hunt nuggets in Australia. I got Doug Stone's books and read everything else I could and dreamed of those monster nuggets.

But as years went by I read between the lines and figured it is a tough go to find the big nuggets in Australia these days. The fact is you only read about people making finds, but plenty of visitors to Oz find no gold. There is always the home team advantage. It is not so much what you know as who you know, and I'll always have a tremendous advantage in Alaska just because I've lived here all my life. Though I do have a few contacts in Oz that might give me a leg up on the average visitor. Still, it may be that my chance to visit Australia is coming as my circumstances have taken a turn for the better. So maybe in a couple years?"

That in turn generated a response from famed Australian gold prospector Jonathan Porter:

"Steve I will tell you this, if you ever decide to visit Australia it would be my pleasure to show you around. There is still plenty of potential here in Australia, the auriferous areas are just too extensive and in some cases very inaccessible so there just has to be good nugget patches waiting for someone gutsy enough to come along and swing their coil over that first lump. I intend to get into some tiger country this year and could do with a good partner who doesn't need a gold fix every day, interested? - JP"

It turns out that JP and ICMJ Associate editor Chris Ralph had been discussing the possibility of a joint prospecting trip in Australia. I had met Chris previously when I had invited him up to visit my Moore Creek pay-to-mine operation several years earlier. A few messages were passed back and forth offline, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to join in on the adventure. Trying to pick the best time as regards weather was a big priority, and it was decided that the fall of 2011 would be the best bet for putting a trip together. Australia is in the southern hemisphere, and so the seasons are the reverse of what we experience in the United States. Our fall is their spring and we timed it to hit cooler temperatures that would be warming while we were there. Jonathan's advice was critical here. We wanted several weeks to give it a good go and decided the entire month of September 2011 would work well. That gave us plenty of time to plan and make arrangements so we put it on our calendars.

This adventure is continued on the DetectorProspector Forum as a series of posts - see here for the full story.

I looked forward to the introduction of the Fisher F75 with great anticipation since the lead engineer behind it was Dave Johnson. Dave has had a hand in many of the best VLF gold detectors ever designed, quite a few of which I have used with great success.

I admit to being put off when I got my first F75. The stupid thing seemed to false constantly when I used it in Anchorage. On top of that there were numerous reports of problems with product quality issues from users on the Internet. It was not meeting my expectations and I sold my first unit in fairly short order to my friend George.

Then George reported how much he liked his F75, the very one I had sold him. Then buddy John got one of the new F75 Limited Edition camouflage models and reported how great it was. Then detector pal Gary told me how much he liked his F75 LE. Obviously I was missing something. So I got an F75 Special Edition, an all black limited edition model with gold trim, which comes with two coils and which has a special Boost Mode for extra depth where it can be used. This unit is rather confusingly being referred to also as the Limited Edition on the Internet. The reality is the only difference between the camo Limited Edition and the all black Special Edition is the paint job.

My first trip in with my new F75 SE was to Moore Creek, Alaska. Moore Creek normally favors pulse induction detectors, but I was pleased to find the F75 handled the tough hot rock environment as well as any VLF detector I have used there, if not better. I got some time to do a little nugget detecting myself, and so looked for an opportunity to use the F75. The airstrip at Moore Creek is made of old tailings, and so has the potential for nuggets. But it also is loaded with trash, so people tend to avoid it. Another person in camp was using a VLF, so I suggested he give the airstrip a go in discrimination mode to sort through the trash and maybe find a nugget. He declined, so I figured what the heck, I'll do it myself.

Usually nugget hunting is done in all metal mode. But I do use discrimination modes a lot, when in trashy areas, or to help with severe hot rocks. I set the F75 up in JE mode and cranked the sensitivity as high as conditions would allow. I used notch 1, discrimination 6, single tone. The unit ran hot and a bit chirpy. I soon discerned that hot rocks were hitting about 16, and concentrated on hits over 16. I dug lots of .22 shell casings, which I was amused to find hit at 22. Plus bullets and aluminum trash. I was right in the middle of the runway when I got a strong signal, and was surprised when a 1/2 ounce nugget popped out of the ground! It also hit right at 22. The next day I hunted with the F75 again, and pulled up two more gold nuggets, each a couple pennyweight each. Needless to say I was very happy with the F75 at this point.

My time at Moore Creek was over and I flew directly over to Ganes Creek, Alaska. Ganes Creek is only 30 miles from Moore Creek, but conditions are far different. It is low mineral ground loaded with ferrous junk, and large gold nuggets. Good ferrous discriminating VLF units are favored there, and so once again I gave the F75 a spin. This time I experimented with the all metal mode. I found I could run with the settings maxed in all metal and yet the unit ran smoother than in disc mode. Better yet the machine is getting maximum audio depth, while the meter continues to operate in discrimination mode.

Fisher F75 Special Edition metal detector

This is a rare trait in a detector, offering the best of the all metal and discrimination modes at one time. You hunt by ear, and in cases where the target is shallow enough, you will get a target id. But what got my interest were the targets I heard, but for which there was no target id. These are very deep targets, deeper than units operating in a pure discrimination mode will hear. I waited until an opportunity arose where the other people in the group pounded a particular tailing pile that had just been bulldozed. This tailing pile always produces gold, so people were all over it, giving it their best shot. Finally, nothing was coming out of the ground, so they all wandered off.

I set the F75 up in all metal, and really put my effort into covering every inch to the best of my ability, listening for the faintest whispers. Up came various non-ferrous targets the others has passed over, all beyond discrimination depth. What I did was get a signal, but no target id, then dig off some soil until the target id kicked in. This usually revealed a ferrous target, and I would quit. Or a non-ferrous target, in which case I dug it up. They proved to be various aluminum targets, which anyone looking for gold has to dig

 I persevered, and finally got a nice, sweet audio, within no id. I dug down, and still no id. And dug some more, and it kicked in as non-ferrous. And then, at over a foot, another 1/2 nugget appeared, but a much nicer piece than the once I had found at Moore Creek. This one was solid gold and a very attractive nugget. I was pleased to no end. It really makes me feel good when I can go in behind a bunch of good detectorists and still pull up an excellent find. It is impossible not to like a detector that lets me make such a find.

  
Half ounce Moore Creek gold nugget and half ounce Ganes Creek nugget - both F75 finds

A month later and I found myself in northern California, on my first nugget hunting trip outside Alaska. We were hunting an old hydraulic pit, and I was leaning on the Gold Bug 2 since the gold was very small. But I did give the F75 a spin, to see how small a nugget I could find with it. Unfortunately I did not have my small coil along, so I can't offer an absolute answer to that question. The smaller coils are hotter than the stock coil on small gold. Since all I had was the stock coil, I gave it a try. A little experimentation showed me that the all metal mode hit small gold well, but the audio response is very soft. I found the same test nugget would bang out hard in JE mode cranked up to sensitivity 99, single tone, discrimination at 6. So I went with that.

I hit an area right next to camp and due to the low mineralization the unit ran smooth even though the settings were maxed out. Not something you will see often. I dug shell casing fragments for some time and bits of lead, but that made me happy. If an area is cleaned out, there should not be non-ferrous targets of any sort left in the ground. Then I got a small nugget, my first gold ever from outside Alaska. I have found many pounds of larger gold, but this little nugget was my favorite of the summer just for being from California. It only weighed a few grains. A bit more hunting in the same area turned up its cousin, also only a few grains in weight.

I have to note that a few grains is small indeed. If the F75 is that hot with the stock coil, it should do better yet with a small coil. So there you have it. Large nuggets and small, gold from mineralized ground and in the middle of trashy ground. For versatility the F75 is hard to beat, and it is definitely a very capable prospecting detector. I managed to pay for the detector in just a few days nugget hunting.

I went back to Ganes Creek in 2011, and got gold nuggets every day. The full story is here. The F75 paid for itself and then some!

Over three ounces of F75 gold from Ganes Creek

There are a few things about the F75 that I like very much. First and perhaps most important, the weight and balance is superb. I can swing the F75 all day with no risk of arm fatigue. Add to that exceptional battery life. This detector just keeps on going. It comes with a meter cover and control box cover that are perfect for rainy conditions. The small coil is great on small gold. It is a very hot 13 kHz detector. Now, I do not want to go overboard here. The F75 is not as hot on tiny stuff as detectors like the Fisher Gold Bug 2 or White's GMT. It does quite well though for a mid-frequency detector.

I learned a lot at Ganes Creek. I ran in all metal mode. What makes the F75 rather unique is that the meter is always in discriminate mode even when the unit is operating in all metal. All metal gets you max depth and sensitivity. So I would hunt and listen with all settings jacked to the max. Boost all metal sensitivity set to 99. Any audio response is a reason to stop, slow down and examine the signal. If the meter is blank, dig on down until the meter kicks in. If you get solid 15 or lower meter readings repeatedly take a pass and move on. If the target does anything else on the meter (bouncing from high to low) dig that puppy. Most gold reads about 22 but the larger the nugget the higher it can read.

I wish I could get my first week at Ganes back this spring as it was not until week two that I really zeroed in on how the machine works. I consistently was getting small nuggets that most of the other people were leaving behind.

So hunt all metal, hunt by ear, study each target with the meter, and dig anything not 100% bad. This ability to hunt in all metal to get 100% performance allows targets to be found that would be missed in a discriminate mode. The signals that give an audio but no meter reading would not be found if the detector is run in discriminate mode.

If there is a lot of trash or hot rocks running in all metal and examining every target can be overwhelming. At Moore Creek there are so many hot rocks I was better off running in disc and setting the discrimination to knock out the hot rocks.

No machine does it all, but the F75 Special Edition is a detector that I will be using a lot in 2012 because for what it does well it does exceptionally well. What it still does not do well is run quietly in urban areas. The machine is rock solid out in the middle of nowhere but is a chatterbox in town. Still, I like how it feels on my arm and I am convinced I have an edge on the next guy. I can't ask for more than that. And it shows how a detector that I once disliked can end up being one of my favorites.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2011 Herschbach Enterprises