Ron (CA)

WTG Ray!! You are definitely a good influence!!

On relic hunts we find gold nuggets and on nugget hunts we find old coins!! Go figure!! I love this hobby!

There is a book written by Max Bell but is really a compilation of many people's research on these buckles. California Gold Rush Belt Buckles and the men that wore them. by Max Bell I have personally chatted with many of the people that have researched these buckles for many many years and are the authorities on these types of buckles. Most date 1850-1855 and almost all predate the Civil War

1850's home site. I actually kicked it out when I rubbed the area with my boot. It was in the top layer of grass and when I saw it it was about a foot away from the original area of the signal. Many of our relics in these undisturbed sites are not very deep. You just never know so you dig it all.

Early 1850's

Pretty rare buckle !!

Sweet find!! Congrats. I love seeing a buckle pop out!!

WOW-- Sweet hunk of cheese!! LOL That had to be a thrill to see in the hole!! Congrats!

Back to the spot Mark got his $20 Gold Coin!! CRAZY!! and a whole lot of fun. Glad I finally got over one!

We have been on a tear lately!! Amazing and unbelievable really!! But I ain't complaining!!

6.6 dwt, 2.2 dw and 14 grains. That was a nice night!! Got 'em with the 5000 The big nugget is the same one, just two different shots

Cool area-- looks like a grand adventure!!

Think it was more of a lighting issue when the pictures were taken. Not the same patch but same county

Got a nice golden bear and a 8.3 dwt nug!

Dude. Find the positive !! Watch the vid again . We state Andrew has a brand new machine. So what you got out of this vid is " they don't know how to pinpoint" ??

Steve, you got that right. I create the videos of our hunts. It is pretty tough to edit 40 minutes or so of footage into 10-15 minutes. I hate having videos over 10 minutes but this was an exception. That hunt was probably about 5 hours total. The video process when all said and done was at least double that amount of time. An expert probably could kick it out in much less time but editing the video, the pictures, the layout etc is very time consuming. At this point we have just made the videoing a part of our hunt routine. We have access to these sites and can get back to them at anytime so the lost time of shooting the video etc is just part of our day. And when you capture something like this it is all worth it.

Way to Trashy for that but we have hunted the area pretty hard. Funny that this was really the bulk of what was there. A random coin spill in the late 1800's. Long after the original site had disappeared! That is the Luck part of this!

Sometimes a video is all you need. I know this video may seem long and many of you will not want to watch a 16 minute video. But this is one you WILL want to watch. (Sorry, it is not all gold nuggets but hopefully you will forgive me) Watch in full screen for the full effect! Enjoy!! I know I sure did!!

WOW- Fantastic Piece and as stated Museum Quality for sure!! "Are you kidding me?" seems to be a pretty popular response as my buddy says that a lot when finding a really cool find!! My responses tend to be a little more beep worthy!! Great pictures as well!! Congrats!! Ron

Stock coil will hear a 5 grain nugget: 12/01 at about 1-1.5" Never have locked the pinpoint and hunted. If I want to hear everything I run a combined mode with a wide open screen. But the ground will grunt from time to time so I run a couple lines of discrimination with a "manual" ground balance. I prefer Ground Coin Mode but will also use High trash from time to time. I find a get a better ground balance with the Ground Coin mode and better signal response in my areas. But using some discrimination. If you run a combined Program with Zero discrimination then High Trash is the quietest mode. I don't think one will outshine the other but that is just my opinion.And if you are hunting for gold with the CTX (smaller gold) then it is a pretty slow sweep speed machines which is typical for Minelab machines. From the Manual Ground-Coin Ground-Coin improves Target ID stability of coin type targets in areas with high ground mineralization. Ground with high mineralization would normally spread the Target ID over a wide area of the detect screen, with the potential to misidentify targets. This setting uses advanced signal processing techniques to minimize the blending of ground and coin signals. The improvement in Target ID stability allows you the best opportunity to correctly identify the good target. High Trash The High Trash setting can identify weak accepted target signals among rejected targets even if the rejected target signals are stronger. The advanced signal processing takes the best accepted target signal and ignores all the rejected target signals no matter how strong they are. When High Trash is used, the Target ID is less stable, therefore a larger edit frame will be required in order to accept or reject specific targets. High Trash can also be used with a slightly faster sweep speed, making it suitable for areas where fast ground coverage is important, such as during competition hunts. The High Trash setting also offers improved target ID stability in highly mineralized ground conditions.

Good Strategy!! All this came from one area of heavy iron. We probably pulled 15 nuggets with the CTX STOCK coil (6 grains to 2.5 oz.) Pulled another 50+ nuggets with PIs and the place is still loaded with iron. So there is plenty more gold but a ton of iron to dig to get it! Just picked up the 5x10 "Joey" coil and air tested it a bit and took it to an iron infested relic site for a couple hours last night. Seemed a bit heavy and when I weighed it later I saw that it is 3.5 ounces heavier than the stock 11" coil. I could feel it right way. The coil ran smooth and IDed very similar to the Minelab coils I found that the high conductive items (Silver Dimes- Silver Halves) with the Coiltek read one number lower on the Conductive side. Not really an issue for relics, gold or even coin shooting as it is still in the range you have to dig if you are deep turf hunting for silver (44 vs 45 or 45 vs 46 etc). I will give this coil a try and also let my buddy Mark use it to get his opinion on it. I am actually looking for a relic coil for heavy iron and also to gain an little more ground coverage and depth vs the 6" The Joey gives up 15-22% in the depth department vs the Stock coil. (this was on coins: Silver dime-16%, wheat penny-16%, Silver Qtr-15%, Silver Half-21%, Silver Dollar-22% and V nickel-15.5%. The Joey vs the 6" Minelab has interesting results as it was significantly deeper on a silver dime, V Nickel and Silver Qtr (15-22%) but on the Silver Half and Silver Dollar the advantage dropped to 8-11%. The Joey had a depth increase of 1.5 inches from the Silver Dime to the Silver Dollar while the 6" coil and stock coil both had a difference of 2.5" So the Joey is not as hot on the bigger silver coins. But still deeper than the 6" . I need to do some testing on the Joey for small nuggets. I air tested a couple small nuggets just to see where they read on the VDI Fly speck 1 grain --ZERO Reading 8 grn/.6 gram Reading around 12/9 on the VDI and getting it close to 4 - 4 1/2 inches 1.1 dwt/1.8 gram nugget Reading 12/10 on the VID and around 6" 8 dwt nugget reading at 12/19 and about 9" It will hear a 5 grain nugget at about 2" and read 12/1 on the VDI But a lot of that will be wiped out once you put things in the ground. I just to air test to give me a general idea of what the coil may be able to do. I don't take an air test too seriously. I will take the same test nuggets with me and bury them and see if I can even hear them!! Plus it is raining so it gives me something to geek around with!!

I have been in hot ground with the CTX and was only getting 4-5 inches depth on large shell casings. I can usually get them 8+ inches in normal ground. So hot ground is hot for all detectors. I ran a MXT for a short will and found it to be a good all around detector. Good at Coins (parks and turf), Better at Relics and good with gold. So I think you have a good machine for what you want to do. Your MXT will find piles of relics and will find coins all day long in relic sites. It may not ID as well as some other machines on deep coins in a park or in heavy iron, but it will definitely give you a nice positive signal to dig. Heck my $2k Deus does not give a very good ID either. So it does not matter how much it cost as long as it accomplished what you want it to accomplish. You have a solid machine and if you can only afford one machine right now I think you are fine. I have heard decent things about the Garrett AT Pro and AT Gold but personally have not used them. For one, I think the build quality is crap, but there is positive feedback about performance. We have a AT gold on the way that we will be testing in some of our iron sites. Good Luck

Simplicity of the F19/GB Pro is attractive. (for many of the reasons you mentioned about the DEUS: batteries, charging etc)

Nice write up on the Deus! Thanks for taking the time to give us all your views. Being a relic hunter in the gold region of CA, it is nice to have machine that "could" nugget hunt if needed. And I have found gold with the Deus. I have been eyeballing the Fisher F19 and hoping that it would be a little quicker in the iron but is it simply a GB Pro with a couple add ons? I have heard dealers say the F19 is quicker and with the iron volume it makes a word of difference in the iron, (but they need to sell machines) but then I spoke with someone at Fisher and was told that I would probably not see much improvement over the GB Pro. Any experience with the F19?

Note sure why we say that so often but it just seems to be our word of choice while detecting!! Funny - I don't think I say it that often while not detecting!!