Lunk

20 hours ago, phoenix said:

Who won the day out of the high end detector and the 2300?  I would think it would be the 2300, but then again, Lunk is no slouch with a detector ?

The 2300 won the day with the most nuggets found, and I was swinging the Minelab Gold Monster1000. It's a rare occasion when everyone finds gold. 

That's a lot of targets Chet, you certainly get an "A" for effort! Like Randy said, the south side of the freeway is a tough hunt with far fewer meteorites, but I'm sure there's a big one out there with your name on it.

Dubious, I see nothing on the BLMs website of the Warm Springs Wilderness that prohibits the use of metal detectors there.

Welcome aboard Majuba man!

WTG Phoenix. That’s a super good photo; if the dime wasn’t there I’d swear that nugget was a huge lump!

19 minutes ago, fredmason said:

I thought you were taller than 5-4...we met at an Outing at Rich Hill many years ago...

Fred, I must have been standing on one of those granite boulders out there...??

24 minutes ago, fredmason said:

Lunk, you are one hell of a he-man to swing that 19 inch coil while hunting in Franconia. The ground coverage is excellent but the strain is much greater. I am curious how you mount the 19 and gpz...harness, hip-stick, swing-arm???

Very nice irons and stones...

fred

Thanks Fred,

Being only 5’4” tall and a scrawny 130 lbs, I’m certainly no he-man. But the GPZ stock harness and bungee adjusted correctly  fits me well, and I can swing that massive coil all day without fatigue. I never use the swing-arm either. However, if I get crazy and swing too fast, the inertia can about knock me down!?

As a side note, I once ran into a guy at Rye Patch that could swing the GPZ all day unaided by a harness, hipstick or bungee, and he WAS a he-man. I don’t recall his name, but I may as well call him Arnold...with a German accent...

35 minutes ago, Dubious said:

Nice finds!  How accessible are the fields you hunt there?  Would a car do it, or is something more rugged needed?  I have been thinking about trying some flat places down south (I am in N.Cal.) for meteorites in the winter (when it isn't too hot!).

Thanks Dubious. The southern half of the strewn field south of Interstate I-40 is accessible by car. The large majority of the northern half is included within the Warm Springs Wilderness, where vehicles and other mechanized equipment are prohibited.

Got out to Franconia early this week. My main objective of course was to score some nice space rocks, but I also wanted to try out White’s new Goldmaster 24k VLF unit to see how well its proprietary XGB automatic ground tracking would handle the extreme variable ground in the northern half of the strewn field. Anyone who’s searched this area with a VLF detector knows how tedious it can be dealing with the endless volcanic hot rocks, and while the 24k handled the ground matrix extremely well and running a low sensitivity eliminated a lot of the hot rocks, there still remained plenty of them to deal with. Although I did find one half-gram iron with the 24k, with all the hot rocks it was hitting I just couldn’t cover enough ground to increase my odds of making a good find.



 As many of us detector operators know, in hot rock hell pulse-induction and zero-voltage transmission technologies are king. So I put away the VLF and brought out the Minelab GPZ 7000 equipped with the 19” coil for maximum ground coverage...time to get serious! With a quick adjustment I was able to ignore all but the largest and most insidious hot rocks and cover a ton of ground, netting several small irons and 2 stones at 27 grams and 75 grams. But the best part was just enjoying the peaceful serenity while roaming the wide open spaces of the Franconia strewn field, and even spotting a wild burro.

11 hours ago, IDMineralSurveys said:

I was originally looking to purchase the GM1000, but as they weren't available yet March 2017 and knowing Lunk had the experience, I called him up chatting about what areas I wanted to go detecting... N Idaho gold!. He recommended the Gold Bug 2 for me - he's right ...it fits my personality. He introduced me to Gerry and I met him during a trip to Boise and bought one from him with the 6.5" coil. I really appreciated Gerry's helpful nature in getting me started with it. 

Mike, we sure enjoy hooking folks up with a detector that fits their predilections and search areas, and then seeing them going out and being successful with it. Congrats again on those nice nuggets, the first of many!

9 hours ago, kiwijw said:

.03 of a gram. Not sure what that is in your language.

JW, that little ripper would be called an half grain bit in yankeese lingo. ?

It’s a work of art Steve, thanks for yet another great resource!

You guys hit the nail on the head. I read somewhere once that the one big secret to successful nugget shooting is that there is no one big secret; it's many things combined, including technique, location, persistence, etc. And I know from experience that the sum of all those things is an emergent confidence: confidence in your ability to operate your detector, confidence in your detector, and confidence in the ground you are searching. When you attain to that level of confidence, you’ve truly become a successful nugget shooter and the gold finds come as a matter of course.

Well done, GB Ameteur! You’ve proven the old nugget shooting adage, “persistence pays”. I’m glad to have met you, and that you were able to find your first gold with the EQX and Gerry’s field training.

Wtg Fred, nice little nugglet.

Fantastic finds Lanny, WTG to both of you!

Congrats on a super awesome find amigo, and I think golden oreo is a perfect name for it!

56 minutes ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

Thanks for sharing Lunk and thanks again for helping get our customers up to speed.  Not sure if you know, but Brian found 9 nuggets with his GPZ after our class.  I have a gut feeling he will become a great nugget hunter.

Yes, I hunted with Brian after the class was over, and he's totally in club Zed now.

Good onya Phoenix!

Looks like a mighty fine season of gold-finding fun, Peg. Hope you find a fistful of doubloons on the beach this winter.

Kiwi is right; if you really want to squeeze every nugget out of an area, it’s best to also come back at it 45 degrees. Althogh it’s usually not much,  I do find more gold by cross gridding.

Andyy, I’m glad  you were able to find more nuggets with my unconventional settings...sometimes it pays to experiment.

It took me awhile to be able to overcome the impulse to wander, but I’ve learned that gridding these old patches is guaranteed gold. They’re typically small bits, but once in a while the law of averages kicks out a bigger lump.

9 hours ago, flakmagnet said:

I wonder if, when you have a moment, you could quickly describe how you go about how you grid an area and how big the areas usually are.

Depending on the terrain, my grid areas are typically squares with sides around 30' to 40' in length. Using line-of-sight, I simply detect between two bright orange soccer cones placed on opposite sides of the square, moving them along the sides until the entire square has been covered. The process is then repeated at 90 degrees.

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

Did you use any 19" this time?

Just the 14" coil this time, Mitchel.

Indeed Simon, but I use a secret weapon in flogged areas: slow and careful gridding; most operators can’t even stand to do it for a half an hour, let alone all day for days on end. But in these kinds of areas, it’s the most effective way to maximize your gold recovery.