hawkeye

Gold Hound, Thanks for sharing that experience. What a great prospecting lesson.

Let's add a new element that combined with luck to got me 3 little nuggets all within a 10' circle. Laziness. Near the end of the day heading back to the jeep came to a little wash and being to lazy to stumble down the wash I chose instead to walk on a nice level bench next to the wash. Went twenty yards got a nice signal on the 2300, dug the target, a nice little nugget. Three feet away another target and nugget. Five feet away under a little bush another target and nugget. This was on a club claim that has been searched a lot. In this case luck was a big factor, and a good deal of credit goes to the 2300. I'm sure I wasn't the first guy to search that nice level bench. Or maybe all the hard workers walked down the wash ;-)

Azblackbird, you must spend a lot of time in the "can" if drinking a gallon and a half a day. ;-)

Chris, You make a good point. You are including one's broader skills as a prospector which is valid. Finding that place to put that detector over detectable gold is getting more and more difficult for the amateur detectorist. Recently developed detectors such as the SDC2300 and the GPZ7000 are allowing us to find gold in areas that were cleaned out with previous detectors. For whatever reasons, time, money, age, length of time detecting, many hobby dectectorists do not have the advantage of being able to find new areas to detect or go back to old patches. A good detector capable of detecting the missed gold offers us a more than 20% advantage.

I'm going to buck the conventional wisdom that it is 80% ability and 20% the detector. How big would your pokes be without the superb VLF's like the GMT or the GB2. What about all the Minelab PI's which revolutionized detecting for gold. Lately the SDC2300 which provided you with gold you previously walked over. Now it appears the GPZ7000 is doing the same thing. Sure you mastered the detector and it provided more gold, but where would you be without it. Probably walking around with two bent clothes hangers. I think it is more realistic to give the detector at least 50%.

Digger Jones, That makes sense. Not sure why I was so thick headed when I read the quote. Thanks. Now back to the gold rush.

Pard, I have read this quote a number of times and I am still confused. I wonder if you meant to write "without a detector"? If not, help me.

Amazing gold. What's more amazing is that at 6" it went unfound until now.

Steve, It was a pleasure to meet you today at the show. Keep up the good work. Ken

Steve, thanks for your comments on the GPZ 7000. Sounds like a great machine. I did not start detecting for gold until I was 71 years old (4+ years ago) and have only been able to hunt hammered out club claims. I started with a GMT, got a TDI SL (big disappointment), bought an ATX but didn't use it much before getting a SDC 2300 in September. I was able to offset the cost of the 2300 a bit by selling the other detectors. I didn't find a nugget until I started using the 2300 last fall. Now I have 8 sub 1 grammers. Not a big haul to some, but I'm happy to be able to find those little bugger's that someone else walked over considering where I have found them. I am a big believer in the 2300 and am pretty sure the 7000 would allow me to find even more nuggets on these claims. BUT, $10,000 is hard for me to justify now. Oh to be 50 again, I'd snap up one of those 7000's and get going. Oh crap, I forgot, I'd probably be working at 50. Make it 60. Seriously, that is an amount that is hard to swallow. Oh, I know they will sell many to those who can afford and want to newest and best, and to those professionals who can actually pay them out and make money. Unlike Steve I am not in my detecting prime, hell I'm not in anything prime, so I will be pondering this a bit more. But, never say never. Thanks again Steve. I thoroughly enjoy your forum.

Kinoite

I wonder if the person who left the 2+ oz'er thought it was a hot rock. All dirty and shaped more like a rock than a nugget. Anyway, a good lesson not to discount anything that beeps until it is thoroughly checked out. If in doubt take it home. I'm enjoying the story.

Have you ever encountered this? I called a city office to find out if you could metal detect in the city parks. "Yes", she said, " but you can't dig". Priceless.

This forum is great, you ask for veteran advice and you get it from the best. Thank you very much. Next step for me, order 11" Commander mono.

I am looking for advice from the GPX Veterans on the forum. I recently acquired a GPX 4800. The stock coil with the 4800 is the 11" DD. I am thinking that my approach to learning this machine should be to read as much as possible about the settings, and log hours detecting. Not really a novel approach. So should I buy a mono coil now, or wait til I get more experience with DD? I have a feeling that at this point along the learning curve I may not even be able to tell the difference. Luckily I didn't get two coils so I don't have the problem of deciding which to use.

Hey Rumblefish, here's a photo of the smallest I have found. The little guy on the right. I have a cheap scale and it registers in 2 grain increments. The little guy didn't register, so it is probably about 1 grain, plus or minus. Consistent with the 0.1 gram that others are finding is the lower limit. I may not have normally heard it, but I had just found the one on the left and I was carefully covering the area nearby. It was on, or very near the surface and barely signalled. I lost it a few times before the got it in the scoop.

Hey Rick, The bottom of your 2300 is a removable coil cover that you can replace.

No,no,no, don't buy one. Buy my ATX.;-)

Hey Glenn, sorry but I got a laugh picturing a guy walking around in dark with a jug of water.

What is the land status of the area you are hunting? Open BLM, mineral claim BLM, ......?

Pictures in the link also show a "health" mine in the area. Yeah, inhale some radon for good health. In the 1970's too

Steve, enjoyed your article about this dredge in the October issue of the IMCJ Prospecting and Mining Journal. I hope to get to the Chicken area someday. When I was a young boy in the late 1940's I had the opportunity to see a similar dredge operating in Prickly Pear creek south of Helena, Mt near Clancy. The dredged area is now pretty much covered by I-15 and the dredge is gone after sitting by the highway for many years. The picture is from a website showing a number of historical pictures from the area south of Helena. http://www.helenahistory.org/south_of_helena.htm Also, at this site just past the dredge image is a newspaper article about the dredge.

I am a supporter of the "zapped" theory. Could they have been exposed to a strong magnetic field or X-rays. Quite likely at least X-rayed. Maybe Garrett could tell you about a possible problem if exposed to either of the above. Sort of suspicious that both not working after shipping.

Ray, thanks for the reply. I wondered how an underwater target could be recovered. In your case it was pretty straightforward. Indeed, it does sound fun and the food and drink service sounds good too. Talking about lazy, I have watched videos of nugget hunters in Africa where the detector operator has a helper to dig the hole and sort through the dirt for the nugget. That appeals to me as I age and the knees are creaking. Good hunting.

Very interesting. I have no experience with this type of detecting. What was your recovery technique after you got a hit on the detector? In other words, how did you get the gold?