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This one was found by a hunting partner... 3.5 ouncer

I've also detected some big gold nuggets with ironstone. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

It's been said "iron is the mother of gold". I've found several gold/ironstone nuggets in Arizona. My camera won't download pictures to my computer for some reason. So I did these on my scanner and if you look hard you can see the gold is stuck to the rare earth magnet. Some of the nuggets show very little iron on them but all nuggets are magnetic except the one at the lower right. I guess it must be hematite and the others are magnetite.

I'll bet it cost as much to feed the cat as the detector cost!

Wow Fred, now that's a big cat!

Yup don't be stupid, The Gila Monster is also protected by federal law. Lil bro just wanted to move this one off the road so he wouldn't get hurt, don't worry both monsters are safe and sound. Just to give you an idea of the size of this gila monster little bro is 6' 5" 330 lbs.

Nice gold Lunk... congrats! I hope there's lots more nuggets for you!

Fred, are you running with audio smoothing off? If not that will definitely help out with the questionable targets, so will running in normal ground if possible. Most of the 25 nuggets were very obvious targets that were missed in the difficult mode, a few were soft subtle targets I had to scrape down to hear as obvious targets. If I'm in a known patch I'll do whatever it takes to run in the normal mode with audio smoothing off, that may not be possible in some areas but as shown in Jason's video there's a big difference between the two ground modes. I also proved it to myself by going back and finding the 25 nuggets missed detecting in the difficult ground mode. Thanks again to Jason for taking the time and effort to make the video!

Thanks gentlemen, Spencer, I'm not sure about how many hours it took to find the nuggets. it's a 2 1/2 hr drive one way where I do most of my detecting so it doesn't leave a lot of time left to hunt. Jason, some of these patches have deep ground and I've found big nuggets at depth with every big aftermarket coil made. I think there is more bigg'ns Also I re-hunted some of these areas that I already covered in the difficult mode and I forced myself to detect them in normal and I found about 25 more nuggets that were missed with the GPZ in the difficult mode. Thanks to your video showing the depth difference. I did have to dig a few ironstones and mineralization but it was worth the trouble, there were two patches that normal just won't work and I switched to difficult.

Nice gold I hope there will be more for ya. Fred I just plug in my headphones and go, it helps me concentrate on finding gold with less distraction going on around me.

Very nice gold Jason congrats, also thanks for doing the video that shows the difference between hunting in difficult vs normal. It forced me to take another look at normal and increased my nugget finds. Take good care of yourself the gold will still be there after you heal up.

GPZ nuggets so far, all from old hammered patches, all from Arizona. 77 nuggets, the biggest is 2.2 dwt, total weight is 21.2 pennyweight. Enjoy the picture!

Nice nuggets, if you're digging bullets in a gold bearing area it's only a matter of time before you dig a bigger nugget. If the area is known for big gold just stick with it... it will come. Good luck!

Some of that 20% depth lost in difficult mode is made up with audio smoothing off. I'm waiting for the big coils to come out and start the learning game all over again.

Thanks for the video and very nice nugget Jason. I wish I could run those settings down here where I hunt. The mineralization is so high in some areas you dig false ground noise with those settings not to mention the ironstones and hot rocks in some places are loaded. I should try normal ground again and turn the sensitivity way down and see if I still get false or ghost signals. .