1515Art

and a view from the top, it is about 3 miles down to the river and the claim from this point, perhaps I should be looking here?

Pic down by the river.

I read a lot about how challenging nugget hunting was before buying the ZED and everything I read was true. I love the challenge and the hunt, I'm finding adventures and getting outdoors for lots of exercise, loving every minute. I have so much to learn and am very thankful for the honest advice by everyone here. Hunting the desert is fairly straight foreword, but the conditions Im finding around the Rivers on the areas Ive been to so far are telling me I have no idea about what Im doing. for example, the american river area is wonderful, but in most every area around the claim i hit targets every 3 inches or so. Some areas I can find a little more clean ground, but it is almost impossible to even ground balance without several target hits every sweep of the coil. pinpointing is impossible with a 14 inch coil in these conditions and most of the ground is vertical and getting a target out of the hole only sends it over several other targets. I was down to listening only for faint targets and then searching the soil scoop by scoop for any targets I might be lucky enough to find. In several areas I am also getting a target response on solid basaltic bed rock, Im guessing this is only hot rock. Im suppose I need to be raking and clearing a small area at a time and trying to work through any trash layers if thats possible? My tendency is to want to cover a lot of ground like when Im in the desert, but that approach won't work down by the river, so I have to guess a more careful and systematic approach is necessary working only a small area?

Fred, great post, thank you. that looks like one fantastic adventure. And one smart looking guy having a little nip after a long day, I'm jealous... what fun!

Hi Steve, I was up there also. I spent tuesday hiking about 3 miles down a very steep 4WD trail into the american river. It was warm and very humid and by the time I got to the bottom my clothes were soaking wet and that was taking it as easy as possible and only carrying my Zed a pick and a small backpack. The climb back out took almost three hours and I was exhausted. I then headed directly out to lovelock and saw some lightning along the way in the Nevada desert, but only a few drops of rain. tuesday night and the next morning it came down pretty hard, so instead of heading out to rye patch and some other areas I just turned around and drove back to Downieville. Im going to drive back up next monday hoping I can find some decent ground, or try JP's advice on salt tuning. Sure strange weather, Oh well... just part of the fun I guess, If you always new what was coming life would be pretty dull. You just have to keep going... thanks for your update on the conditions, what do you think I might see next week when I go out there? Ive never been there during or after a rain.

JP, thank you very much. really helpful. I was in Lovelock NV today, but skipped going out to rye patch because it rained pretty hard all night long and was still sprinkling this morning. I'm going to try again next week and if I hit any of the hee haa s it will be nice to have a way to deal with it, guess this could also be the answer on a salt water beach as well.

as I read about his experience with target pinpointing and recovery of his target, I don't find that I'm having the same degree of difficulty. it is unfortunate his experience is so unsatisfying Im just thankful those problems seem to be related to some specific conditions in which the detector is operating as I am not experiencing the same level of frustration with mine.

Speaking of noisy northern Nevada ground... anyone been out there in the last day or two?

Nice shooting lucky

Yep, Paul, I think you got it... for the life of me I can't see the USA map as a good example, maybe Mexico. But the croc, that is what he should be selling it as, a good ol Australian salt water croc... he would get $2500. per oz for his nugget.

Fred, you are so right. the nugget would have to be something very special... like one of Steve's great finds before it would have any personal meaning. I did buy a 9 gram spongy test nugget from a gold dealer at around spot and it has no special feeling for me, I like the little 1/2 gram i found while blowing two tires much better. not that it makes any difference, my art studio is in Santa Clara, the antique store was in Los Gatos, I live just a little way up the hill in the next town over. It is one of the better shops (antiques) I've seen in years with a lot of very nice stuff, but I like the junk shops too. Clark

The sun ray I think had just come out with a version of the probes for whites at the beginning of this year and at that time they only supported the DFX, mxt, V3i type platform or those Whites units that shared a coil and the V3i is one of the models that has some issue in certain applications because of the coil configuration. Im not sure anything in the 50 kHz is supported yet by sunray?

spell checkers??? Sun Ray, not sunday probe, although I could have been talking about the one you only use on Sundays. the special Sunday dress detector day stuff. hope the nuns don't bust my nuckles over this one. ok, not being bright, I just realized I can edit my errors after Ive posted... Hmmmm this new tool I found will be very handy for my typing impairment.

I have read a bit about the sunray probe on some of the various blogs and for the most part people really like them. the big advantages are you never lose your probe, you get all the discrimination your detector processor will provide, they use the same battery as your main detector and the depth is very good... better than most probes. the cons and there are always a few, on some detector and coil combinations (not many) you may find some noise in certain situations, it adds weight to the detector at least a pound to pound and a half and sometimes people forget to switch back to the main coil and cover a bunch of ground before they remember to switch back to the main coil. I don't remember any quality complaints, a few did not like them or thought it just was not worth it... a lot like them and some just love them and would not be without one. if you google sun-ray probes you will find a bunch about them. the falcon is a whole different ball game, but the most sensitive at 300 kHz, nothing better for fine gold, but the depth is not deep as most other pin pointers at times I've read an inch or even less on very fine gold. still in its application a very good tool to have.

yes, nugget value although Im not certain if there is any standard. I guess the bigger and more unusual the bigger the factor, but I'm certain others on this forum are much better versed than me on this subject.

Headed out for breakfast in town this morning and stopped in a local antique shop first. Looking around and saw this nice little nugget for sale in one of the cases. Thought I would post a picture for a little Friday inspiration.

Steve, Thank you.

Hi Chris, Thank you very much for the report and all the help and information you so freely give all of us. I'm really appreciative for the info and it will be a big help for me next month. thanks with the GPZ, when encountering difficult salty ground, i imagine it is difficult to say exactly where you will encounter this problem other than by how the metal detector reacts. Or, do you tend to find the difficult salt ground to be in more low lying areas or pockets? Is there any relationship to heavy salt concentrations in higher areas that might indicate ancient low ground that may also have collected other heavy metals and by this could the GPZ's extreme sensitivity to salt be anyway advantageous?

Thanks Scott, great lead of a fun outing. Best of luck with the zed.

beautiful, thats the kind of nail you want and boy do I wish I was there too... just reading about all these great stories is killing me and I need a fix of the nugget hunting kind.

pretty nugget, i bet it was nice hunting down by the river. thanks for sharing your find!

ah yes, I knew this had to be something some of you had tackled before. Beautiful craftsmanship Steve, when I saw the picture my hopes went up it looked like a product model I could just order. No matter, this also sounds like a fun project to work on and build. Steve, thank you very much!

cool rocks Scott, great collection for the deck and good memories.

ive chewed my nails a few times and don't think anybody would care for them to much, kinda bland.

Mmmmmm, sushi.