bado1

Nice to see you back at it, AjR. Thought we had lost you. Great looking gold! Looking forward to seeing more!!

Dean

Good idea!

Sounds like a great trip. Beautiful specie. Love the old coin in the photo too!

Man, what a bummer you had to cut your trip short. From what I've read about Nokta, you shouldn't have any problems with their customer service. Nice to hear another good report on the performance of that machine. It is going to be my next detector purchase. Good luck!

Thanks Guys.

Tortuga- I like those pics too. It amazes me where gold winds up and how it got there. I am not nearly the careful excavator that my buddy is. He carries a nifty little pack of micro-picks that are like dental tools. They really come in handy when trying to coax a flat little flake out of a crack. He gave me one of them and it works great. I tend to use my big pick first and ask questions later. I am learning, by his example, to use the little tools and expose the nuggets "in situ" just because it's cool to see how the nugget was placed by nature.

Dean

My buddy and I have been looking at a promising spot on Google Earth for the past few weeks so we decided to give it a go this weekend. We started early on Saturday morning and had to wait out the rain for a while as we gazed down this monstrous canyon that didn't look that monstrous on Google Earth. No shrinkage here. We did "the hike" which turned in to a death march and didn't even turn our detectors on . After braving the heat and being tired and hungry from our "hike" we decided to go re-visit an old area that always gives up a dink or two so that our effort wasn't a total bust. We both scored three for the afternoon. My buddy had visited another nearby spot on Friday afternoon after he got done with work and he scored three there as well.

The only positive that came from "the hike" was that we spied some other good looking country (not in the bottom of a huge canyon)and decided to go there and check it out this morning. Now, lesser (smarter) men would have stayed home and got a massage after "the hike" but not us. And it's a good thing that we are not that smart.

In just a few hours this morning I scored fourteen and my buddy another three! So, our weekend total was twenty six. I swung my SDC and he his GPX5000 with a "Sadie" coil. Fun in the Arizona sun. Here are some pics of my take...

My buddy did a careful excavation of this one. It shows just how stuck they can become in the bedrock. Good luck.

Dean

Great nugget. The GPX is an awesome tool. More than anything, it matters who is behind it!

When I get some time I will re-visit the rock. It is black and the dime has got a blackish patina from being in the ground for years...found it detecting.

That goes for gold nuggets also!

Them little ones add up. Thanks for posting Dean.

Steve,

I wish the nuggets would rattle more often!

Wow! Way to go!! That is beautiful. Thanks for sharing those vids with us. Keep it up.

Dean

I just posted this to the AZO forum. Let see if I can do it again...

We went to the micro-nugget gulch for a few hours this weekend to clean it up. We both were swinging our Minelab units. Me the SDC and my buddy his GPX-5000 tipped with a 6" Coiltek coil. The SDC is made for this kind of hunting and the 5000 with this coil is super sensitive to the small gold. Started out a bit warm but got much nicer as the sun got lower. Some may think of this type of hunting as tedious(it is)but it really sharpens your detecting skills. It forces you to slow way down and listen for the slightest change in the threshold. A good pair of head phones is essential.

The wildlife was out as well. We saw some Mule deer and met this guy...

Look very close as he has great camo. Can you see him? A beautiful and deadly Mojave Rattle Snake. Snake guards would have done no good as he is hip height on the edge of the inside bend of the gulch. Thankfully, he was not in a bad mood, as I didn't see him until I stood up from digging a target about three feet away! He would not rattle and we could not get him riled up. He just wanted to be left alone so we obliged him and let him be and moved on up the gulch.

As the guardian of the gold he didn't do a very good job because we scored these little guys....

first few (combined).

My total take. I didn't get a pic of the final total but I think it was 14(?).

My first target of the day was a perfect signal on the SDC. A nice mellow gold tone. I thought to myself, "first gold, YES"! Instead, this is what gave the nice tone...

Very strange for the SDC as it usually doesn't sound off on hot rocks and if it does it gives a different tone. Plus, there aren't many hot rocks in this area and they don't look like this. It appears to be a large piece of Hematite. It is not magnetic. Weird for this place.

Another fun trip with my buddy hunting micro-nuggets.

Dean

Way to persist, Scott! Congrats on more gold!

Dean

beautiful!

Cool nugget, Scott. "Shaken not stirred"

It was a very rainy weekend in AZ.so we used it to our advantage. It was nice and cool and the washes had been flowing.

My buddy purchased a GPX5000 and wanted to give it a swing. Chris at AZO set him up with a Doc's Power Pack Kit and a 12X7 Nugget Finder coil and some NF swag. Chris has a great special on this gear going right now. Very nice set up. It worked very well as he found a nugget both Saturday and Sunday with his new 5000. I spaced getting pics of his gold for the weekend:(.

Sunday was cool and beautiful after all the rain so we headed out to one of our spots to give it a go. I used my SDC and Steve his 5000. He went one way and I the other. After a short swing on a hill side that had given up gold in the past, but was being stubborn on Sunday, I decided to move down in to the wash where the Old Timers had thrown everything out of the wash to expose the bedrock which consists of Schist and white clay. As I get to the exposed area I look down and see this little guy just waiting for me....

(Dead center)

Cool. First gold of the day by eye ball. I fire up the SDC and just start to swing when I spy another one stuck in the clay just a foot away! Eyes two. Detector zero. That score didn't last long as the SDC started to hit on the micro nuggets every few feet. What a blast! It was starting to cloud up and I could hear distant lightning in my head phones. Steve put away his 5000 and came over to see what I was up to just as I was digging number five. He watched as I scored another and then hit another that was so small I had trouble getting it in the scoop and became frustrated and abandoned it to search for more cooperative ones. He asked if he could give it a go with the SDC and away he went. He found another five or six and even went back and managed to get that stubborn one that I had abandoned in the scoop. The SDC is deadly on the small stuff! Here is a pic of the seven I found...

Nothing of size but beats the skunk any day.

Dean

Great hunt you guys. Mixing it up with relics and gold...doesn't get any better. Nice country.

Dean

Awesome! Congrats!!

Nice nugget jasong! Yep, 18 grams is lunker territory in my book as well. I have yet to detect in Gold Basin as the Central AZ. gold fields have been keeping me busy but I intend on going there soon to check it out. Thanks for sharing that great nugget!

Dean

The cool weather this summer has been great for us as well here in Central Arizona. It has really extended our detecting time. Great job as usual on the gold!

Dean

Get well soon, Paul!

John- He used a Joey coil.

The "old" 3500 can still find em with the best of them. Here's proof...

My buddy is deadly with his 3500. It will find them as small as the SDC will.

Thanks for the great update, Steve. Your pictures are really good. You are certainly perfecting the art of taking pictures of gold. Which, I am finding is not as easy as point and shoot with your cell phone. Good work.

Dean

Great job!

More SDC gold. Way to go!