Bishop

here is a treasure map. if you take the time to learn how to use it. http://www.mylandmatters.org/

(I'd rather get less gold if it means less trash) the old timers were everywhere. when you are finding miners trash from the 1800s its probably a good idea to slow down and have a look around. (I don't prefer locations where I know others have detected already) you might be surprised just how far some will go to find nuggets. (The more remote, the better.) ill just say be careful. this morning i found a 60 year old guy from Texas broke down. he was nugget hunting. he was pretty far back in there. he had busted his oil pan on a very bad road. i had to use a tow strap to pull him out over some spots i don't even like to take my 4x4. kind of messed up my day. you didn't say when you were planning to do this, its 90 degrees here in AZ today and will be pushing 100 next week.

i think it was 1995. i bought a Tesoro Diablo II Gold Demon from Arizona Al who had a little shop in Glendale. as i only had a car, i only got out when a friend of mine with a truck could get out. i think it was about 8 to 10 trips within about a years time i found a 1.5 gram nugget shaped like a small pinto bean. i was out in that area this morning and thought i would give it a look. i have hit this spot a lot with lots of different machines. and was not expecting to find anything. all these years and i have been walking past this .56. it was 8 feet away from the first one i ever found on the opposite side of the wash. it was under 5 inches of old dry washer tailings.

first pic, an old miners cabin,1930? San Domingo. back in the late 90s i was on a quad and had to take shelter in it during a hail storm. fire place worked nice. 2nd a rich little rivulet that had a nice bit of gold next to that tree. 3rd a too hard to get to wash that had a lot of small bits in it. 4th is the small hill i think spit out the 6.4 gram specimen i found recently. work in progress. heads down you Arizona boys. snakes are up and moving. i saw my first rattler last Sunday.

is he running the 6 in silent mode? seems like it. would be much better with a threshold. im easily distracted, in the top video something is moving in the background. just to the left of him, 20 feet behind him. i thought it was grass blowing then at 3:15 in the video it moved way to the left then back. i watched it a few times and im still not sure what i am looking at. is it the camera glitching?

the acrylic was precut at 11.5 inches, so perfect fit for the 11 inch coil. i went with 1/4" thick. should have got the thinner stuff but was thinking thicker/stronger. what adhesive did you use. im a coil scrubber.

Gotau, the gritty soil is lightly mineralised so i was maxed out with the stock 11 inch coil. i am still using my homemade acrylic coil cover, works good but it starts to get heavy after 4 or 5 hours and i think im going to get a replacement for it. my partner was using a new Coiltek Goldhawk 10x5, i tried it a bit and it seems nice. as for the trash. there is a lot of wire, boot tacks, bullets and brass, copper bits. by this time next year a detectorist will come through this little wash and think it odd that there is no targets of any kind in it. looking at the orange iron stained quartz in it matches what is coming down the hill sides. so hoping for a eluvium patch.

i have not been able to get out in 3 weeks due to work and rain. managed to get to a few new areas this morning. first 2 were to deep to beep. then i stopped the buggy at a small rivulet that looked like it had been worked long ago. turned on the 6k, first swing had a mellow hit, dug 8 or 9 inches to Caliche when i first saw it in the scoop, i was like no way. even had to take my glasses off to make sure i wasn't looking at a yellow rock. my partner and i hit the rest of the area hard with nothing but 50 pieces of trash. such a trashy area and my first target was this 103 grain/ 6.67 gram specimen.

that was a good read. one thing i did not see in the article. maybe i missed it, is how hot rocks and ironstone, even with discrimination can mask targets if they are near them or on top of them. one of the areas i hunt, San Domingo. is littered with basalt hot rocks. last year i found a small nugget on a hill side but the area was undetectable due to hot rocks. i raked off the hot rocks and found 5 more nuggets. its a lot of work raking and i only do that on patches. looking forward to see what Garrett Axiom can do with its discrimination.

subscribed. im not sure what you are using to record video, it looks good. if you are interested in a free gopro hero8 let me know. i found it a few months ago on a detecting trip. i cant find the owner and have no use for it.

nice setup. i have a 12x12 Ezup tent. first time out with it there was 50 mph winds and i packed it up and went home. they are nice for fair weather. the straight walls and tall ceiling are spacious. did a few deer hunting trips to flagstaff we put 3 12x12 in a row. one for sleeping one for cooking and the last one for a patio for when it would rain. all capped with a 40 foot tarp.

GB_Amateur earlier this year i went to a few incredibly hard to get to washes trying to find some fresh ground. 2 of the places had unfilled dig holes that were a few weeks old. still found a nice 1 gram nugget in one of them. another spot i found 2 guys getting ready to detect the wash. these are places miles from any trail access. there is a lot of hardcore nugget hunters here in AZ. the nice thing with the new wash is i have not seen any evidence of detectors having been there. even the little bit of old timer miner trash 1930? maybe older, is still there in the gut of the small wash. geof_junk, no cloth. i just pull it off the magnet. i did have gloves on, so not to bad. my mining partner is thinking about getting a bigger magnet, like the kind they use for magnet fishing. too heavy to lug around i think. im going to talk to my partner again about not claiming it. silence is golden.

got out today. weather is getting cooler here, 87 degrees and was able to get out for a 6 hour hunt. this was a prospecting hunt in a new wash/area so was very happy when the first 8 grain bit came in within 30 minutes. after that we slowed down knowing there was gold in the wash. about 2 hours later my friend was calling to me he had got this nice 31 grain nugget. fun watching him all excitedly carrying it one hand griped over the other like it might get away. the area is remote. a hard, steep hike to the wash and the wash is loaded with black sand, so much so that the 6k was really struggling on its lowest settings. targets were being masked by the black sand. would a beeper with discrimination help with this. we were using the neo mags to clean up the black sand off the bedrock and the non ferrous targets were much crisper after a sweep with them. my friend wants to file a claim on it. i don't know. it is really hard to get to and i don't really know if i want to bring attention to the the area with a new claim. it is going to take a lot of trips/time to placer this wash out. we barely made a dent in what needs to be checked out. im sure someone will come along and see our work and figure out that there is nuggets there. catch 22 i guess. also i cant see bringing a dry washer in as it would be too difficult, so probably just going to scrape it down beep it and keep moving on. anyway, always a good day with new ground to hit.

thanks for the idea Norvic, i like it. i got an 11.5 inch x 1/4 inch plexiglass disk from Etsy, sibe-rplasticssupply.com couldn't find lexan precut. i went 1/2 inch over coil size , 1/4 all around, so i could get protection on the sides of the coil. might have been less weight getting the 1/8 inch, but this should last a long time. used silicone so i can change it out later if i want to. also used 16 spring clamps to get a solid, tight fit when curing the silicone. tested it out this morning. i was purposely rough, putting the coil directly on rocky ground and plowing it forward. swinging around bumping rocks. the coil cover that came with it would have had a hole in 5 minutes and never had made it through half of what i did with this today. i did end up with 2 small chips on the edge where the acrylic is squared off. pic 1 before test. pic 2 after test. pic 3 stuff i found today.

Nice. are you using the 2300 or monster more often.

anyone else wear there coil cover out yet? the 6k covers are way to soft and thin. i think i read, maybe here somewhere. that they epoxied a kind of thin tough plastic? maybe something like Formica to the bottom of the coil cover. does anyone know what that material was called. i need some for my next coil cover.

i have only seen 2 bears in the wild and would mess my pants if i saw a grizzly. if i was hunting up there i would have at least my 30/06 with me, i don't think a pistol would do the job. nice gold.

thanks for the comments on the housing. i think i may have worried some of you with that. yes it would be a bit extreme selling and going full time. im 90% sure ill stay with the plan of working till 55. there are bad days at work when i stop and look around and think, why am i still doing this. im actually very cautious and calculating when making retirement plans. it is well thought out and wont be short funded. if anything, i worry ill die with a bunch of cash left over as i really don't spend that much money. yes, expensive health problems could come up later in life. i like my house, but ill likely sell it and get a smaller place when i retire. home prices have spiked, but there are a few spots that i have been keeping an eye on that are somewhat reasonably priced. mostly due to being away from the city, and i like that. i really like spring valley just down the road from Mayer. Wilhoit has some good prices. but im a little worried that this area could burn up fast in a fire. Yarnell, i had a friend that i would visit there and it was/is a very nice area. he ended up losing his place to the big fire. Jennifer, now you have me looking up stuff on trulia/zillow.

i was thinking of posting something similar to this, a retirement post. so im happy to see your post here. early retirement is something i have been aggressively saving for the last 20 years. im 50 now, i was planning to retire at 55. i have run the numbers and if i sold the house, i could retire today and go full time beeping and let my 401k (old man money) grow for the next 10 years. its funny how material possessions can hold a guy back from doing what he wants to do. however if i wait 4 1/2 years till im 55 the pension kicks in and the taxes/money works out much better and i could keep the house and all the crap, that i really dont need. for me, as far as where to go? the bradshaws are in my back yard and i know them well. so there is that. the outback would be interesting, maybe the mother load in cal or northern nevada. or drop nugget hunting and pick up beach hunting. the treasure coast Florida or waikiki. after thinking it over, a lot. i think being a snowbird might be best. 5th wheel toy hauler, wherever the weather is nice. right now im looking closely at what the market/fed is doing. with a recession likely on the way and inflation out of control. im stockpiling cash and jamming as much as i can into the market.

crack vac, mac vac. its a leaf blower screwed on a 5 gallon bucket with a vacuum hose on the side. basically a gas powered shop vac. not to hard to build them for about 150 bucks, or buy one from the mining shop for 500. comes in handy for cleaning bedrock, i also use the blower on my dry washers.

thanks. that Honda is a goat. will go up almost anything. the engine braking going down steep inclines is amazing. only bad thing i can say about it is its a little spooky on uneven ground, haven't put it on its side yet. it was that or a quad, and this has lots of cargo room. can pack 2 beepers, cooler, dry washer and gas crack vac easy.

yesterday i got out with the 6k for a 4 hour hunt on an old patch i found 27 years ago or so and was able to find an extension of it. got 4 for the day.the biggest on on top was the last one of the day. the other nuggets in the pic are recent finds. mostly with the 6 but a few crumbs with the monster. a lot of my hunts only seem to be 1 or 2 bits and that's it. the 2nd pic is me looking rough after a hot hunt. my buggy, set up for prospecting.

size #7.5 bird shot is the cheapest, most commonly used shot. i don't think it was purposely done by minelab, but maybe some kind of happy accident that the stock 6k 11 inch coil seems to have a harder time hearing them (unless flattened out) in the ground. or air testing them. i never thought i would say it. but i don't need more sensitivity with the 6k. 5x10 might be nice though for poking in cracks and shrubs.

very cool. sounds like you are living the dream. it seems like you left Meadview just as the weather is getting nice and going off to the cold of Montana. was it the wind that had you pack up and move or just wanting to get a early start in Montana. i am thinking of doing something similar in a few years, but with a small toy hauler as i know that camping in a tent with high winds can be rough.