Condor

Too bad it wasn't General Hercules who found that one.  He could make one hell of a video digging up that bad boy.  He can use the F-word so much it loses its shock value.

I've been detecting for gold for over 20 yrs and never had much interest in the coin and relic side of detecting, but I was getting bored in sunny/hot Yuma.  I got interested in the XP Deus because of its potential for gold prospecting in heavy trash and started my online research.  Naturally, I experienced a good deal of confirmation bias, finding all good reasons to get a new Deus and ignoring all the downsides.  I'm really betting on the come with the alleged new coil with higher gold frequencies.  Nevertheless, I decided to buy one and get started learning a different side of detecting.

Many thanks to Rob Allison at Rob's Detectors for helpful advice and putting together a nice package deal with the Garret Carrot pinpointer.

It's only 87 degrees here at sunup so gold prospecting was going to have to be short and sweet.  Yesterday I took the Deus out to the PotHoles area where I met Fred this past winter.  We had detected near his camping spot and found way too much trash, but a few small nuggets.  I brought along a .5 gram and a 1gram nugget for testing.  I detected for less than an hr before it got too hot and found no gold.  I practiced with my test nuggets in some of the hotter ground and in with the trash.  The Deus detected both nuggets with relative ease, the .5 gram at about 4 inches in hot ground.  I would not say that it was any better on the .5 gram than the $499.00 Gold Bug, but there are some nifty things you can do by adding different tones to ferrous targets without adding depth killing discrimination.  I'm still learning this process, but I'm pretty sure it will have its place in some gold areas littered with iron trash. 

This morning I decided to try coin/jewelry hunting in the park.  Yikes, I was not prepared for cacophony of noises from the trash in parks.  After a dozen flip tabs and bottle caps I decided I better learn this detector elsewhere without making a mess of the grass.  I understand the whole "plug" thing and the pinpointer helps, but I was not too confident that someone might not bitch about my excavations.  

So then I noticed that there were 5 new volleyball courts with nice washed river sand footing.  I started thinking about Steve's micro-jewelry concept and decided that was the place to learn this new detector. I could dig every target and not make a big mess.  I detected the first court and found a few zinc pennies then played around with the detector settings.  Since the ground was relatively clean, I ran the stock "Fast" program, but took the discrimination down to 0 and switched the tones to "Full Tones".  You won't miss much in clean ground with that program.  The photo shows my success in less than 2 hrs of hunting.  A couple pieces of micro-jewelry.  The one piece has 2 sparkly stones, doubtful they are diamonds, but I'm on the right track.  Now, normally I doubt you would see me bend down to collect a zinc penny in plain sight, but with detecting it becomes part of the chase.  So I collected a bunch of zinc pennies, shouldn't take me more than 3 yrs to pay off the detector as this rate. 

I trolled around some of the other relic and coin hunter forums and found a pretty good post from someone reportedly in the know though he was deliberately vague.  The V4 update and coil will allegedly be released in September '16.  I'm seriously considering one to start park hunting in the shade since it's 108 in sunny Yuma.  My real purpose is betting on the come with a lightweight, wireless system that can detect gold in the trash.  I keep thinking about a couple places we hit in Baja where the old timers camped on the diggings leaving behind the usual assortment of iron trash with small shallow gold. 

I remember a thread where Steve H. was reconsidering the Deus in light of a yet to be released new coil option that raised the possibility of its use as a VLF gold detector for high trash areas.  I searched the web and everything pointed to a summer '16 release, all silent since then.  Just wondering if there are any new hot rumors out there, maybe Nevada Chris can give some insight. 

18 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Excellent job Steve.  I'd like to be hunting down there again.  

You helped change my mind about Yuma forever.

Mitchel

Hey Mitchel,

This area is about 5 miles as the crow flies from where we were detecting last time you were here.  Easy drive with your rig, approaching from the Gila Valley/Mittry Lake road.  Probably have to wait till winter though, too friggin hot, even for me. 

I had some get after me this winter.  There was no more than a dozen bees drinking water at the edge of a small natural pool.  They were not flying or swarming at all and I tried to step past them to get up a slickrock slide area.  Maybe I stepped on one by accident and he yelled for help because they started lifting off the waterhole and hitting the backs of my legs.  Before I could get away from them I got stung 3 or 4 times on the calves.  I was wearing shorts naturally.  I suffer my share of allergies, but the bees don't seem to bother me. 

Summer has arrived here in Sunny Yuma by the Sea.  Predicting 110 by next weekend.  I got out at sunup this morning in the same spot from the other day.  I found these two in a small side gully.  Hiking back to my truck I saw a nesting nighthawk and took a quick photo of her eggs.  Wide open terrain, two eggs in the shade of a greasewood bush.  She tried to lure me away with the old wing dragging trick. 

On 5/27/2016 at 2:08 PM, beatup said:

Steve, did you ever go back to that spot or are you going to leave it for me to try again next winter.

Hey Brett,

I haven't been back there.  I'd need someone who runs a lot slower than me to tag along just in case.  I'll leave it for you next winter.  Dennis did find an 11 gram chunk downstream from that spot.  The nugget was tucked into the bedrock back in the sidewall of the wash where it turns to red dirt.  Maybe we get a good monsoon season before you get here. 

News article from Phoenix yesterday has it that a 20 yr old tourist hiker got killed by a swarm of bees in a desert park.  Bees were all over the guy when the fireman tried to drag him away and the swarm continued to chase the rescuers.  This past winter I was out with Beatup and he chose to abandon a promising target because he heard then saw a bee hive in a rock crevice here in Yuma.  Grim business, you just never know. 

I went back out this morning and changed up my settings some.  I added some low smoothing and switched from Normal to General, maxed out Sens.  The heavier nugget was in the side of the wash.  I missed it yesterday because the coil needed to be turned on its edge to shoot sideways not up and down.  I could never have done that with the GPX series because of nearby powerlines and military jet traffic.  That kind of EMI would have overloaded the audio on GPX.  The second biggest nugget I didn't miss yesterday, I just chose not to dig it like a idiot.  It was up in the roots of a bush covered in blow out gravel from a shallow waterfall. I heard it clearly yesterday but thought it was trash from the blow out and hung up in the bush.  Naturally that was before I had found the bigger gold so I was still in prospect mode and not in dig it all mode.  I've only been doing this for 20 yrs, one of these days I'll learn to be a little more proficient.  

The Minelab vs. Minelab thread and auto tracking got me wondering again.  Perhaps Norvic, Lunk and JP can chime in and shed a little light based on actual field experience with changing ground conditions.

About 3 weeks ago we had some rain here in sunny Yuma and the moisture really lit up the clay/silt layers.  The Z got really noisy especially in my usual settings of HY/Normal with a sensitivity of 15 +.   I tried a variety of changes and found that in order to cover a lot of ground I had to switch to HY/Difficult, Sens 12-.  I could run my usual settings but had to slow down to a dead crawl and she still growled and moaned blurring any possible faint signals.  Running in Difficult I  did get a couple very faint signals but it auto tracked them out.  I switched back to Normal and both signals were loud and clear.  One of them turned out to be a tiny piece of gold, the other was a hot spot of red clay. 

What I didn't check was how far I could back off the sensitivity in Normal and still hear the targets.  I'm wondering whether in this situation backing off the Sens beats switching to Difficult. 

My SDC is nearing 2 years old although I haven't used it much since the 7000.  There had been some audio issues with a worn headphone jack connection so I used duct tape to stabilize the whole mess but it was down to audio in just one ear.  It's not the headphone cord, but the connection ring on the detector that was worn.  A friend expressed interest in buying it and he called Minelab about getting it fixed on the warranty.  He was told they don't repair the 2300's, just send it in and they would send out a new one.  I know a couple guys here in Yuma that had audio problems with the 2300's and they have received a total of 3 new ones between them.  Perhaps the steep price on the 7000 is helping to offset these warranty returns with the 2300.  Hell of a way to run a railroad, but I'll be happy assuming a new one gets sent out as stated.  I might have a brand new 2300 for sale real soon.

Jasong,

I stuck mine in a weak acid bath of CLR and it did not fiz very much like your experience.  This gold came from the predominately silver and lead areas of Yuma county.  Gold was a by-product during smelting but obviously a few veinlets of gold must have formed, just never rich enough to interest the drywashers.  A fellow prospector and I will explore the box canyon tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.

I played with the camera a bit more.  One photo dry nugget, one photo wet.  The wet photo makes the matrix look like some quartz hidden in the black rock.  I dunno, give me some ideas

Thanks for all the kind words.  When I'm not out detecting I live vicariously for other people's prospecting adventures.  I'm glad we have an active forum to share this hobby.

I played around with my camera and photo editing to try and get a close up of the rock matrix on the nugget.  Still not so good but maybe some of you experts can figure it out and give me an idea where to look for the vein.  The nuggets I found last year all had the same matrix attached.   There are hundreds of quartz veins in the area, but I haven't found any gold with obvious quartz attached.

6.61 grams, not oz.

I caught the stomach bug which kept me pretty close to home if you know what I mean.  After 4 days of shut-in I was ready for some detecting.  We had a bit of a break with cooler weather so I went back out to the area of the "short rich gully" to do some exploring.  I put in 5 hrs of hard walking yesterday trying to find a new patch.  I had avoided this particular zone in the past because it is littered with bowling ball sized volcanics and had some minor use by the old WWII desert warfare training folks.  A fair number of jacketed bullets and mortar shrapnel are pretty common on the flats.  After a lot of walking I dropped down into a shallow gully ready to round my loop back to the truck.  I get a solid signal where I know bedrock is no more than 15 inches down.  I hit bedrock and out pops a perfectly ugly, jagged piece of yellow.  Nice, once I get my gear back in order 5 ft away I hit another good signal.  Another flat, jagged piece of gold.  Wow, that vein can't be far from here.  I get going again and 50 ft away in a secondary flood channel I get a booming signal.  Got to be a piece of shrapnel, the depth is no good, this target is in float gravel.  4 inches down out pops a 3rd piece of jagged gold.  I am convinced I'm on the vein so I start a grid back and forth up and down both sides of the gully.  No joy, plenty of shrapnel and bullets out there.  I gave it a thorough go and no more gold to be found.  

I spent the night out there and got an early start this morning.  All morning nothing but bullets and shrapnel so towards noon I start heading back to the truck.  I'm bumping my coil along and I see a quartz outcrop ahead.  I make a detour and bang, 1.5 gram piece right in the float off the quartz vein.  I start a good search and find 10 pieces, some so small they won't register on my scale.  The Zed continues to amaze me with those tiny bits.  That quartz outcrop is a good 1/2 mile from the other big pieces from yesterday so I don't think that was the source. 

Hey Lunk, sorry to throw shade on your birthday nuggets. 

Maestro has been detecting this spot for 25 yrs with the Gold Bug and SD2200.  The gold we found was beyond the detection range of those detectors and the bedrock I found gold on had been uncovered by a storm in the past couple years.  Any detector would have found that bedrock gold.  We covered a lot of hard miles each day.  Temps were mid 80's to 90's with a decent breeze.  Still we each ran through 1/2 gallon of water each day. 

No trouble with locals, feds or military.  1 military checkpoint with a cursory examination of our gear.  Mexican customs insists you have registration for the ATV when entering country.

Very little trash even though there are miles of old drywash tailings.  The Tertiary gravels had some horrendous hot rocks that make the Z operator dig a lot of holes for some deep rocks.  I spent an hour trying to bust a booming signal out of caliche, but when I switched to Severe it disappeared.  Just to be sure I put a .5 gram nugget down next to it and the nugget signal came through clear at 4 inches.   

Some more pictures.

Maestro's gold and "big red" on the trail.

Baja photos

I didn't finish the first trip to Baja report and now have a second trip to report.

Trip one was 10 days over 400 miles south of the border.  We found gold nearly every day, mostly small pickers for me, but my guide, the Maestro found some nice 4 and 5 gram pieces.  The last day the Maestro took us to rough looking gully where he explained that he had never found a lot of gold in this gully, but all were large nuggets.  He gave me the lead and I worked up the gully to an area where more recent rains had eroded one side out of the main channel.  Right away, a 2 grammer then 4 ft away a really nice signal.  After about 30 minutes of digging into the bank and tumbling a big boulder out came an 11 gram slug.  That brought my total up to 28 grams.  The Maestro finished with I believe 38 grams.  The Maestro consistently beats me for total weight.  The main difference is that he will dig more questionable targets and he will spend more time with the coil on the ground when I'm exploring what's over that next ridge.  A detecting style I will probably never break. 

Trip 2 was only about 200 miles south of the border, 5 days.  We had to take "big red" my poor old beat up Polaris 500 ATV because of the distance to the placer zone.  We rode double with the Maestro carrying his detector on a sling over his shoulders and my detector in his lap.  Some rough sledding and "big red" had its difficulties with narrow rock chutes and steep rock climbs.  One of the electronic parts that controls the cooling fan and charging circuit caught on fire.  Using a mexican speed wrench, (vice grips) we took off the radiator housing to bypass the burnt part.  One thing about the Polaris is its redundancy.  We lost some cooling capacity and the ability to use the electric start, but we could pull start the old fashioned way.  The only down side of pull starting is yanking when its on the compression stroke, ouch!  Eventually yanked the rubber start handle right off on one of those compression strokes.  The Maestro fashioned a new start handle out of a green tree limb and it will probably outlast the whole machine.

But we found good gold.  On day 2 I got into an area of bowling ball sized hot rocks and the Z really lights them up.  I got frustrated and worked my way down to the main wash and an area of bedrock.  One 50 ft section was loaded with up to 1 gram nuggets.  I found 23 pieces in about 3 hrs. 

Maestro was his slow methodical self and pulled some multigram pieces up on the hillside and consistently outscored me in total weight.  On day 4 I was off exploring and just pushing my coil along a high bench with some old Tertiary gravels.  I got a screeching, warbling signal that surely sounded like trash but dug it just to see what the old timers had left behind.  Out popped a 12 gram specimen nugget with quartz and host rock wrapped around it.  I called the Maestro on the radio to have him come over to the new spot.  I told him I had a nice piece convinced I had him beat for today's best find.  He showed up an hr later and told me he had something to show me.  He pulled out a beautiful 21 gram piece.  Damn, I can't beat that guy, but we do enjoy the competition. 

We finished up this short trip with a good pile of gold.  Maestro finished with 79 grams, me 48 grams.  We did not see another soul out there in placer country.  Saw desert BigHorn Sheep a couple times and the camp got raided by a pair of ravens.  Crafty bastards punched holes in plastic water bottles and took whole bags of potato chips away with them.  We named them Barack, since they perched up on the Ocotillo above our camp and shouted their names at us. 

Photos to follow from my camera phone.

The storm concept makes good sense.  This is actually a very shallow gully and not a desert wash.  All the bigger nuggets I found last week were at the same midpoint and not on the bedrock.  None of the tiny pieces I detected today were on bedrock.  All were 3 or 4 inches down just below float gravel as it were.

It was a genuine pleasure meeting with up with you and your brother here in sunny Yuma by the Sea.  Same time next year I hope. 

Photos I hope