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Will somebody please send us some cooler weather down here in Arizona? It's just too darn hot to detect and the ground is super dry. The good news is that it cools off to the low 90's at night. Check my thermometer lower left while I was out this afternoon.

Hello Steve, or other fellow detectorist. I’m going to be in Yuma at the end of February and the first week of March and wondering if it’s worth bringing a dectector with me. Parents go on day trips would like to add a piece of AZ gold to my collection

Wasn't found with a metal detector, very nice quartz and gold specimen found in a placer mine in the Huachuca mountains of Arizona.

Springs Here! Please be Careful on Sun warming area's Both You and Your Dogs! There is a Poisonous snake vaccine available ask your vet! For those w/experience in "Rattler Country" the "rattlin in the video is definitely on the quieter" and deadlier! (hard to pickup while detecting") side of what you hear in the field....there is also med.- loud. and even ragin' buzz saw Louder Crotalus' in the American Bush! Post any USA or OZ reptile encounters during Gold hunts

I am posting this here since there are folks on this forum from Arizona. I was wondering if anyone might have information like rules, regulations or possibly links to which agencies regulate and permit suction dredging. I know, there is not much water in AZ, but there must be places that a person might find gold in streams.

Does anyone have information on these silver boulders that were found in Arizona? They were on display at the Tucson Show this past February.

Tried a new area for metal detecting last week, Nothing AZ, it lived up to its name. Spent 5 days and came up with Nothing. Lots of quarts, black sand looks good but no gold.

I have found many rock contains mírala need help identifying.

I’m new to prospecting and need help identifying please. What kind of minerals and rocks do k have?

Hello all, My soon-to-be-fiancée and I are heading to Arizona in a few weeks. She's a Science teacher and loves ALL things space. I want to take her meteorite hunting but have NO clue where to start. For the folks whose ever been to Holbrook, I have a few questions: 1. Are there metal detector rental places nearby? We're flying in from Florida so I'd like to purchase/rent when we get there. 2. If we drive into Holbrook, are there maps telling you where to go hunt? I'll continue to look for GPS coordinates before I go. I've read folks talking about railroad tracks... 3. Are metal detectors the best way to find something? Can you "drag a magnet" or use the naked eye? Thanks for any replies. ANY help will be much appreciated. -Bobbo

Let me start of by saying I heard about and saw some pictures of hugh silver and gold found in Arizona. If I find a link or the discoverer wants to post up his pictures I'll let you know. This find is not about that. This find is about a couple of good weather days in Arizona near Wickenburg if you follow on the map. I went there because of Bill Southern's outing that was very well attended. He'll have some pictures on his forum which I'll try to link here. https://nuggetshooter.ipbhost.com/topic/34683-outing-pictures/ Minelab America was there giving away something to everyone who attended and they also had a raffle which benefited AMRA to the tune of $2700! This was near the second day and where the nuggets were found. This first picture is a panorama of the area where I went the first morning. It is near a GPAA claim was a nice specimen was found last month. As you can see the desert is not really dead. It has many living plants and animals. The fallen cactus is a saguaro. You normally only see it standing with its green skin but inside it is an engineering masterpiece. It is made of many rods that give it strength. The next set of pictures is of the cactus that makes cowboys strong and forget about pain. These are the jumping cactus that get you over and over again. I finally dug a hole but it was hot ground. If you enlarge these pictures you will see in the picture some wild burros. There were about 10 with a couple of black ones. The next day we stopped by an old mine on the way to a different claim. Chet got us near and then we went off a less travelled road and we had to turn around. This is him coming out. I didn't take my phone detecting this time because it lost power trying to find a signal. This was the claim where Chet found a nice 2 g nugget and I found the .25 g nugget. These were my pictures on the way out at the end of the day and before my 6 hour drive back to Santa Monica. I took a couple of bad picture of the nugget this morning with the phone. It makes me want to get a better one ... nugget and phone that is!

So many people call me and ask about getting into Nugget Detecting and then comment, “Hasn’t it all been found by now?”. I’m here to tell you what I found out last week on a short trip to Yuma to get some sun. The last minute, I decided to take a GPZ-7000, as it actually packs in airplane luggage easier than my 5000. Anyway, we did the usual stuff for the first 3 days and then got the call to meet up with Lunk and another of my customers the next morning at around 9AM. I was worried my rental car 2WD Ford Escape was of no use? But when we met up at the site, I realized my riding lawn mover would have done just fine. After all, we turned off real genuine pavement and drove less than a mile on gravel, seen some dry wash piles on the side of the road and decided it was good to hunt. OK… lets cut to the chase… How did we do in the 5 hours of detecting? All 3 of us found gold with our detectors. Are we all swinging the high end GPZ-7000 that most folks can’t afford.. you ask? Nope. Only me, as I did not realize smaller coils would have served me better for that site. My one buddy was using a more moderately priced detector, SDC-2300 and he recovered more than I. Lunk was swinging the best VLF gold machine under $1000 and he too found more than me. After all, coil size to match the terrain is pretty important as I found out. So whats the verdict on AZ and Yuma specifically? Plenty of gold out there folks and I was able to drive my riding lawn mower less than a mile off a paved road when we seen old Prospects so decided to try. Each of us using 3 different detector price ranges and even technologies (VLF, PI & ZVT) scored some Au. We all went home with gold…and a few great memories. I’m still awe struck that gold can be so easily found a half mile from a paved road, 15 minutes outside of Yuma? I guess those folks enjoy dry washing more than nugget hunting? I'm thinking next winter I know of an area to put on a Gold Detector Field Training class for my customers? At least I know it is really close to town and most anyone can get there. BTW… There is plenty of lead targets in that area too, so you’ll get your share of pinpointing practice. And on the way back to the hotel, you can pull off the side of the road and get another kind of nuggets, fresh AZ oranges.

Hello everyone. I'm new here and have been studying about this new hobby for a month or so. Yesterday i ordered/received my first ever detector the Equinox 800 and added the 6 in. coil. (i'm targeting Gold) I've lived in AZ all my life and currently live in Queen Creek. I'm looking to make my first hunt near Hayden, AZ, 75 miles SE of my home location. I also joined a prospecting club, The Roadrunner's Prospector's Club. My first hunt site will be on a RRPC claim. RRPC has 31 claims in this area. Below is a aerial view of what their claim areas look like. I'm hoping to head out there in a few weeks, It's going to be HOT!

So I titled this as such because when it gets especially hot (here in Arizona) I start my hunts at midnight and go thru until the morning until about 8am. For me, this offers multiple benefits. There is more time with the family on weekends, which for me is #1; I cherish this more than gold. And secondly, if it is hot out, I cannot keep my ground balanced, as some put it. When it starts getting hot, I would tend not to look as hard and rush through areas. Anyways, back to the gold. I was in a wash last week when I ran into some pretty good gold. I found 11 small pcs adding up to almost 4 grams. Now, for my night hunts, I won’t go every weekend, I usually skip 1 or two so that I get my sleep cycle working again. But then there is Mother’s Day coming up and so my wife briefly mentioned that I should go this weekend, too. An hour later I am charging batteries. She walks by and says, “wow, you really have the fever don’t you”. I just laughed. She knows me. She has seen me prospecting for 5 years and put up with it for 5 years. One of the best decisions I made was marrying her. I explain all of this because it was nice to come home and show her the source of the fever. So I went back to this area with my GPZ and started walking through more washes I had marked out on my gps. Nothing for the first one, but the second one, I got a nice strangely shaped 2.75 grammer. Now, I can kinda see a patten on my gps when I look at my finds. I finish the wash and go to a wash that is in the direction of the gold distribution. Good topography … I am in. First couple of minutes of slow hunting in this wash yields, nothing. And then I start focusing on a bench that is maybe a foot higher than the rest of the wash… and I get a signal. A clear, still loud, but smooth signal. My heart jumps as I begin to dig. The dirt just fell away until 15-16” I hit gravel. By now the target was booming. I scrape the gavel back with my pick and I see a large piece of gold flip out! It replays in my mind over and over. Needless to say, you may have heard my scream at 2:15 in the morning (Arizona time). LOL. From there the gold kept coming. I got a couple more pieces farther up the wash and then came back and placered the area for a couple more little ones missed by depth. Wide range of sizes. THAT is why I love the GPZ. And it was nice to see my wifes face change to a smile when she felt the .86oz chunk fall into her hand. Priceless. All in all, my findings came to just over 1oz. Who needs sleep ... Andyy

Just got a metal detector would like to get out in the area and detect around. Although I have an idea where to go would be nice to have others to go with. I anyone in there area would like to go shoot me and email. I do live locally so when and where will never be and issue.

It looks like I may have to travel down to Casa Grande, AZ for a week at the end of the month to bring my Mom home to Canada and was wondering if there was anybody in the area that might be up for taking a Canadian prospecting tourist out for some dry washing or metal detecting? Thanks in advance. Shane

And You Thought Gold is Heavy? Wow Monster Pieces ? Enjoy! Ig

It’s been a lot of years since I last met Chris. At one time he was very visible in the prospecting world but I think family life caught up with him. Very nice to see him out and about again in this excellent video! Though I barely recognized his new furry look. Published on Feb 3, 2019 - “Come join me in the remote goldfields of Arizona as I revisit one my favorite old patches and pull off a few more gold nuggets with my metal detector.”

Sunday morning I had a chance to go out and prospect. What to do? Where to go? I'd go back to gold if I had found gold recently so I had to think about where I had found gold in the past. I left and on my way changed my mind at least 3 times and then I remembered a new place I had wanted to check out. It is in the middle of the Mojave and I would be there about sunrise after 3 hours of driving. Off I went to explore. What I found was very interesting but it was not going to be much for the detectors. I hunted around for a couple of hours and it was time to go to one of those places where I had found gold in the past. At the end of the day my best rewards were these pictures! It was still nice.

HNY from the Gem State" Enjoy! ? Cheers to All! Ig

Last Thursday night it was time for a Gold Basin trip. I knew I had a couple of days so off I went. The trip for me consists of leaving sometime in the middle of the night, driving 375 miles (6+hrs) and then beginning the hunt. I've done this many times since I first started going there in 2011. It is not an area where I've found a lot of gold but I've found some. Meteorites are also around but I didn't seek them this trip. When you go into gold basin there is always this sign. It is not the old Gold Basin road that is about 5 miles away but it makes for a good picture! These first couple of pictures were taken about 8 AM so I did pretty good with a couple of stops since I left at 1 AM. The hunt was on. I wanted to find something with the 6 inch Nox so I hunted with it for the morning and the afternoon. I'll save my details about that for another thread but I did manage to get a little .32g nugget with the Zed before the day was over. No skunk at least. My camping spot was near where I found the nugget. I slept in the 4Runner with all of the things outside. It was a great night without wind. This was the dawn the next morning looking out my bedroom window. After a bit more searching in this area it was time to explore and I ended up in a gully. You can get an idea of a partially dry washed and detected gully from these pictures. I didn't get any gold out of this stop but I did later. I called a friend and told him where I had been and what I had done and he suggested a place to go. It was very similar to the pictures (it all looks the same) but this time I was using the 7000! I heard a little mellow signal and dug down about 5 inches to bedrock and thought ... oh, no ... hot rock again but then the target moved and the bedrock stayed! In the scoop screaming ... a nice little .42g nugget! Two days, two nuggets for .75g total. This is better than I normally do in Gold Basin. The weather started closing in so it was time to go. It is better to stay longer there now because of the long drive but I was not going to stay in the rain. On the way out I had some visual treats. Mitchel

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/02/16/arizona-meteorite-fetches-record-breaking-237500-at-auction.html