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I recently detected an area close to some prospect holes, all of the usual finds, pieces of old tin cans, the broken end of a pick, shell casings, bullets, logging wire and finally a nugget. After finding the first nugget, I really slowed down and very carefully covered the area. The nuggets seemed to be in almost a straight line below a prospect hole. I thought I covered the line carefully, but returned for a second try and found one more piece, the one in the middle. Always detect around the rims of the holes and the adjacent areas.

What's Best, Cruising Or Crawling? My Last Day Gold. I decide it was time to slooooow down. I crawled over my old patch that I took 100 plus pieces out of last year, and found 3 more. I only work about a 10 foot square area. More to discover I hope. They weighed out to .63 grams. Not very big, but its better then nothing. I will be looking for mommy and daddy tomorrow!

Hi all, It’s been awhile since my last post, but I’ll be sharing some knowledge and anecdotes more often, now that my summer job is a thing of the past and I’m free to once again roam the desert southwest, wielding the power of the mighty Zed to unearth nature’s golden treasures. I was carefully gridding (or - in deference to Gerry in Idaho - crawling) an old nugget patch during a recent trip to the far flung reaches of Nevada’s golden triangle, when the hypnotic drone of the threshold was suddenly broken by a sharp, double “wee-ooh, wee-ooh”. This type of response typically heralds a small and shallow target, usually within six inches of the surface. “Most likely a boot tack or bird shot”, I thought to myself as I crouched down and scraped an inch or two of the dry and dusty desert soil away from the target zone with my pick. Another swing of the detector coil indicated that I had moved the target, and a quick sifting of the material with the hand scoop revealed a small yellow nugget...the first catch of the day! A few more of these shallow pickers were dug during the the next couple of hours, and then I heard a faint, single “wee-ooh”. Knowing that this meant a bit larger target at depth, I went to work hacking into the densely packed soil with my pick until...well, I’ll let this short video tell the rest of the story: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzmm1pgdrpaswe7/Nugget dig.mov?dl=0 The actual weight of the nugget turned out to be 5.6 grams, bringing the total for the day to over a quarter of an ounce of the good stuff!

Fred made a comment on one of my posts to Mitchel and I feel it needs more input from a variety of hunters and their styles. This is results from my last day at Rye Patch (last Saturday). My 5 days of hunting had me doing the hoping and looking for an indicator nugget...and I also snail crawled. Here are my results. The 2 days I want Prospecting and covering a lot of ground produced 1 nugget. The 3 days I snail crawled with 7000 produced 25 nuggets. In fact, my last day was spent in a very small area of approx. 20' x 30' and I found 12 pieces of gold. 10 of those were signals most others have missed and including myself a few times missing them, as I have detected that exact same piece of ground twice. I'm much more fortunate than most folks who hunt Rye Patch, NV as I've been doing it for 20+ years and I know the history of the old patches. Sometimes I go back to those old patches, pick a small section of ground and work the crap out of it. I especially like sites where I was pulling deep nuggets in years past, as I know those deepest pieces of heavy metal might only make a peep within a small 1 to 3" width. Don't ask me how or why, but overlapping at least 1/2 and sometimes 1/4 of coil size, per sweep with the 14" coil on the GPZ can produce. Lunk and I spent the last day crawling with our 7's and here is a photo of the results. Both of us and some other well known hunters have been in the wash before. The old saying it true "You can never get them all". I just want to make sure I get my share. How do you other Prospectors do it and what is your results when covering ground and snail crawling with a detector? I look forward to hearing everyone's comments. Nuggets on top of dime are Lunk's and the ones on bottom were found my myself on the last day.

Nice today so I headed out but the sun never did come over the mountain so I cut it short as my feeties got cold....lol Dredge piles gave up this cute little .800 gram noogie!!!!!! I managed 1 more bit and this specimen outta the same area yesterday and got skunked today......

I was running the 7000 hot as I could maxed no filters normal hi yield semi auto SP1 enhancer, this was a soft sweet signal that finally sounded like something other than surface trash down about 4” on a hillside just above a wash in what i latter learned is a heavily pounded old patch with little left to give. It came out in one piece looking rusty and worthy of tossing aside except it was not magnetic so I began scraping, chewing and bending. Yellow began to emerge and that’s when I should have slowed down except it looked more like pyrite to me so I kept working at it and I was surprised it only bent a little before breaking, looking at it now it appears spongy and that may be why it broke the way it did. I’m not actually 100% convinced yet that it’s gold seems like it could be perhaps mixed with something else? This would be the first piece in a new area for me and I’m unfamiliar with hmmm the gold there and host rock and well everything. I was finding a lot of lead and bullet fragments so it seems there should still be more although today only the one (now it’s 4) for me, if in fact it really is gold and not mostly pyrite or something. my scale is in Santa Clara so I don’t know the weight?

I just got back from Rye Patch, Nevada; found 14 small nuggets; 6.2 grams total. I found nuggets with all three of my X-Coils; 10” round bunch wound; 17” round spiral wound; and 17”x 12” elliptical spiral wound. I have attached a chart that is compiled from testing of the 10” round and the 17” round coils as compared to the Minelab GPZ 14 coil. The testing was accomplished in a Rye Patch gully by placing a two foot PVC pipe into a freshly dug hole. Gold nuggets of various sizes were lowered in a medicine bottle by a cloth measuring tape. This test was for my own relative comparisons; so those that want to critique the methodology feel free to do it another way. Two obvious depth improvements would be gained by increasing the Threshold setting and using headphones to listen for barely perceived target responses. After discussions with Lucky Lundy and Gerry McMullen I now have found a middle ground that works for me with the following settings; High Yield, Normal Freq. Auto, Sens 20, Volume 12 Threshold 1 to 27 depending on EMI noise level Tone 53, Vol Limit 12 Auto Smoothing Off, Ground Balance Auto, GS Off The 10” is very sensitive but noisy. When roaming across the desert it has me swinging back over false targets much of the time. But it works quite well to slow down and get into small openings between the sage brush and close to bedrock in narrow gullies. Some quick checks make me think that the 17”x 12” will have similar depth performance to the GPZ 14. But will cover three inches more ground on each swing. I will chart some depth comparisons when I get time to do some more testing. I use the 17” Spiral Wound Round coil when I want to cover a lot of desert. The extra inches in circumference with a little extra depth penetration over the GPZ 14 coil is an advantage. At this time I am retiring the Minelab GPZ 14 and the GPZ 19 coils. I have no connection to X coil, or to Davsgold except as a customer. X Coil and Davsgold have both been very responsive to my emails. Have a good day, Chet

I was able to get down to Rye Patch, NV and meet up with a few old friends, make a couple new ones and have some hard earned success. Those of you who drive around out there probably remember seeing the old piece of mining history (notice the bellows at the back lower end). Wonder how much gold went over that belt? Anyway, Here is some of my Success (the golden ones anyway) and a nice crystal. Total of 26 nuggets weighing just over 15 grams. Seeing old friends & making new ones is another big score for me and so the stories will continue... wish I would have taken a couple pics of them? Just another reason to meet again I guess.

A few pieces ive banged in, a lot of hard work as these are individual targets....

A few years ago i was camped out near the cemetary at decisions corners . I put my brand new 3000 together and drove past the GPAA camp towards Yarnell. I was looking at a bench i had decided to hunt.. Walked up the hill and started to hunt that bench area, I made exactly 2 sweeps and i got that tell tale tone Wee ooop that i knew from then on it probably was gold.. Dug a little and out popped a nice piece of gold..Well i hunted the area hard after that but it was the only gold around... No complaints was very happy with that..... I was a little newer in that photo....lol

Weather gorgeous yesterday so I grabbed the Monster and headed out. Teamed up with another and found 2 bits and gave him one because he dug the hole! thought my season was over but I guess it ain't over until it's really over....😉

Wandering aimlessly when i found this, what a surprise when it popped out of the dirt.. https://www.detectorprospector.com/magazine/steves-mining-journal/georges-gold-nugget-moore-creek-metal-detecting/

I managed to get away a couple of weeks back for five days to chase some gold. Headed north of Kalgoorlie Western Australia to a spot I've been to before but could only manage a couple of little ones and a specie that was on the surface. Oh and 22 cents! Despite the good stuff being scarce it was great to get out bush. The two nuggets come in at just over a gram, all found with a GPZ 7000.

A while back i was hunting a bench area in the 40 Mile that a miner friend had given me permisson to detect.. I was checking a cleaned bedrock area and over a gravel filled crack i heard a nice tone...Several dwt pieces were cleaned out and at the bottom was this 1.5oz slug... yikes time for the gold shuffle for sure....

Pretty much done for this year. We've had snow twice already and it's hitting the teens at night. Last season I got 106 bits for just under an ounce and this year I only detected 40 bits for just over an ounce so an improvement over my 1st season! 18 bits from Montana and 22 bits from Idaho. FULL DISCLOSURE: 1 gram of the tiniest bits came from crack scratching/panning in the creek. I had fun and met some locals from Helena area (BIG help) and that helped me stumble onto the two bigger pieces (25g/4.5g) that saved my season. As long as I can improve weight at the end of season over the last I've reached the main goal. good luck guys......

This summer i had a chance to camp and hunt for a day, and i had some luck when i turned up this little slab just hanging out in a small depression in the bedrock. .6gram

Bedrock Gold. Jeff and Gary ( Two Toes ) take you on an Adventure to find Bedrock Crevices filled with Placer Gold in the California Motherlode. Watch as Gary pulls out Gold Nuggets from the Bedrock and Jeff trys a little Sniping for Gold.

Had an outing with a good friend to a Local creek yesterday. We dug a huge hole and moved some big boulders and found the 1.3g right at the start of the process. Diligent detecting elsewhere in the creek produced the other two. The 1.7g was right at the start of a crevice that seems to run under a virgin bank... Might dig that out some time but there are some fridge size boulders in the way. Cheers for the fun day out buddy.

As I'm struggling through the Equinox 800 learning curve, I'm beginning to realize it's potential for deeper gold. Both the two inch quartz specimen and the one gram piece were down about eight inches. The one gram nugget was pretty loud, but so was the specimen with only about a tenth or less of a gram. Unlike the Gold Bug 2's perfect signal, the noise and the numbers coming out of the 800 are really hard to interpret. I guess it is going to be practice, practice, practice. Rattlesnakes are still out in Oregon and I'm sure most other places as well-so be aware. Gary

Dealing with some family issues me, my wife and a group of friends finally made a trip to the central Colorado mountain’s to search for gold specimens on tailing piles that have been productive in the past. Part of the group this was their first time using a detector searching for gold specimens. After a brief overview of the history and different areas to search, we spent some time setting up the different types of detectors to achieve the best results. We then took off in different directions with some partnering up with others for additional instruction. It didn’t take long for the 10,000+ foot altitude to begin taking its toll and the steep terrain limiting the area they wish to search as everyone was cautious for their well-being while detecting. The group detected for three days and four specimens were found. Here are a few pics showing the wire and leaf gold specimens as found and then cleaned: Close up of the largest gold specimens: Couple of us detecting on the tailing piles:

Hi guys. Been really sick, still am kind of, recovered about 50%. But came back and saw some notifications. Two can't find. But, I reckon before I got sick I shot off at a member here and may have got it wrong. So, you know who you are and no hard feelings mate, my bad this time. To the Boss, Steve, same, my bad. Still not right though, real bad virus. Haven't felt like this in over 20 yrs. Got fed up of laying around coughing, sweating, nausea so got out. Felt great, kind of, short sessions though and glad to get home. But small wins regardless. 1st pic at the head of a deep lead in the very very last throw outs going up a mountainside. 2nd total virgin ground, very scattered, no rhyme or reason, been there before and it's like "toss a coin" direction you go.

Found this little guy on my second hunt with the nox. Just barely registers at .01g on the scale. It rang clear at 2 inches deep. I'm hunting in trashy hydraulic pits that have been hit hard with PI's and VLF's but I think I'm the first equinox user. I never thought I could remain sane hunting these areas but this machine changes everything. Only iron I dug was the old burro shoe.......pretty cool!! Im in gold 2, sensitivity 18-20 the rest all stock settings. Thanks

River Detecting for Gold Nuggets - See who gets the Biggest Nugget. Gold Prospector's Jeff ( Smithsgold ) and Gary ( Two Toes ) Head to the Hills in search of rare Gold Nuggets. Watch and see who gets the most Gold and the Biggest Nugget. SG 010

Finally had a good sized nugg turn up for me. Hunted Fri. and Sat. over near Helena and drug up 8 pieces but I lost one little dink so only 7 in totals pic. Definitely did the happy dance and still can't believe I finally stumbled onto a big one!!!! Enjoy!