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Part of being a detector dealer full time, it's hard to walk away from the shop, as it's usually not profitable. But after Christmas, my sales sometimes slow down, so South I try to go. As soon as I made plans, then everyone gets a $600 stimulus check and of course I missed out on a few sales. Heck, I can't win a break. Anyway, the trip was a go and the flight down was easy (other than wearing a mask the entire time). Well it isn't a monster, but when you go to a site Lunk has detected, you usually get the Big-O. I'm quite pleased with this little .6 gram gold for my 1st of 2021. Great weather (so much better than Idaho), fantastic friends/food and of course a few treasures were brought home. What has been your 1st gold find from 2021. Would enjoy seeing some shiny stuff in the sun while I'm back in the shop in Idaho.

What better way to ring in the new year than going nugget shooting in the sunny desert southwest. 😎 In my wanderings through an area heavily worked by the old-time placer miners, I spied an old raked and drywashed nugget patch on a hillside that sloped down to a gravel bench deposit high above the dry creek bed. Back in the VLF gold detector era, the surface rocks were raked away in order to get the detector coil right on the ground, to make up for their limited depth capabilities. Detecting these types of environments with the newer PI and ZVT tech can reveal deeper nuggets that were beyond the reach of VLF detector operators. Slow and methodical coverage of the old patch with the GPZ 7000 yielded two small nuggets for the poke today.

Because I'm a nice bloke and deserve it 😀 Down about 2 feet and not getting anymore signals so not sure if I'll pursue it any further. Was hoping it would balloon out down lower. https://i.imgur.com/kI57fDH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/tQndDrd.jpg Will update when it's all crushed and I know what I have, was hoping it would be substantial but probably only a couple of ounces.

These are from CA, found several years ago on an isolated high bench. There were nuggets everywhere, despite having been detected by others who didn't know their machines or were swinging too fast. My detecting partner found 3 with his GP Extreme. Found with a GPX 4000 and 17" elliptical NF coil. The nuggets are 4.8 grams total, the speci is 5.6 grams:

Condor took my brother and I out for a hunt in what was a new area for us two to detect and let me tell you it was some of the toughest walking I have done in quite awhile , it did put the hurt on myself and Steve my brother not so much but he is part mountain goat anyway. The good part was everyone found some gold Steve got one, i got one and my brother a couple pieces the gold seems to be very spotty in this area and very thin with a quartz matrix also stained with what seems to be manganese . Here are the pieces my brother and I found.All gold was found using GPZ 7000s.

I was able to get out for several hours to an old patch that has been hammered to death, is near power lines and has seen lots of shooting with lead, bullet jackets and fired casings everywhere. Found with the 7000 in Bogene mode. I was concerned about depth in this mode, but one of the pistol cartridge cases was a solid 24" down in sandy soil and was a delicate but obvious signal. My first pieces with the 7000! Total weight of 1.1 grams: It is simply amazing to me how sensitive the 7000 is to tiny lead BBs and bullet shards:

Very short but very productive year for me, seeing as I only got to prospect from Oct. - Dec. and only about 8 days during those months. I'll post a few more photos later of my 2020 finds. But enjoy this semi drawn out nugget discovery to recovery 😂

Hi my name is Travis. I am new to the site. Here are a few gold specimens I have found in Idaho.

This thread is a place were I can share and continually update pictures of any of my current gold finds, kind of like a gold diary of sorts. Sometimes I’ll include narrative other times it will be just pictures of what I found for the day. I get out detecting regularly and I use a lot of different equipment some of which is not open for discussion. This thread is NOT about equipment but about the gold I find as I find it. I will try to include pictures of the terrain so people can visualise what the areas look like where I‘m detecting. I would prefer if others do not post up pictures to this thread but ALL DP members are more than welcome to comment and ask questions about detecting related subjects, especially about targeting locations and mind sets and approach. It’s OK to relate to a post and talk about your own experiences, in fact I insist on it. That’s the whole point of a gold thread, to share my daily gold finds and talk with like minded people about how much fun it is to find gold. The Last couple of days detecting things have been a little slow as I revisit old haunts not visited for years. I’m targeting areas associated with old gold finds looking for indications of other nearby locations that are conducive to nuggets being present. The signs I’m looking for are gravels that are exposed at the surface, especially with pieces of ironstone in the mix, then working off the edges into the soil covered zones. Clermont does not have channeled gravels that were originally associated with creeks and rivers but instead has deltas of wash that spread away from the source becoming water worn in the process, this means you can have quiet large areas of deco clays with very little gravels then hit an area the size of a kitchen with good wash that contains gold, sometimes it can be associated with a weathered down localised quartz reef which has acted as a trap for mobile gravels or it will be made up entirely of gravelly wash that has moved on-mass and delta’d out in a fan shape. The trick is to find these areas hidden amongst the tree cover and fine surface soils that hide them. Quite often you will head downslope following the gold then hit a blank of deco that goes for 30 meters then the gravels will start up again. The trick is to try and push the boundaries until either a major drainage gobbles up the contents of the slope or the ground becomes barren. The hard part is to try and decide if the surface soils are laying over gold gravel or just deco with nothing underneath. JP Pics are of the last couple of days in two different locations. Day two

I was sent this coil for free to use and keep by the manufacturer many months ago with no expectations of reviews or anything else, and I had intended many times to test it in Nevada for my own personal use, but work kept delaying me and I never made it. But I was able to finally get free from work and give it a solid 12 hours of run time over 2 days in Arizona since it's winter now. Soils are mild, few hotrocks (more on that in a moment). 40-50F degrees out. Mostly shallow, rocky washes or hilltops I've pounded with the stock and 17" X Coil (as well as a 4500). I consider these spots flogged and dead for my purposes, and so great places to see if new products can find missed gold. My observations were as follows: This coil (as expected with a smaller coil) was noticeably quieter than the 17" coil and the stock coil. I was able to bump my threshold up 8-10 points and still had about the same threshold chatter as I did with the 17" coil. I usually run 18 sensitivity here because I like a very stable threshold and EMI can be an issue, but I bumped up to 20 sensitivity with no problem. The coil ground balanced ok and I ran in auto which seemed to work fine. This coil loves hotrocks, as would be expected when you are running a smaller, more sensitive coil. I was finding hotrocks deep, shallow, and in places I considered more or less hotrock free in the past. Conversely, I hope it will do well in salt, which I hope to test this summer in Nevada. This coil is bump sensitive This coil is sensitive to a lot of vegetation, particularly sticks/twigs and grasses. I'm unsure if it's detecting them or bumping them. This coil screams on tiny nuggets just out of range of the stock coil. It gives decent signal on edge of detection, tiny nuggets that I missed with the 17" coil. The light weight made me very much more prone to lift up and detect side walls, benches, and pick up and poke/prod into just about any place I encountered, from beginning of day to end. The weight didn't fatigue my arm after a half day of swinging, 5 or 6 hours. Much of that time was without a bungee. This coil eminates a faint, very high pitched squeel or buzz if you get your ear close to it Overall, detecting with the GPZ feels a lot more pleasurable and less like fighting your equipment with a coil of this size and weight. I've mentioned it in prior posts, but take my word from experience now - it's not the weight of the GPZ that causes problems, it's the coil. And this 8" coil is almost the perfect weight to counterbalance the GPZ with the shaft fully extended - ie, this is the coil weight the GPZ should have been designed for. I'll take another pound on the control box no problem, but add 100 or 200 grams onto the coil end, that causes fatigue. Swinging the GPZ with this coil (or any coil of this weight) is a pleasure and not oppressive. The bump sensitivity I'm guessing is a relic of trying to cram so much wire into a tiny space that might not be meant for it, as I get the feeling that this coil is pressing the limits of how small a Super D can be built. But it does mean that I have to slow down and really concentrate on not hitting rocks or vegetation, which ends up being ok because this is a cleanup coil where I am going slow anyways. I expected to find a handful of faint, edge of detection signals I had missed with my other coils. But other than a couple nuggets, almost all the signals were bright, some even loud, and all pretty obvious. Even right out in the middle of the wash. This coil hits hard on tiny stuff. I haven't compared it to the GB2 or Gold Monster, but I found stuff down to 0.06-0.07 grams and they were all great signals. Pinpointing these tiny targets with the coil edge can be difficult as the center of the coil is more sensitive. And they are too tiny to register on my pinpointer, especially the porous and not flaky ones. And that is why I think I missed all the nuggets originally which I later found with the 8" - its a lot easier to get the center of the coil over more of the potential ground, especially with obstructions in the way. In the end, I didn't find a lot of missed nuggets in nooks and crannies, most of them were simply next to a rock or other obstruction like a bush which I was able to get the center of the 8" much closer to. Overall this seems like a good coil for working steep areas (Colorado comes to mind), surface patches, tight washes, and banks/vertical surfaces. The bump sensitivity is the only real major downside, so a slow and controlled swing is important with this coil I think. If NF doesn't end up releasing some critical sizes of coils and new detector releases make the GPZ cheaper (and less risky to make an adapter) then serious detectorists may want to give X Coils another thought. Because right now I can't help but feel like with these coils I am running a new detector that no one else has access to in a way, and I'm somewhat surprised more hard detectorists/enthusiasts haven't availed themselves of this opportunity. But, in the same respect I'm happy, because my time is slim and I haven't had a chance to put them over a lot of places I know others would have flogged to death already. My favorite coil by far is still the 17", but if this 8" (and the 10") perform well in NNV then I may change my mind on that. Here are the nuggets I found (weights are estimated) and my recollection of why I thought I missed them originally with all my other equipment but then found them with the 8" X Coil: Test Wash 1, less than 0.1 gram, too deep for other coils Test Wash 1, 0.08 grams, next to a rock and slightly into wash bank Test Wash 1, 0.12 grams, from a boot scrape and I had given up finding this with the 17" for some reason Test Wash 1, 1+ gram, next to a rock and oriented vertically in a bedrock crack, not sure why I didn't hear this on at least 6 or 7 previous passes since it's right in the wash, but it didn't produce a diggable signal with other coils/machines Test Wash 1, .2 grams, in a little ring of rocks, was only a few inches deep though Test Wash 1, .15 grams, too deep/edge of detection, or too close to rocks Test Wash 1, 0.12 grams, no idea, great signal and should have found before Test Wash 1, 0.15 grams, in side of bank, arm was probably always too tired to raise the coil up there Test Wash 2, 0.12 grams, no idea why it was missed before, right in middle of wash Test Wash 2, 0.3 grams, 2ft up wash side Bench patch, 0.3 grams, next to cactus, too deep/edge of detection? Bench patch, 0.08 grams, too deep/edge of detection Bench patch, 0.06 grams, edge of detection That was all of them. Smallest was 0.06 grams and very porous and almost on surface, largest was like 1.1 grams but I forget the exact weight. All total was a little over 4 grams out of severely beat up washes and a patch. Not much, but it did pay for my gas down here at least. I think once stuff gets below 0.15 grams, it's not really worth my time to chase on general principal. But when you need to grind out some finds for gas, food, whatever, and if you have a lot of patches that produced more than 5 or 6 stray nuggets, then this little guy can probably pop up a few more when you really need them.

Hello Everyone, First, wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New year, it's less than a week away. I haven't been out much, nor doing any videos. I figured I probably need to toss something on my YouTube Channel before I lost all my Subscribers.... LOL This spot a friend and I have been working on and off for over a year. It's a dry wash bottom and we are placering it. We are removing the large boulders and gravel and trying to work the bedrock for nuggets. In some spots we have attempted to vacuum up the gravels on bedrock and dry wash them, but to be honest the results were not hot. Sometimes when you're into large gold nuggets, you don't have a ton of fine gold. I'm not honestly sure if it was to do with the particular mining district and geology, but over the years we never found a lot of fine gold or small flakes/pickers to make it worth all the effort of Dry washing. It's seems more productive for the time we have to work it, to just expose as much bedrock as possible and metal detect it very well. We normally use the GPZ 7000 or GPX 5000 as the primary detectors to cover the bedrock, but will pass back over the same areas much slower with the Minelab Gold Monster 1000. That being said, we normally don't miss much, as the small gold is just not there and the Gold Monster really don't clean up much. Well enough of the chit chat, here is the video. Hope you enjoy, if so, Subscribe to our YouTube Channel after watching to follow us. P.S. Nugget ended up being just shy of 1/4 ounce. Very dense, sluggy nugget gold is this area.

Hope this is a good xmas for all of you

Chime in w/ Your deepest depth target and what detector and coil, and what the target turned out to be! Enjoy this "Mega Dig" w/ Big Payoff at the end of part2! Happy Holidays" from a balmy warm 33f Idaho . 😆 Ig

The article describes one 25-year-old fisherman catching sight of something gold in the sand, which turned out to be a medallion. He let his father-in-law know, and soon a number of the town’s residents were engaged in the search, which began in September. https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/history/mysterious-gold-washes-ashore-in-venezuelan-fishing-town-guaca If you have a New York Times subscription you can read a more complete article.

.78 gram yesterday and 14.92 grams today .

These were all the good targets for my brother and myself the first tens days out this december. All GPZ 7000 finds.

Hello! I’d like to hear from some folks experienced with the GPX detector sounds. There is a lot of talk out there of how much quieter these model detectors are over their predecessors, but I am not so sure. I have found that hot rocks my old detector would scream on are ignored, though as for noise, there is a lot of it. I’ll do my best to describe what I hear in a relatable way, a bit deeper than the general listening to little harmonicas in the headphones. To begin, I can absolutely discern a nugget response. I am lucky enough at this point to have found nuggets every day detecting with this detector since I’ve owned it. But questions, they have arose and I hope that by sharing my curiosity and (hopefully) receiving feedback, I may learn to use this machine more effectively and shine more light into the world for other GPX operators. I thoroughly believe the ground I have been hunting is quite hot, maybe even on the severe side. I have not been able to run my detector very quietly at all. Don’t be too harsh on me for saying this, but I have not tried running it in Sens Ex yet. Fine Gold is finding me nuggets fairly easily with a Gain of about 8, Stab about 10, Tracking fast, and Motion medium. I tried out Enhance once and it didn’t seem to make a difference, so I stuck with what’s been finding me nuggets (3 trips-14 nuggets). The noises, I’m looking for some confirmation or identification if you can deduce my rough descriptions. First I suppose I will start with the threshold. This sound I believe is very obvious to pick out, to identify it I simply adjust the threshold up until it’s loud and obvious, then I turn it down until it’s hidden and then back up until it’s quiet yet something I’m able to focus on. Now sometimes this very faint drone will go blank for moments, but so far I have not found an instance of it being repeatable. What’s happening? Other times it seems like some sort of audio boost kicks in without any changes in volume or pitch, almost like just another layer of the same sound is being superimposed over the threshold and noise, also no instances yet of repeatability. What’s this? Second, I’ll ask about ground noise/ground balance. I seem to be getting quite a bit of noise from the detector which I am assuming is, the infamous ground noise. I’d describe this noise as a chatter and all the likes of little burps and chirps that are not repeatable. Now I assume I could quiet all this down via settings, but again, I’m finding nuggets so I’m willing to endure for now even with the awareness I may be missing nuggets at the same time. But I think my big curiosity with this is the fact that sometimes it seems like I can’t ground balance. I even am careful to gb over multiple spots in case I was trying to gb over a target, but it just won’t smooth out. Though it seems to smooth out once I start going even though it wouldn’t during gb. Is this common at any level? I made a sorry attempt at a specific balance once, but I was finding nuggets still, so I haven’t really been diligent about pulling off a good Sgb. Now my last noise question is about EMI. I can identify when I’m getting false bump and vegetation signals, but what I’m thinking of as EMI can be really bothersome and seemingly malicious! Is EMI the totally false booming signals that sound like a target but are not repeatable and also don’t really match up with my sweep speed? I’ve tried playing with some manual adjustment after doing a tune, because sometimes this noise that I’m thinking is EMI is so bad that I’ll do an auto tune every five minutes or so. I wouldn’t really think the area I was in would have so much EMI. Maybe the Sun has been a bit more excited lately??? I know I’ve just asked a lot and I have even more questions than this, but if anybody would be willing to even partially help out. I’d be very grateful. I’m very interested in the way that the GPX settings work and what’s actually going on even deeper than what’s described in the manual. So if there is any literature out there with some more depth into this machine, I’m asking to be guided. I absolutely love the GPX and I want to get a couple aftermarket coils for it now that I’ve seen how it is with the stock coils and reading about how much more of a performance boost some of the coils out there can give it. Thank you!!!

Nice Couple" Good Times! Good Gold! 😆 Enjoy" Ig

Exciting Dig!😆Cheers from 16f Idaho! Ig

Most of you are aware of gold being found with detectors in NV, CA, AZ, AK and even OR or WA on occasion. But the majority (including many who live here in this geological wonder of a state) do not know much about or detect for the elusive Au in Idaho. So I've decided to share a Holiday Special with you, as it is Golden as glee can be. This little glimmer of Au comes in on my postal shipping scale at 1 pound 5.7 ounces = approx 22 oz which is then turned (if my math is correct) to 20 ozt. I did not get a specific gravity test done, but can assure you this astonishing mosaic is about 97% Au. History of this discovery. I'll not provide the name of the finder or site for security purposes. It was found with the Eureka Gold and I know many good pockets of wire gold came from the area. it was unearthed at a location already mined and was missed by the old timers. It is one of the biggest pieces of Idaho gold I myself has ever seen, but I have heard of larger pieces coming from the area. To put a twist on it and to add some beauty to this post, I'd love seeing some of your Idaho Au diggings. No worries about size, value or other as I would (and I am sure many others) enjoy seeing some more Idaho gold.

Do any of you geeolodgik jeanyussez have a good theory for the formation of these nuggets? They were all found within about 50' of each other using an excavator and a7000.

I finished my 2020 Field Training of customers a couple weeks ago at Rye Patch and was able to run the 7000 without interruption for 6 days. My best day was 12 nuggets but I also have to admit that on 2 days, I was skunked (the 2 days I was swinging new ground looking for a patch. ). Almost all the gold were whisper signals most folks are not good at and in a particular wash near the burn barrel, I pulled 7 in a day. I even called over some customers who were hanging around to let them listen, watch and learn. It just amazes me this detector can pick up nuggets at 14 to 18" deep and they are less than 2 grams. Now I would never expect these kind of results in the Spring though so make sure you know your ground and timings. I was able to also watch Lunk dig his 1 ouncer and it blew me silly how it had been missed by the older machines. Anyway, we had a great trip, fabulous customers/camaraderie, some delicious meals (Thanks Chef Rusty) and good gold. I'm starting to see a pattern when training though. The lady customers seem to pay more attention and their proper coil control gets them more gold.

I always look forward to the winter months when I can freely swing the mighty Zed in the vast stretches of the desert southwest, uninhibited by the dense vegetation I typically have to deal with in the forested regions of Idaho. Searching new areas for a nugget patch is never easy, and long, fruitless days can really test your stamina and forbearance. Thankfully, the odd scattered nugget encountered here and there can spur one on to continue the magnificent quest. Such have been my days of late, patiently covering ground with the large GPZ 19 coil and anticipating that sweet sound of gold. Having been awhile since using it, I had forgotten how extremely sensitive the 19-inch coil is; pictured below are two recent sub-gram finds. The small one weighs a mere 0.12 of a gram, and the larger, thin bit, 0.18: As beautiful as it is, the desert presents a daunting and endless expanse of landscapes to explore in search of the elusive yellow metal: Of course, researching productive sites and following the geologic clues as well as old workings left behind by the prospectors of days gone by, like these coarse dryblower piles, can narrow down the search area: Discovering a new nugget patch is the holy grail that every nugget shooter dreams about, and though few and far between, they are still out there. So persevere and always keep in mind these words from one of the greats: “Put the sound to the ground and leave tracks all around, because that's the way gold gets found!” A small, undiscovered patch of nuggets I stumbled upon in the Nevada desert last spring:

While trying to keen up my record before I upgrade my computer, found this old receipt of refined gold (Panned Gold) that I cashed in to get a new Whites VLF detector. There was a bit short of 3 oz I am happy that I did not cash in any nuggets back then. The purity was as close as you can get to 92% when cleaned 91 grams but AUD $16.12 a gram was good but now it is AUD $82.36 but the price of a top detector has risen high than the gold price. PJ Williams Precious Metals.pdf

First off, hello all! Great reads here, and a big thanks to Steve for all of the generous work put in for the lay-detectorists. I have gold fever. I’ve had it since I first dug up my own gold in 2013 and I’ve learned that it never goes away. It just gets worse as it sinks it’s claws deeper into its poor host. My summer job this year really hasn’t left me much free time for prospecting. Mostly a very brief opportunity to pan some gravel in the Feather River for flood gold. Much of the time for prospecting it has actually allowed me has been in the form of Google Earth prospecting the reminiscent values found in old patches and pure fantasy of what’s left to be found elsewhere. All of this imagination mixed with the ungodly lack of personal time has really flared my case of gold fever to a boiling point... no, something more closely resembling a nuclear reactor nearing criticality... yes. But, ah! Finally! After 3 months of work with only 10 days at home to take care of personal matters, another 2 days off without the chance of being bothered. An opportunity to go prospecting! In all the time I’ve had locked inside of my own head with my thoughts and stupendous ideas. There was one idea I had been diligently working to manifest into reality; I was going to use a mountain bike to subtract the amount of physical exertion it normally takes me to hike in and out of an old, arduously located patch! Well, my imagination is quite the steadfast optimist! And it kept being so, no matter how hard each and every contour line of this rugged desert terrain attempted to beat it into accepting the reality of the situation. Until finally, I submitted. My idea did not work. It was not smart, to try riding a mountain bike for my first time on the equivalent of an advanced, single track, rocky bike trail, with a backpack full of sustenance, plus a detector on my back. I had travelled 2 miles from where I parked and ridden the bike for maybe 500 feet... That translates to pushing the bike along in front of me with its front tire in the air for over 10,000 feet, not to mention the elevation gain involved! It was 8 o’clock in the morning, and I looked like I just got out of the shower fully clothed in Georgia during an August heat wave at 3 in the afternoon! Without shame, I laid the bike on its side next to the trail and proceeded on foot without looking back. I dried off quickly and was pleasantly relieved at how much easier it was to just hike after the whole bike ordeal. Eventually I made it to the old patch, where I had another plan thought up to explore the ground conditions for some future drywashing. This plan however was much safer, much less chance of failure. And I pulled it off without a hitch! It simply involved digging up a 5x5 foot area to see how deep the residual deposit laying over the area was. Of course more future exploration is planned, the purpose of today was just to have little teaspoon of medication for my fever. But I didn’t bring that detector for nothing!!! After dreaming of nuggets all summer, you bet I was gonna listen to what the dirt had to say today! I threw my old SD together with my trusty stock 11” DD and in two minutes I had a beautifully screaming target that stayed faithful after scraping away the surface. I couldn’t believe it happened so quickly! Soon I was looking at my first nugget after a 2 year skunk streak. A beautiful little half grammer! In another 20 minutes I found its little sister about 20 feet side slope to the left at a quarter gram. After exploring another one of my ideas without anything to show for it, I decided my day had been good enough and I’d head home and continue enjoying my short amount of time off. Plus I still had to push that dang failed plan from earlier back as far as I had pushed it in... but now with a Whopping .75 grams of extra weight of gold in my pocket