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If does help to have a bulldozer and jackhammer also! Published on Oct 6, 2014 - Yes, over his 35+ year prospecting career Matt has found more than his body weight in gold nuggets. Garrett ATX Information Page

Well with the Thanksgiving Holiday we just had, I was able to jump in the truck for a quick over-nighter to try out the 15" coil on the NOX. Now for those of you who know me, I spent most of the summer/fall testing the new Whites 24K in Oregon and Idaho (with great success) so I did not get to hunt gold this year with the NOX. Actually this was my 1st trip using it for gold nuggets and since my friends had already hunted the site with their NOX and standard 11" round DD coils, I figured there is no use in doing the same thing over. My intuition paid off and to say it bluntly was an understatement. My 1st gold piece (not jewelry as I have found ounces of gold rings so far with NOX) is a dandy. 2.78 ozt or over 3 regular ounce "Golden Oreo" at 16-18" deep. This is by far my biggest Oreo of 2018. The photos show the 15" coil standing upright in the hole and the sun is coming down at an angle and barley shining on the top of the coil. You can see the back of the rock pile is higher than the coil itself. Another factor is I found out the 15" coil is very bump sensitive to rocks so I had to swing it a couple inches off the ground. I typically do not recommend this to my customers and say to keep the coil to the soil, but at times it can't be done. Yes I did drop my SENS down and preferred 19 most of the time. Do you think "Golden Oreo" is a good name and if you have something better, please share it as this masterprice needs its own name. On a side note. When swinging the 15" coil on the NOX for 8 hour days in rough terrain, you need a bungee and I really do like and recommend Docs Ultra Swingy Thingy Harness System. I actually use it with my GPZ 7000 as. Another great thing I like about the harness is it actually clips to the back of my pants to hold them up better and my plumbers crack does not get burnt as often.

I haven`t been posting any finds recently because, well, I haven`t been finding much. I`ve been spending a fair bit of time in a area where years ago multi ounce nuggets were common, but most days I come home empty handed. Today I got one of those "is that a signal or isn`t it?" targets. I run very conservative settings now and because the detector runs so quiet I dig a lot more ground noise than I used too, I thought this was another one. It was just the tiniest change in the threshold. When I was down about 4" it was giving off that lovely electronic warbly signal I like and somewhere down about the 8 or nine inch mark this little speci popped out.

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/two-nuggets-are-better-than-one-prospector-s-dual-delight-in-wa-outback-20181121-p50hi3.html ........Link........

I'll take one or the other ... thank you. ? https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/two-nuggets-are-better-than-one-prospector-s-dual-delight-in-wa-outback-20181121-p50hi3.html

Hi folks, I got out with the GPZ for some gold hunting. It has been almost a year since I used it...glad to say it still works. Dick W and Mike G were kind to invite me to their claim...I found four little bits For point 89 of a Gram...about 1/2 a pennyweight

I got out for a few hours this morning with the Z hooked up to the sPo1 enhancer wired to the WM12 for wireless operation. I spent the first part of the morning rolling big chunks of granite that were giving off faint positive tones hoping that one of the tones would continue once the rock was moved. I was having no luck other than shards of lead bullets. I stepped up on a bench section of an old desert wash and saw that someone had dug a Z coil sized hole about 4 inches down. I waved over the hole and got a faint positive tone, not much different than the 30 or so I had experienced from the granite rocks on the way down the wash. I hit a couple big chunks of granite with the pick and pulled them out of the way. The faint tone was still there, but seemed very broad and not well defined. I dug down another 4 or 5 inches and waved the coil over the hole, still a faint, broad tone not much improved. Thinking it was more hot granite I switched to Difficult. Nothing, not a peep. I was about to give it up as another hot rock but decided to dig a few more inches. Now I'm down 8 or 9 inches and the tone improves in volume, but still seems overly broad. I dug down another 4 or 5 inches and the tone is really crazy. No clear location and it started sounding like crumpled foil with a choppy broken tone. Now I have to widen the hole and go down another few inches. The Z tone is really crazy so I switch to Difficult. Even Difficult is catching the tone now, but it's sounding like a piece of wire. I'm pretty sure I'm down past the trash level and start scooping out the hole with my plastic scoop. As I'm scooping it out I see a layer of rusty red, crumbling clay rock. This stuff is fairly common down here and it's hot enough to really gives the Z machine fits. I get out the pinpointer and stick it down in the hole. The pinpointer goes crazy over the entire hole. I scoop out some of the red stuff and wave the pinpointer over it. It goes crazy, so I wave the scoop over the Z coil, it reacts but not overly so. I'm about to give up for the 3rd time, but I decided to dig out all the red stuff and take some home to pan out. I've had trouble with the Z over this red stuff in the past, but never this deep and Difficult usually cleans it up. Now I'm digging in earnest and using my pocket knife to carve this stuff out of the wall of the hole. I get another scoop of it and wave it over the coil, nothing this time. I am baffled so I stick the Z back down there and bam this thing is sounding like a fist sized chunk of foil. I take the Sens all the way down to 1 and stick it back in the hole, still banging like a gong. I get the scoop and start scraping everything else out down to this red clay layer. I'm piling it away from the hole to try and separate the sounds. As I pick up the Z to check the hole again, it sounds off over the pile. I got you this time you little bugger. I"m thinking it must be a 1/2 oz craggy specimen, see for yourself. I measured the hole off on the handle of my pick. Right at 19.5 inches deep. That's not including the 4 inches the first guy dug and left it thinking it was a hot rock. That's awfully deep for 2.4 grams, even for the Z machine. I'm thinking that hot red clay somehow magnified and distorted the signal. I've dug plenty of deep gold with this machine, but nothing like that. I'd like to say the steelPHASE enhancer did the trick, but that would probably be a stretch. This was just an oddball situation with a crazy sounding nugget. I did recheck the hole and my piles, there was still some reactivity in some of that crumbling red stuff, but not enough to convince me it was golden. I was running the Z machine in HY/Normal/ Sens 16/0 Threshold/Low Smoothing. Beatup- This is the same washes your brother favors past the power lines at Sugarloaf peak. I wonder if he missed this one.

Whats wrong with this gold photo? Answers please...

???????Go ShaneOz! Tops to Ya" Enjoy! Ig

From https://www.facebook.com/Garrettmetaldetectorsusa/ Garrett ATX Information Page

Hi all just like to share a pic of my hunt over the Melbourne Cup long week end. All found with the 7000. Hope everyone is getting yellow.

Snow trying to stick down low and drove thru snow to the gold fields a couple days ago so days are numbered!!!!! Might be able to get in 1-2 more days depending? Here's my total nuggs for my 1st year chasing with a detector. I'm happy with results and thank ALL on here who helped me general info and "secret" info (lol)...they know who they are. The New Zealand boys post up great info and I think we all appreciate the scenic so I thought I'd sprinkle in some scenic for them so they can see my area in particular which is typical in many areas of the western U.S. All the nuggs were got with the Gold Monster in 2 locations in Idaho and 2 in Montana. Sluiced gold came from Montana claim from 2 trips mid winter in butthole deep snow (FS don't allow sluicing in river but they ain't up there mid winter...lol). My other hobby is chasing predators with trail cams so I sprinkled in a couple to show you guys, and the New Zealand boys what you could see at any time out in the western states. Hope you guys enjoy the pics...... Weight wise...this was my best day below

For those that don’t follow me on Facebook this is the end result of 3-days behind my GPZ at Rye Patch. Robin and I, just got home from a big group hunt at Rye Patch and a few days later one of my partners said, he was heading back up. I already had three other buddies there that didn’t make it to the outing and his call got me off the fence to pack my truck up with my gear. Surprised my new Super Ice Chest still had some ice in it too! If you followed my last posting we all had a great trip, but the wind was doing what wind does...keeps nuggets out of your poke. It creates all kinds of noise to fight to hear a faint signal or tones while metal detecting. I knew we left nuggets behind on this hot little patch. Not a puff of wind and the area produced like I was hoping. We took advantage of the warm calm Autumn Desert on a handful of other old huants and if you listened close, you could hear the whispers and cheers of times past while adding to the poke of memories of the present! Leave no nugget behind...I always leave them behind, it’s what keeps me motivated to come back! 5 of us added nuggets and good times to our pokes. Below is my harvest (keeping it in season) of the Great Pumkin Patches of Rye Patch! LuckyLundy

Tom(CA) and I have been working a site that we researched that's produced several 1850's - 1860's seated coins, and some rogue early 1900's coins, as well as a variety of period relics. We tried to get one more trip in before Old Man Winter completely shut us down, and it did in fact shut us down, but not before I finally, got something I've been looking for for a long time, and after watching others find them over the years (I saw Tom dig three!!!), I was starting to think it would never happen. Well it finally happened, and it turned out to be a good one, an 1865 San Francisco minted Liberty Half Eagle!! Here she is out of the hole: Here she is rinsed off: Here's a video of the hunt: Less than 100 known, Mintage: 27,612 Although the mintage of the 1865-S is quite a bit higher than the mintages of the S Mint Half Eagles from 1858 to 1864, it compares in overall rarity to the 1858-S, 1860-S and 1863-S and is only slightly less rare than the others. Almost all known examples of this date are well worn with VF and lower being all one can expect to find. The 1865-S ranks second in the entire $5 series according to average grade and I do not know of a specimen that would grade better than EF. The very few specimens that I have seen were rather softly struck and the mintmark was always quite weak. Thanks for looking, hopefully the next one comes easier

...back in the early beepin days, sure wish I’d had the bug back then. Returned yesterday from wandering the sage and gravel of northern Nevada and happy to come home with wonderful memories and just a few hard fought little pieces of sunshine found the last two day of hunting. First 3 days hunted the usual spots with only tiny bits of rust and lead, some faint deep signals I thought sure were gold only to disappoint me. Finally near the end of the 4th day of hunting I drove off looking for some old small workings off the beaten path and after stopping to check and interesting spot was rewarded with a few small pieces for a total of a little over 2 grams. Also stumbled on some cinnabar float and some of it had tiny blood red clear crystals on the surface, eventually found what looks to be the outcrop it came from and dug around it a little just to see if any crystals might be obvious in the surrounding soil. Didn’t see any and not really sure what I’d be looking for or where crystals would tend to form within the structure? Found another interesting piece in a completely different location and kept it for yard art, according to everything I can find about cinnabar it should not be a toxic hazard as long as hands are washed before eating food if the material has been reciently handled?

Hit a really hard worked out area in the Mojave this last weekend. With a little know how from watching Bill Southern's videos on the Gold Monster, reading Steve Herschbach's literature on the Monster and a lot of persistence I managed to beep up some good gold! Bedrock and tailing piles were the cats meow in this situation. I also wanted to mention that I picked up an old pair of Koss TD/80's with the 1/8" inch plug and adjustable volume that work flawlessly. -Mike

Years ago, when I started to hunt Rye Patch I knew it was well past it’s hey days! Yet, I continued to see nuggets being found there by others Prospectors! Our group, finally started to pop some gold after wearing out several sets of boots and skid plates on our old trusty GPX’s. With the new generation of Minelab Detectors, SDC 2300 and the GPZ 7000, it was a new game. Having cut our teeth on the learning curve of both new detectors on the California side of the hill, we set our sites to Northern Nevada. Multitude of hours by our group to establish productive ground and techniques with our GPX’s, lead our new detectors to what seemed like brand new patches of gold. This last outing was no different! One of our hunting members had a moment of Total Recall and remembered a few years back that we found a few nuggets in a spot with our old GPX’s. Well we hit the spot swinging and soon our detector’s started to sing back to us! Now remember, I was out there a couple weeks ago, trying to track down a couple new spots for this group hunt trip. I didn’t find any new spots on that trip and we didn’t even hunt the old spots on this trip, which I did good on. Now, there is only one way to run the SDC and that’s turn it on, it’s and incredible detector and the operators of it on this trip pulled teens of nuggets with it. But, you have to know the variable sounds of the SDC when you run the coil over a target that set you apart from others swinging the same machine over the same dirt. It’s the same with the GPZ 7000, you really can’t run it wrong, just turn it on! You make it run for you and your inner self. Sure I have settings, I like and so does everyone in our group of Prospectors. You have to know what it’s telling you if it’s a target or not, there isn’t many Duck nuggets left in any old gold field(s). Air testing or burying a test nugget does not reproduce any of these nugget signals (tones). I’m still learning tones of the GPZ and will never be and expert of them. The sweet tones of a nugget, I do have lock in my mind is what keeps me and boot makers happy! Lucky...No - spend the time in your local gold field, might take a few pairs of boots, skid plates and multitudes of digging holes in hot ground and rocks to learn the tones of your settings of your detector. We had a great time, even though the wind was crazy windy and made Detecting a challenge - Persevere, press on regardless! Until the next hunt Here’s Robin’s and my 2 1/4 day hunt total in dwts

Hi guys, Dave and I had time for a short hunt Sunday. Dave had scoped out a new area that when we got there looked promising. Unfortunately no luck at all. One of these days we will find a new area. I then suggested we head back to a spot that had a bunch of trash, but a lit of mining done in the past. I got lucky and found a couple small pieces in some old drywash tailings. Another piece on a slope, and a 1.2 g nugget in an old hole. Dave went of in a different direction and had no luck...he really needs to pick up his game, he's been slacking lol I've been on the no luck side many times when he has scored. Hunting with Dave is great because if one of us happens on a patch, we'll radio each other to join in on the fun. It all even out in the end. Good karma lol. When I got home I soaked the 4 nuggets in some CLR, and when I took them out there were 5. One was a perfectly formed BB of gold... weird!! I posted before about a quartz specimen I found detecting, decided it wasn't worth keeping as a specimen so I crushed it up, and panned it. It was better than I thought. 7.7 grams. Cheers, Chris

I took the new GM24K into the hills this past weekend for its maiden nugget hunt. Although my first time out with it was actually a week prior, it really wasn’t a hunt since I was mainly just familiarizing myself with the features and functionality of the machine and trying out different settings on a small buried test nugget. But after finally getting the 24k dialed in, I did happen to find a subgrainer a mere foot away from the test nugget that day; an obvious zippy target at an inch and a half deep.? This little yellow speck won’t even register on my grain scale! So fast forward to Saturday: I was digging every target or nuance of a target and noting the VID numbers. The occasional hot rocks in the area seemed to lock in at a solid 1 or 2 on the display screen, without deviation, but even the smallest of the subgrain nuggets I found would bounce around into higher registers, sometimes in the 70s or 80s, making it easy to differentiate the gold from the hot rocks. Slow and careful searching yielded 5 of the little yellow blighters. Sunday I continued on where I left off on Saturday, and although I was finding tiny bits of foil and lead, the gold eluded me all day until just an hour before quitting time. I was in a trashy area littered with small remnants of old timers boot tacks that just screamed on the 24k; they were shallow enough so that a quick dig and poke with the super magnet took care of them. One of the screamers however stood out from the others because it was reading much higher on the VID. First thought was something sizeable like a 22 bullet or casing, but it turned out to be a chunk of bedrock. A quick rinse with water revealed it was actually lithified ancient riverbed sediment containing a partially exposed nugget.? Definitely a nice surprise. The 24k sniffed out a couple of subgrainers nearby to round out the day. I’m really liking the new Goldmaster 24k, a very versatile VLF gold machine with innovative ground balancing technology. It’s lightweight, well balanced, very stable at high sensitivity with minimal coil bump falsing, has a pleasant tone, and won’t easily tip over when sitting on the ground. Good work, White’s! ?

- - - over an hour from the Nineties. I haven't successfully transposed it to digital format yet but I'm still working on it. The sound is present but my capture device isn't yet picking it up. I'm a bit over the moon about it really, some welcome good news following a tough week shooting drought weakened sheep - - Starring are some memorable characters from the earlier years of gold detecting, as well as some nice gold. Here's some early screen grabs, hopefully the final MPEG's will be of higher quality. 5 oz from Guys Rush, Rheola VIC. found at depth with Jimmy Stewarts 36" "Bismarck": 30 oz from Guy's Rush, Rheola VIC, found at depth with Jimmy Stewarts 36" "Bismarck":

I was able to get out with my new GPX 5000 for the second time since buying it and my destination was Libby Creek in Montana. I had worked up stream on saturday with the monster and had a huge amount of bedrock to detect, but finding a nugget up stream was not to be on saturday. On Sunday morning I decided to let a friend use my gold monster to give him an opertunity to find his first nugget with a detector and I would use my 5000 in search of it's first nugget. Shortly into instructing him on the monster he found two small pieces and a little while after that I got signal with the 5000 that turned out to be a 5.6 gn nugget shaped like a heart. I think I am going to like this detector way more than I did the Gpx 4000. I got a 2.4 gn nugget saturday evening with the monster as well. 8 gn's for the weekend.

While rattling through a cupboard I located a film canister I'd "hidden" once containing these finds from years ago using an SD2200 and 18" DD Coiltek coil. The 6.8 gram specimen was found about 50 meters from the monument where that rather large specimen was found by John Deason and Richard Oates. I'm sure they'd have lost sleep worrying about not finding it: I think the brass object (about 30mm in length with lead backing) is part of a knife handle and was even closer to the monument, buried deep in the brick red clay of the huge surfaced area surrounding it. I've no idea of the nationality but the combination of stars and what looks like a bird of prey had me thinking it could be of American origin- - - ? Update: it's a silver handle piece from a civil war era "Liberty and Union" gentlemans folding knife. Thanks again to "Professor Google"

I took the Gold Monster into the hills again this weekend. With autumn well underway now, temperatures are definitely cooler than just a couple of weeks ago, but the resultant fall colors are a sight to see. Only 5 minutes into the hunt on Saturday and I had recovered the first target; a chunky little bit of yellow at a good 4 inches...a nice start. Next was a shallow target, just under the moss, that turned out to be a small flake of gold. After digging a couple bits of foil, I manuevered the Monster’s 5-inch coil next to an ancient river-worn cobble. The detector responed with a broad, deep sounding signal that I really like to hear, as it usually heralds something good. Well, this one was no exception, because by the time I excavated the 4 inch hole I had recovered no less than ten pieces of the good stuff. It was then that I thought to myself, certainly there must be some gold under that cobble, right? And indeed it was so...seven more bits to be exact. The next two flakes were loners off by themselves, again just under the moss. Ahead I spied a small depression in the moss-carpeted terrain - a good hiding spot for some gold. Sure enough, the Monster sniffed out another couple of golden goodies. And the last target of the day was a small chunky bit down in a bedrock crevice. Sunday was even a few degrees cooler than Saturday, with a few rain sprinkles. I hit another spot of old diggings up slope and managed to coax 3 small flakes from their hiding places. All these nugglets combined tip the scales at a whopping 1.2 grams, but oh what fun it is to recover each little bit!

A mate of mine gave me a New Zealand 50 because I`ve been posting with American coins. I`ve not been out much in the last couple of weeks because of vehicle trouble but I got out a few times. These were all found on new ground away from diggings and I dug some sweet sounding targets but still nothing big. There is always tomorrow. This lot goes 1.58 grams ?