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At the end of May I got out for what has become an annual trip. It has been getting harder to get out and dredge with my 6" so now it has become about once a year during summer leave. I also purchased a SDC this last winter. It's hard to detect in AK in the winter so it would really be the first time out with it. My plan was to detect for the first few days and then dredge. I headed north to where I had found nuggets before. After a long trip and some rest I hit creek. The SDC sounds almost exactly like the GP extreme to me. As soon as I got going I got a good signal and dug a nugget. I thought lucky, so after detecting all around the immediate area with nothing else I moved down about 20 feet into a hole that someone had dug and got another signal which turned out to be another nugget. Now I was getting excited. I few minutes later and only two feet away I got another signal which also was a nugget. By this point I was supper excited. The detector kept chattering over the pile so I panned it and the small piece was in there. Over the next day I raked and gridded the whole area with nothing. Through the whole time I only dug 5 pieces of trash. With no more gold I headed out for the dredging grounds which is a whole other story. The bottom picture is the hole where the nuggets came from.

I just got back yesterday afternoon from a three day trip out to the gold fields of Northern Nevada. It was warm, but not too bad for the first 2 days (around 90) but it warmed up into the mid 90s on the third day and it is supposed to be above 100 for the next few days (So I am glad to be home in the air conditioning). Steve was out there with me for the majority of the trip. Neither of us got over any gold at all on the last day, but I had good luck the first two days. I got 13 nuggets for a total of 10.9 grams, or just a bit more than 7 pennyweight. No serious patches, sometimes it just seems like the gold out there has just been scattered randomly over a wide area. The largest nugget looks water worn, but the rest are jagged and have not traveled far. The GPZ and SDC both worked fine out there. I used the SDC in a trashy area where I was able to pinpoint and remove a zillion little pieces of steel window screen that had been blown around the area by the wind. For me, its just faster to pinpoint those little trash bits and remove them with the SDC. Next time out I will have a magnetized rake and use that to pre-treat the area for surface iron. In the less trashy areas where the depth and greater coverage was helpful, I used the GPZ.

Just a reminder to you nugget hunters dont throw your hot rock's away, these pesky red rocks were showing up where i was working in pocket veins. I was using a GB2. There were red, grey,black, rocks all in this same area,all had gold in them. Being new to this i almost pitched these rocks but then decided i would take them home and look later,glad i did I soaked them in acid and they all had gold. I had been finding good visible gold here and it never looked like these oddball rocks that kept getting in the way of my new find. I know someone (i wont mention names) that had found these pesky hot rocks also around a deep deep mineshaft and he was working around and finding visible gold and kept pitching the red ones down the shaft out of the way. After i showed him my red rocks cleaned of minerals he was very disappointed that he had been throwing all his gold away. I keep everything that im not sure of now,hope this keeps a little more gold in your pocket. RICK.

Here are some recent finds from the last couple of Saturday outings. SDC nuggets. My buddy's nuggets using his 3500. These are this afternoon's X-Terra finds from a mining town that was established in the late 1800s. I believe that these are parts from a clock. All found within a small area. There is more of it I'm sure but I ran out of day light. Was really hoping for an old coin (aren't we all)but it didn't happen today. TONS of junk! I'm slowly learning what the X-Terra is telling me. I see why a small 6" coil would come in handy. Every swing hit multiple targets. I found two sides of an ornate wood stove that are awesome but couldn't carry them back to the truck in the dark. So I stashed them for next time. The clock gears appear to be brass(?). Starting to have some fun with the X-terra. Good luck. Dean

Did some detecting yesterday with the GPZ in a Hydraulic pit in California. Dug a lot of bullets and square nails, but also got this guy, a 2.5 gram nugget. It was surprisingly deep, around 9 inches.

I tell you being retired and digging gold is like work! One day someone will invent a metal detector on wheels and will dig your holes as you sit under a shade tree listening to which tone to push the dig button...lol. I'm starting to think, I don't have Gold Fever...I have Tone Fever! I love hearing the perfect nugget tone on my GPZ, it music to my ears! I should start leaving a few, just to swing over them to brighten my day...but, I do have a couple of Daughters in College and I have a need of a cold brew in the frig, so I'll toss them in the beer fund poke! Until the next hunt LuckyLundy

Here is a bit of gold I have got on a couple recent trips to the northern Nevada goldfields - Been a really wet last 6 weeks or so up this way in Northern Nevada. There were times I was hearing several lightening strikes a minute in my detector. The total weight for this gold is about ten grams, or roughly 1/3rd of an ounce. The bigger pieces were found with the GPZ, while the smaller stuff, mostly to the right side of the photo, was taken with the SDC 2300 - both very definitely have their place for the types of detecting I do. I've not always been able to do a full day recently - I had rain shortened days where I had to sit in my car and wait out a storm, etc. and some partial days that were spent with some time prospecting but also some time driving back and forth to the gold fields and later returning home. I'd say this gold represents the equivalent of about 5 full days of prospecting. I wish I could claim the biggest piece was some faint warble of a signal that I had the talent and skills to hear and identify, but it was a loud booming target less than an inch deep that any metal detector could have heard. When it boomed through my earphones I was sure it was trash, but I dug it and in much of northern Nevada there is not a lot of trash. The second swing of my pick a dirt clod flipped over and the nugget was shining back at me. Its still out there, it just takes some work, persistence and a bit of luck - and sometimes patience while waiting for the thunderstorms to stop.

I stumbled across this today. What fun to look over this fellows shoulder. Hope he does not mind my sharing it with you.

Got lucky in a few way's today. I was supposed to have a dentist appointment so i got off work at noon. Ends up the dentist called my wife and changed the appointment date. So i got a few hour of detecting in and scored my first gold in awhile. Off on my Zuma to find some Gold! I headed into an upper fork of the same stream i was hunting in the snowy pics i posted. Shortly after i arrived i noticed an area that had scoured from the recent Super Cell down pours. The scour was small but it exposed a little bedrock just along the edge of an old tailing pile. The tailings split the stream into a very uniform braid. I had found pieces down stream under the edge of the old tailings therefor i dove in and tossed some boulders and moved some dirt to expose an area a few meters long by a half meter wide. With my first pass of the coil i heard a faint warble nearly like old lead but a bit different. Hmm i thought with a smile. In many locations i'd have thought lead but i had never found any lead in this stream and very little in the entire area for that matter. After afew swings of the coil and waves of the hand i was smilen big at a little rough nug. Sweet! Into my poke and back at it. I focused on a spot just above this piece that showed a big boulder resting on the bed rock and as i passed it seem a mellow sweet signal. Awesome its under the boulder and very unlikely anything but gold. Needless to say i tore that boulder out and their underneath about 3 inches lay a beautiful dwt piece. Made my day and broke my little dry spell. Super stoked i continued on but only came up with a few nail tips and a piece of very thin wire. All of these were a little above were i found the gold. After i pulled the big piece i burrowed into the bank more but had no more signals. I'll let her rest until i want to return and dig. This weekend i'll be out to find the new patch I've been determined to find. The place i'm going is a 3 mile each way march so i'll be gettn in early and out late to spend as much time as possible swinging my good old SDC. The little rough piece was .1 dwt and the big one as i said above 1 dwt exactly. Good Luck AjR

I was able to get away over the weekend to check out one of my old patches here in AZ with the SDC 2300. This particular spot has been really good to me over the years. It has spit out tons of nuggets, but most have been small & under a gram. A few friends and I have worked it hard using VLFs and the newer PI machines like the GPX 5000 and 4500. My last trip there with the 5000 only netted me two tiny ones, so I thought it would be a good spot to test out the SDC. This machine doesn’t penetrate as deep as the GPX, but what it lacks in depth it more than makes up for in sensitivity. A couple hours of hunting produced 14 nuggets; most of which came from places I know I had scrubbed before. Total weight was around two grams. For small, shallow gold in highly mineralized dirt, the SDC definitely tops my list. Here's the loot..

Went yesterday up to an old mining pit that has been worked to death by people in the past...I also had been there with my GB2 and had a rough time cause the ground was so hot.I also hit the same area with an AT GOLD and had no luck ...well yesterday with my Nokta that wasn't the case....got 8 Lil nuggies...I'm loving the ease of this machine ...i ran this machine in BST mode ..sensitivity on 83 and the I.D. masking ste on 5...I got a lot of ground noise but the target signals were very clear...even the real low target signal was low but clear of it hitting a target...one piece is .7grain and was about 3" deep... every hr I hunt with this machine I learn something new about it and its potential as being an awesome machine for any beginner as well as the experienced hunters...

IN GOLD WE TRUST

I just got back from the 16-1 mine. Went there to see if I could score on some good material. Dave informed me that they just hit a 50 OZ pocket. Was not their well know "A" grade because of the arsinopyrite and not pure white bull quartz. Some was certainly good enough. The most interesating part was that they just bought a GPZ and credited this find to that detector. He also said that they blasted out aother strong signal, but have yet to muck it out. I sure hope its full of "A" grade........ Guess they paid for that detector with just one signal.......They are looking forward to finding much more with the GPZ. Only complaint was the weight and having to use it up walls and overhead.......

Not every hunt is what you hope for! Nice nuggets, dinks or a Skunk is one thing for certain. My goal for today's hunt, was to burn some of the great food I had at a couple Reno Casino's over the weekend. I wanted to hunt a patch, but on the way I was swinging through and old patch first with the GPZ. I found myself keeping busy, digging up Bird Shot in this old patch which I thought we got them all. Well where there's trash in and old patch there's still nuggets left. Didn't take long before I dug up a dink, lots more BIrd Shot and another ding! From stretching out my stomach this weekend, I build up a hunger and called it a hunt. I still need to swing the GPZ on the patch I intended to today, but there's always tomorrow...Until the next hunt. LuckyLundy

Well it wasn't the best of weather this week in the Rye Patch area. One day it was very windy and all I could hear was these three nuggets! The next day was much better and all I found was dinks, what's up with that...lol. Headed home today to beat the rain called for Friday and ran into some May Snow Flakes at Donner Pass...love them new tires! Until the next hunt LuckyLundy

Headed up to the high sierras on Friday for quick one day recon mission. I wish I could have spent at least 3-4 days up there. Hopfully in the next few weeks that will happen. Beautiful country. The amount of work that the old timers did is amazing. Boulders stacked 15 feet high. And trenches 15 feet deep. What a way to make a living. We have it so easy now a days. Makes you wonder what the gold was like back then. Were there 5 gallon buckets to throw it in? Got the meet the legendary Klunker finally. Thanks Norm for taking the time to drive up and meet with us and show us where the claims are. Your Bernese Mountain dog is a compliment to your good looks. strick

Now I wish there was some epic story to go with this find to match the sense of achiement I got from finding it. I have been detecting for around 6 years and have dedicated a large amount of time to researching the topic (for both gold nuggets and treasure/jewellery) and I have been reasonably successful. Well at least I have always had a good time out hunting . Anyway. Our local beaches have become sanded in over the summer and finds have been hard to come by of late with just the odd gold ring for entertainment (and then just 9ct). Tonight I went to a beach and noticed that the far end, about 200m away, had washed out exposing the soft clayey bedrock. The base is a sort of mudstone and in this area had just a few crevices that might hold goodies. The rest was smooth and barren. Most of the crevices had iron signals which kick the discrimination of my excal 2 into action and killed the threshold. So I get a loud positive signal and look down. See the edge of a gold tinged coin, no way, and I pick it up. JOB DONE! Meant to be I recon.

Some big nuggets unearthed in WA yesterday afternoon, apparently another good signal was left overnight to dig out today. http://gpwa.forumotion.com/t221-30oz-and-50-oz-with#1161

My office computer woes shut me down this afternoon. Soooo, I left it to the IT guys and escaped for a short swinging session with the SDC. Found this little .2 subgrammer within 10 seconds of turning the machine on! It was left for me courtesy of a dry washer who, obviously, did not believe in detecting his tailing pile. I walked up to the pile that was maybe thirty yards from my truck turned the machine on performed a quick balance swung over the top of the pile and BANG... Signal! Out came this little guy. There were four piles within a few yards of each other so I kicked them all down and detected them. This was the only one. Climbed back in the truck and was out of there in about an hour. I think this is what they mean when one "turns lemons in to lemon aid". Not huge by any stretch but it beat the skunk. Dean

Area is about 3/8 inch square. The gold from this area went 78% Au 22% Ag. Base material is limestone almost marble. No quartz in location of find. This is a small specie I kept for its uniqueness. As I have not got specialist macro gear this is best I could do, but you can see it is as if the gold replaced organic material, sort of a mineral fossil.

I’ve been using a specialty detector in search of gold nuggets for over 20+ years. Some of the tips and lessons learned while in the gold fields are not as well known by many of today’s newer hunters. On my last trip to Australia I was fortunate enough to run into a full time nugget hunter (I don’t recall his name) and we chatted up our experiences and knowledge. One of my eye openers was when he shared with me a gold nugget that sticks to a rare earth super magnet. Since that time, I have always paid a little more attention to my Hot Rocks and especially the ones that look like this. Wonder how many nuggets and or meteorites we have tossed into the nearest bush because we did not know? If anyone else has photos of nuggets stuck in ironstone please share so we can all learn. Yes I did purchase the nugget from the guy as I needed Proof and also wanted to educate others. It weighs a total of only 2.6 grams but I expect at least half the weight to be gold.

Back home now for the summer in northern Idaho, I got out to swing the mighty Zed for a couple hours at an old spot where the skunk now dominates when searching with a vlf or pi machine. I got the first signal within the first minute after powering on, and after six inches of digging the target was out of the hole and in my scoop - a small golden "watermelon seed" nugget. At that point I knew it was going to be another productive outing with the Zed. Most of the gold unearthed was small and thin - more like flakes than nuggets - too deep for the vlf's and invisible to the pi's. It's going to be a great summer thanks to ZVT!

Had a great time this past weekend in the Nevada desert. The weather was a bit crazy with lots of rain, some hail and a bit of snow even. A special thanks to Gerry and crew for taking the time to show Lisa how to use her Gold Bug 2. I think I'm in trouble now as she has the bug real bad. As we were leaving she said that the next time a big rain comes through we need to drop everything and run back to Nevada lol. Also thanks to Lunk for spending some time with me on the ZED settings. I even got to shake hands with Steve Herschbach and Chris Ralph! It was great meeting you guys. Wish I could have stayed around for the talk but there was no way I was going into that trailer! Lisa's nuggets are on the right.

Hope this picture turns out. This was found in Northern Nevada in the last two weeks. It has been dipped in acid but just enough to bring out the character of the nugget. The weight is 2 1/2 ounces after being cleaned. Pretty piece with more to come, hopefully. Steve

A whopping .13 grams... but it busted the skunk! Took the SDC for a swing in the rain today and scored first gold as well as some junk with the new machine. Learning the SDC language. The dime (2010) was the first target of the day. The knife is an El Cheapo brand and will be relegated to utility status. I also did the head phone lead mod and it works like a charm. The stock Koss phones will now be back ups. No looking back now. Thanks to everyone for all the tips and tricks for the SDC. Much appreciated. Dean