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Hello everyone, I found out yesterday that i wouldn't be able to get out this coming weekend so i took a short 4 hr trip into the place i nabbed the merc nugget and saw the Mountain Lion afew days back. It snowed last night and i was stoked to have a wintry day of mining. We've basically had no winter the last two yrs so this was a welcome suprise. My wife dropped me off and the dogs and i slowly made are way down into the headwaters. It was slow going for my Queensland Healer Zoe, she's going on 10 and after braking her back while mining last year has never been as spry. Droping over the ridge the snow slowly rose until it was waist deep but very light and fluffy so easy to brake trail. We got about half way and ol Zoe slipped into a small streamlette and couldn't get out, so down i went to get her and away we go. We arrived at the spot i'd scored the last nugget and i went to un-stacking the old tailings that the nugget had been just along the edge of. A half hour later and snow ablown i had opened up another 10 sq ft or so of bedrock and began to detect. With the snow flakes growing in size i hit the small piece first with just the faintest of a whisper. I doubted it was actually a target and thought it was ground noise until i got it in my scoop and closer to the coil. The bigger piece came a few minutes latter near the upper edge of the area i had cleared it was a cool mellow tone. Knowing this area rarely has any flakes or fly chit, but wanting to be sure i had brought my EZ sluice. I put thru about half of the gravels on the bedrock but got only one small flake as expected. That took my few hours and left an hour to hike out so i decided to clean up. I snapped the pic of the gold and then drooped the small piece as I tryed to put it in my poke. looked for it a little and then figured easy come easy go - i'll get it when i return in the future. I hiked out a different route up a more sheltered ridge which was good for the old dog being the snow was mostly ankle deep but very windy. Took pics of the old road that hits the ridge i came in on. I acquired a video camera lately and used the still shots from it for the first time today. They appear a little dark but will work on that in the future. I had a great time and enjoyed the solitude and brisk quiet the snow brought to the forest. I was very stoked on the little nugget, only weighed .2 grams, but its the roughest piece I've seen come from here which is cool because I've been trying to find the golds source up the hill. The old timers have a few runners above but they could have missed one. Likely the last deep snow trip for the old dog but a rememberable one for sure - and I'm proud to say ive gotten gold every trip out with my trusty SDC. I hope you enjoy the pics AjR

4 years ago I found a big 1.5 ounce nugget with a hole in it, yesterday I found the twin to it in the same patch with the GPZ. Solid gold nuggets with holes in it are pretty rare. They are just like father and son, just like twins Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well they're kinda like twins... aren't they? I'm worried the GPZ has reduced me to a crumb chuncher.

Had the day off so I went back up to the foot hills. Second real hunt with the ZED and I'm really liking it. Today I was using Lunk's settings...and it worked! Even on high smoothing I was still able to hear these dinks. Thanks Kieth for sharing your settings. I dug so many deep bullets today. It's so disappointing when you hear that deep solid target and then it comes up a mushroomed bullet. When am I gonna find that big nugget? strick

All 48 nuggets found with the GPZ on old worked out patches, total weight is 12 pennyweights. I worked a old patch today that has some very nasty hot rocks that gave all the previous detectors loads of trouble. They have black iron stripes or streaks and also some solid ironstones. The 7000 just purred through the worst this patch had to offer with no complaints. The 6 nuggets found in this area were loud and clear... notice the one at the lower left has a defect in it. Almost forget I found a tax token today. I guess some poor guy came from Oklahoma came seeking his fortune in Arizona and lost a tax token, he probably went home broke and busted and nugget less. Why couldn't it have been a $5 gold piece instead of a worthless 5 tax token.

When Chris and I were at the Mesa show last month Jim P took us out to Little San Domingo one day for a few hours. I only got this one little nugget but was happy to find my first nugget at LSD. We visited with Kevin Hoagland at Gold Basin after that, again for only a few hours, and I snagged my first Gold Basin nugget. They can go next to my couple little nuggets from Rye Patch. Not much gold but kind of rounded the bases with the GPZ anyway and had a good time doing it.

I know enough has been said about the GPZ and its abilities to find nuggets missed by previous metal detectors! Today, we wanted to hit and old patch and glad we did. The GPZ, was amazing snagging nuggets in and old pounded patch, it nearly reminded me of the hey days! Needless, to say my hand lower one has only dinks and my partner had the hot coil for some quality nuggets. I might take tomorrow off, still recouping from my Rye Patch trip...but there's gold to dig! Until the next hunt LuckyLundy

Well I know I wasn't the only person to swing a coil today on the forum! Here was my first Nugget of the day. Feel free to post your April Fool's Day finds on this thread if you'd like. Until the next hunt, LuckyLundy

Wow, what a trip! A few of us got together for a little outing at Rye Patch and 9 days later I'm finally home. I was excited to run the GPZ on some proven SDC ground and was more than happy with my results. The SDC gave the GPZ a run for the money and it even skunked me one day. But, the GPZ can reach down for them deeper nuggets and hold its own on the shallow ones too! The SDC is just right for my Wife Robin and the GPZ gives me a good workout for a days detecting and a good nights sleep too! Here is the finds before one of our days lunch breaks! Until the next hunt LuckyLundy

Been working some old Chinese mullock heaps. A first for me yesterday was four small nuggets in the same hole along with 3 tiny bits of wire . My first target was a 0.8 gram nugget which I was fairly happy about except it had the craziest signal. On rechecking the hole I at first thought my GPZ 7000 was playing up cant even describe what I was hearing. So after a restart I quickly realized there was a lot more going on down in that hole. Picture below shows the .8 sorry don't recall which the other 3 where. Also happy to report the Coilcover patch up worked a treat.( picture taken before sanding ) ad...

Nevada porous gold, I'm very impressed with sdc for 3 days, 5 nuggets, 29.5 grams

Hello All, Had a dentist appointment today and got home just as it started to rain at 5 o'clock. Looked at the wife and she said you better get going because it'll be getting dark soon. Off i went to a new spot that was a quarter mile below were id previously found some color. Rain lightly falling i fired up the trusty SDC and slowly worked way up river along a small bedrock shelf. Not a thing. Circling around a scree slope that had previously slid into the river i spotted another little bedrock shelf. After scanning for a minute or two, woo-woo, i hear a little something, after digging a little gravels and fanning a little i see a large flake, its like gold foil. Not skunked and gold all 4 days i've had my new machine. Awesome. Wait a minute i think as i reach around to were my pack should be to get my gold bottle. No pack i was in such a hurry i forgot my pack, LOL. An i didn't notice for a good half hr plus. Addicted is the only fitting word. As it was getting darker and raining more heavily i got another signal and fanned out a crack and saw two flakes about half the size of the last. With no tweezers i tried hard to get them but had to leave them for another time. Not much gold - it wouldn't measure on my scale but allot of fun for sure. AjR

Change of plans today so i only got out for about 3 hrs but i had another enjoyable day with my new mistress. I headed upriver from the spot i hit my first evening with the SDC. I detected away for awhile and dug afew shotgun shots and a piece of a nail and then a mellow signal. A little flake again and a second signal near by, two matching peaces. Took me awhile to get them to because the were just at water level and the clay soils kept clouding the water. Working up river waist deep i went a little while with no signals and then got a screamer and a mellow signal nearby. figuring the louder one was lead i dug the quiet one first for the third flaky peace, the load one ended up being the biggest peace, it was nice being able to work in the river and rain with out worrying about sinking the machine. I did give her a swim too. Dug a 5 or 6 more peaces of shot nearby and headed home just as the rain turned from sprinkling to a stead poor. Big peace was .5 dwt and the flakes .1 dwt altogether. Hope your weekend has been as enjoyable as mine. Until next weekend - Good Luck AjR

Three weeks with the GPZ and I finally broke the half ounce mark. I got a little bigger nugget this week at 1.2 pennyweight. The total weight now is 10.2 DWT's. They range from a couple that won't register on the scale in the grams mode all the way up to 1.2 pennyweight. 38 nuggets and I still can't pin point with the GPZ and I'm not use to digging such small nuggets. They are adding up and after 3 weeks I've lost 15 pounds and the detector is getting lighter, and I'm getting the exercise the doctor ordered. Some nuggets haven't had a bath yet. Enjoy the picture...

Hit the dirt early today and hiked into an area that has some of the hottest bedrock around and has been hammered for years before the roads got washed out. The place i had the most hope for was down a gulch, across the creek and up a hill to an old grounds sluice operation. I hunted my way down the gulch, the old timers tore the entire place apart but sure didn't miss much. In and out of my homemade hip waders to cross the creek and up the hill i go. Dug a few boot tacks, a little lead and a front piece of a button out of the bedrock as i worked my way towards my spot. Slown Low i keep telling myself as i listen to the mosquito dove in my ear. Oh yah thats a good signal down in the bedrock. And out comes the little flake. Yes!, first gold of the day in under an hour. Close by is another little peace, neither register on my .1 Gram scale. Alittle up hill i dig two tinny pieces of screen mesh wire and the head of another boot tack. Come on now, then another good signal but only smooth bedrock under the coil. Hmm. Chipped in and theres a nice peace, then another not far off. Very excited i sweep the area but come up with nothing else. I stop for a drink and then crank the sens. up to 4 - had been on 2 and i could hear some of the more mineralized stringers in the serpentine. At 4 i have some falseing but get a repeatable signal in a small exposed bedrock nook adjacent to the last peace. Chip alittle and out comes another picker. In total the three peaces are 1.1 dwt. You may notice in the pic the two peaces on top are very rough and show little signs of water ware while the bottom three are all well worn. I happily eat lunch and look at my 5 peaces of gold. After lunch i worked my way to another area digging nails and junk as i headed to the most mineralized bedrock i know of out here in Scott Valley. Arriving at this location a good hour later i have found no more gold and set to testing the SDC over the bedrock. Total overload just like a VLF no matter what i do. Hot Stuff! After this experiment i work my way to another hillside and continue to dig little peaces of metal and afew peaces of lead and a random 1988 penny that has two holes nearly eaten through it, but mostly quiet ground. My first batteries died and i changed to my second pair and detected up til four oclock with no more gold.Tired and very happy with my new machine i hike out to show the wife and kids my finds. Off to another spot tomorrow, i'm pretty much hitn places close by that have been heavily detected to see whats missed but i can tell this machine is just aching to find a new patch. Thanks for sharing my adventure. AjR

Well many of you know it's my Big day of the year! St. Patrick's Day is my Birthday, hence LuckyLundy! In true form, I get up and enjoy my coffee and read the morning paper. Done with the morning routine, I grab my gear and head out for my Birthday hunt. The Little Leprechaun, was kind to me again this year and he tossed me a bone from his pot of gold. This target wasn't even a target, just a noisy spot that I thought I better checkout as I'm learning the deep sounds of the new GPZ. Needless to say, it was pretty deep and this patch was well worked over by all previous Minelab PI models. It hit the scale at 5.87 dwts...Until the next hunt! LuckyLundy

Hello All, Here is a video of myself digging a nice 1/3 ounce gold nugget at depth with the new GPZ 7000. I was using "High Yield" and "Difficult" with a Sensitivity of 10. The ground was very mineralized, making it too hard to hunt in Normal or raising the Sensitivity much. Approx. nugget depth was 16-18 inches and it was a faint whisper when I first heard it. Hope you enjoyed. Rob Allison Rob's Detector Sales

Here's a picture from just a few hunts using my GPZ 7000. All flogged ground finds.The nuggets come from areas I hunted with my 5000 and 2300 not to mention thousands of other detectorists coils over that area in the last 30/40 years.Except for the river worn boomerang 2 grammer nugget. Directly under the number fourteen in the picture. From what I understand no detector has been over that area in at least 20 odd years. The boomerang nugget is totally a different looking river worn piece by the looks of it. Compared to the other nuggets. Cant wait to get back out there to that spot. I have permission to hunt there and have been told there are over 300 Chinese mullock heaps there. 41 plus grams.

Second week with the GPZ and very impressed how easy it is to set up and run. It was mostly a matter of getting used to the threshold and I've done that now. Total weight now for the GPZ is 7.7 pennyweight... still waiting for the bigger stuff.

After spending my first week with the GPZ 7000 on some old patches in Nevada, I am a true believer...an official "Zedhead". Pictured is an half ounce of nuggets, some surprisingly deep and others surprisingly shallow...enjoy.

I cant get on this forum to confirm and I am not willing to register, but supposedly this link: http://www.detectingwestaustraliangold.com/t5339-confirmed-12oz-1-1mt-with-a-gpz7000 is about a guy in WA who just picked up a 12 ounce nugget at 1.1 meters with a GPZ 7000. 1.1 meters is a little more than 3 and a half feet. Steve did you ever get registered for that forum? So consistent with the other thread, for those who don't want to be digging 3.5 foot deep holes, that is another reason why you may not want a GPZ. It just finds targets too dang deep.

Nice little nug today. This one has a pick or tool mark in it.

Found this on another forum....Jen found the 51 grammer. Bill http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t20985-had-doubts-but-not-anymore

Hello all, I got out this morning to try and find a birthday nugget. I had to get up early to make the long ten minute drive to a secret place right next to the highway and then make the long two minute walk into the goldfields. The sun was shining brightly, there was a breeze blowing and I could hear the traffic behind me. After the long trek, I stopped at a likely looking spot right out in the open and turned the old 3000 on. I was using the Sadie coil, it finds gold on its own. I moved three feet to the left of a wet spot and with one sweep of the coil I had a real nice audio response. The signal was very shallow, didn't want to dig deep holes on my birthday anyway, so that was alright. The ground was wet so I made a small scrape with the pick about as big as my hand, getting the grass out of the way. I made another sweep and the target had moved. The target was in the small pile of mud. I reached down and poked my finger around, trying to stay clean, and I saw a flash of yellow. I wiped my hand off and put my glasses on and bent over again to pick up the nugget. It turned out to be a pretty little nugget, my birthday nugget. I dropped the gold into the vial and decided it was time to make the long trip back to the rig. After the brutal two minute walk I got into the Jeep and headed home. The nugget weight is 2.36 grams, for Shep that is 1.53 pennyweight. I wish it was this easy every day... Thanks, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

The wife and I headed to N. Nevada this past weekend. It was our first Nevada trip together and my second to the area. Got there late in the afternoon and neither of us could wait to start detecting. I turned on the 2300 and within 5 min found my first nugget about 6 inches deep. I don't know why but I seem to have my best luck within minutes of turning on any metal detector. 15 min later I found another. Another hour and the sun was starting to set so we got in the camper and had dinner....and a couple vodka drinks. One thing I love about this new hobby is there is no legal shooting time nor is there a bag and possession limit. So I told Lisa I'm going out to do a little night time detecting. I found three more. I get back in the trailer and have another vodka drink.... I'm thinking I'm on a roll so I comment to Lisa that I'd like to end up with at least 20 nuggets for this trip. I should know better then to say something like that. The Kiss of death. All day Saturday not one nugget. I swang the 2300 till my arm almost was ready to fall off. Sunday morning we had 3 hours to detect before we had to leave. I managed 2 more with a lot of effort. It was windy on Saturday and my machine was acting up. There were times when I would get this big spike in volume and the 2300 would make a loud screeching sound. I was running sensitivity on 4 and threshold on 3. Very frustrating. Might send it in to get checked out. strick