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Finally hit a worthwhile patch today, it was a brutal trail to drive then I had to hike down a steep canyon and go almost two miles till I rounded a bend and saw a nice long stretch of bedrock, when the smoke cleared I had 9 nuggets for a half ounce then had to start the long trek out, but I was carrying gold so it was ok

Got a nice golden bear and a 8.3 dwt nug!

6.6 dwt, 2.2 dw and 14 grains. That was a nice night!! Got 'em with the 5000 The big nugget is the same one, just two different shots

Dunno why the forum went off line at about midnite Sat, Jan 17, just as I was trying to post? Anyway, seems to be ok now. I was bored so finished panning off a bucket of paydirt from Indiana from September. Did the job indoors in a plastic tub in my bathtub with a stopper on the drain. Found my biggest picker in 2 years in the bottom of the 1/4 inch screened gravels. Makes me even prouder considering it was in gravels and clay I scraped off bedrock slabs I removed from a creek bed secret spot I had found with my copper dowsing rods. The picker measures 1/4 inch x 1/8 inch , thick as maybe 3 sheets of paper and klinks in my bottle. Does that make it a flake or a nugget? A happy ending to a week of misery with broken furnace, winter, and more repair bills than I cared for.... I just now tested out my new GB2 I got from Steve with the 6 inch coil, on my new picker. Never realized how hot that GB2 can be and stable, indoors airtest, anyway. Got about 3 - 4 inches airtest that I could hear without headphones. Almost 2 - 3 inches with Tesoro Lobo ST and 3 x 7 coil, minus phones. Nothing on my MXT with 6 x 9 coil. -Tom V.

Did a little detecting this weekend. Saturday at one of my relic spots. Sunday at an old pit in the mother lode. I'm slowly learning the Deus. My main squeeze is the ctx 3030 but the Deus is kinda fun to swing because it's so light. The ring is stamped 18K and probably early 1900's It was in such bad shape that I did not even know it was gold until I tumbled it overnight. The nugget was 2.2 grains...Finding gold is a lot harder then relics! I'm slowly filling my poke. strick

I finally had a chance to get back out with the SDC 2300 since the meeting out in Rye Patch last month. This time there was nobody there to hold my hand. I did the research and found a spot in the Mother-lode a couple hours from my house...... and BINGO! Two real gold nuggets! All by myself! They may be small but you got to start somewhere I guess. Cant wait to get back out.... strick

I expanded my search and ventured into an area of steep canyons, shallow bedrock, though not generally considered a gold producing area. I plotted the course with Google Earth and estimated a 3 mile zone with a continuous desert wash. I hiked less than an hr and started seeing exposed bedrock. I unpacked the SDC and within 5 minutes got a good target. The large flat nugget was in a shallow depression. Wow, I thought I was going to need a burro to hike out all the gold I was about to find. No joy for the next hr and a half. I reached a huge dry waterfall and decided to turn back. I took it slow concentrating on only exposed or very shallow bedrock. I picked up the heaviest nugget jammed in a bedrock crack, I had to chip away at the edges to get it out. 100 yards further, the last nugget was in narrow crack in a smooth bedrock raceway. This turns out to be my best morning, 3 hrs, 3 nuggets, 5.2 grams. I'll give her another go tomorrow, less walking and coil to the ground. The surprising thing was no little crumbs, just decent nuggets that any detector would have found..

Hey Steve, How would you like to follow behind Glenn with the SDC? I got out for a few hrs and dug a bunch of bird shot, but found this guy in a spot that screams gold. A bedrock bench with a foot of overburden. Based on the birdshot, I doubt it was ever detected. I need to pull off that overburden and give her another go. 3 grams, we're getting there.

got out alone this morning and decided to hit an old area that has been beat to death, but it is easy to get to and I have a long long hike planned for tomorrow morning so I didn't want to kill myself. The old 2200d that I am using while waiting for my 4500 to be repaired was making more weird sounds than I could count, it was wobbling and screeching and just plain annoying me and no matter how many retunes I did it never got any better, so I just tried to get into the rhythm of the wobbling and see if I could hear any changes, after about two hours it started to settle down and I got a very weak signal and I spent at least a half hour digging for the target, when I got into bedrock and red clay hardback I knew my chances were pretty good, I was down at least a foot and finally popped out this yellow turkey leg and then about 15 minutes later I hit the small one for dessert. One darn good meal.

the road was horrible going in but the ride out was a little better with the extra weight we were carrying, lol. I wasn't sure we were going to get out but we did a little after dark. The storms have really moved some material.

I went out to a new old spot from last year. I had taken a few pickers off an old bench with shallow bedrock using the Gold Bug II. The overburden is 8 to 10 inches with decomposing schist bedrock. The bedrock was almost too hot for the GBII, hard to separate the tones. I had raked down the overburden and went over it with the GPX 4000 with 16 inch NF round mono, no joy. I went back yesterday with the SDC and immediately got a faint tone. The bigger of the nuggets was right in that decomposed bedrock. With no more signals, I again pulled down the overburden as best I could with my short handled pick. Got another faint tone 8 inches from the first nugget. I opened up the hole and the signal just wouldn't improve. I kept opening the hole thinking the target must be in the side of the hole. Still no luck and the target just wouldn't improve. In frustration I used the pick to bust up the bedrock and pulled the whole mess out. Bang, now the target was blowing my ears off in the dig pile. That was the long looking nugget. I waved over the hole and got another faint tone. Same issue, I couldn't get the tone to improve until I got it out of the hole. My assumption is that the hot bedrock is somehow diffusing the quality of the signal, even when I'm right on the target. Once out of the hole, they sounded off like the quality of nuggets they are. 3.5 grams total. They must be fairly porous, awfully light for their overall size.

Here's the photo of 3 weeks worth of detecting with the SDC2300. These were mostly around Yuma, a couple hrs each morning, all within 45 minutes of home. Some were from out near Palm Springs. Finally dropping to mid 80's, I'll extend my hrs and range next week. Total weight 19 grams.

Went back out to iron stone hell, long walk, much cooler, only needed 2 liters of water. I concentrated on a placer hillside where the nugglets hide amongst the iron stones. No trash, but used the Steve H concept of clearing all the targets. I kicked, picked and dug at least 100 iron stones to find 15 little nuggets. Total weght 1.9 grams. The poor SDC howled on some golf ball sized iron stone at depth. They seem to build up a halo when they're down deep, the target response is much less once they're out of the hole. Only a couple nugget targets screamed dig me. Everything else was just threshold warbles.

Hello all, I got out with Chris today and hunted an area that we have been eyeballing for while. It is a long walk in and a longer walk out. The area is an old hand diggings and there was hardly any trash. I got my larger piece in the first few minutes and the next few came during the rest of the day. I was using my 3000/Sadie. Chris took a few hours to find his first piece, after that he did ok also. Chris was using his GB Pro/Ten inch coil. It was beautiful day with the high around sixty eight degrees. The hunting days are getting short already. Thanks, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

Finally back in az for the winter, got out today for my first hunt and hit seven for a total of 86 grains or a little more than three pennyweight, felt good to get back out, looking forward to a lot of good hunts this winter with all my friends.

I'm in Yuma, so I go out locally for a couple hours every morning. Still too hot for all day. I've been finding a few flakes every day. A few in the .5 gram size. 10 days, maybe 6 grams total. The SDC is really keeping things interesting because I find something nearly every day. This morning was the best yet. I found the smaller nugget 1.4 gr right in the wash below drywash tailings. Biggest one of the week. I followed the wash, very shallow, granite cobbles. Maybe 100 yds up, I get a screaming signal. Sounded just like a jacketed bullet, low/high warbled pitch. Very shallow, 4 inches at best. Frankly, any detector would have found that nugget. Weighs in at 4.8 grams. Biggest nugget so far with the SDC. I'm enjoying my morning outings, and the SDC is a good motivator.

Steve was going to spend a couple days prospecting in Nevada, so I decided to join him for the afternoon - because of family commitments I could only spend the day. So I only used the SDC for the afternoon yesterday, but still got seven little nuggets over at Rye Patch, in a place that has been pounded by everyone and his brother, friend, cousin, and neighbor for the last 20 years - and I got seven little nuggets. The total weight for the seven is only 0.7 pennyweight, or 1.1 grams, but I only detected 4 hours with the SDC. The bottom line is that I had a lot of fun and got some gold - what more can you ask for with a short session on a pounded patch? This time of year the weather can change to wet and cold in the Sierra Nevada, so I've pulled out of northern California to focus more on Nevada gold fields. The weather was beautiful - though this time of year the weather can be chancy and you just never know - but we hit it just right.

Well this year I had grand plans to get many weeks of detecting in with my new GPX. After a great in person field experience with El Dorado I thought I was ready to have a big year and get some serious experience under my belt. But a great opportunity to start my career popped up earlier than expected and I had to pack my bags and head down to Texas. Due to the early move I only got two more days of detecting under my belt after meeting El Dorado, but his help and guidance got me a couple of nice pieces. On the last day, I found my most attractive piece of gold to date, and the ugliest one as well. Hiking out that day I slipped and my face landed two feet from a baby rattle snake, and somehow learned to fly and avoid getting tagged on the face. Needless to say I think I crammed a whole season of excitement into that last day. Hope you enjoy the photos. JD

My buddy Mark recently found this one. I labeled it the Dachshund Nugget for obvious reasons.

Here is what I found last week in nev. Will post these later after I clean them up. Rick.

I got out and did a little more prospecting with the SDC, and got 3 more nuggets, total weight 2.5 grams. The more I use this detector the happier I am with it. I took my brother in law out with me and with the external speaker gave him a few lessons in nugget detecting. there were a bunch of 22 brass shells at this one place, and I told him we needed to get these out of the way because they would block the detector from seeing smaller targets. Sure enough, we got them out of the way, and right in the middle of where they were was a fainter target. I told him that while larger nuggets would sound like those shells near the surface, most gold would sound like this fainter target. We dug it and it was the smallest of the three nuggets.

In the last few weeks, I've had a chance to try out Minelab's new SDC 2300 in the hills of California. I've had excellent luck with it so far - 8 nuggets the first day out, 6 nuggets the second. I did up a blog post with more detail for Minelab's Treasure Talk blog. See: http://www.minelab.c...-s-new-sdc-2300 Minelab has a long history of introducing new, cutting edge PI technology, and the SDC 2300 definitely continues that tradition. Its very sensitive to small targets, waterproof to 10 ft., amazingly resistant to coil falsing on grass and rocks, rugged, compact and easy to use. Between the small gold sensitivity and the waterproof feature, this detector will be accomplishing things no pulse detector could do before. I plan to be using quite a bit the rest of this year. No question that a number of GPX owners will be wanting an SDC, and I am sure many of you will be interested in taking a closer look at this new detector, and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

G'day all, After watching JP’s latest video clip “SDC 2300 Child’s Play” displaying a very small nugget detected by the SDC 2300 with its 8” mono coil and it resting on the tip of his finger I tried to estimate what that nugget would weigh on a gold scale? So I had a check back through my results to see what I had recorded as my smallest nugget find. Well that turned out to be a 0.08 gram found with my previous GP 3000 using a Minelab 11” DD coil however my current GPX 5000 using a Commander 8” mono coil has now lowered that to 0.05 gram. Just another pic of it on the scales maybe a little clearer. Therefore with the SDC 2300 about to hit the market what is the smallest nugget that you have detected with either a PI or a VLF and hopefully a result will be posted here with a SDC 2300 also. Thank you for your results.

Hello all, I got out with the guys today for a hunt. We all met up and headed out to the site at 0800 this morning. After making sure everyone had everything we were on the trail down to the creek. After a mile of walking we hit the mouth of the canyon and split up here and there and began detecting. We were detecting bedrock along the edge of the stream. We had four Minelabs and a GB Pro in motion. It was a hot one today and after about five or so hours we were all ready to go get a cold one at the local store. We all got gold so all were happy. There was a total of 7.3 grams found between all of us. Thanks, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

Steve, here are a few gold nuggets found on our claim. They are the first of this type. I am still working in the trench below Rick. Maybe a new vein? We went deeper on the main vein and stopped finding gold, these were a foot deeper or so. We picked up the main vein higher up the wall.