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Weatherman claimed sunny and 50 degrees today so last night I charged batts and dug all my crap out to get ready for todays hunt! Grabbed the 2300 and the Monster and headed out this morn, 24 degrees when I left the shack. I get to the area I figured should have little if any snow...but NOOOOO. Had to use 4WD, trees across road from previous windstorm so had to hike in, couple inches snow with a few bare spots. Sun never did cut through the fog and hands/feet got real cold. Managed to pop 3 littles (.9g) so actually had a good day considering. SDC got 2 and the Monster got one. Glad I got out even though anyone with half a brain would have stayed home....lol Had a great season and best part is property owners have invited me back for next season. This is the last of them for this season...I'm done!!

Hello All, Here is a short video of a very nice crack/crevice we found earlier this year during the Summer Monsoons. Prior to this find, we were just weekend warriors placering various areas and metal detecting for nuggets finding a small handful of nuggets per day. We were not finding anything to really write home about, just the common US nuggets from about a quarter gram and up to 3-4 grams. Working one of these dry creeks, we were hitting a few nuggets in the cracks, but found one we decided to chase down deeper. Normally we don't do this, as digging down several feet or more to bedrock can be a lot of work, especially if you don't recover anything. We had a wild hair, so we decided to do so and this spot paid off very well. As you can see in the video below, the crack started off with two amazing gold nuggets, one was 2.2 ounces solid (just a flat lump) and the other was 1.01 ounces. The gold nuggets were almost side by side in the same crevice as shown. We ended up finding 3-4 smaller gram sized nuggets in the same crevice, but the bedrock popped right up and the gold just disappeared. It was a great moral boost for the Summer season, as it's normally pretty hot and nasty during the Summer Monsoons in the Southwestern US. The tools we normally use are shovels, metal rake, crevice tools, metal detector(s) and pinpointer. We were using the Minelab GPZ 7000 with the new Nugget Finder Z Search 12" coil in this video. The pinpointer we typically use is the Garrett AT Pinpointer (Orange one). Hope you all enjoy the video. If you would like to follow us on Youtube, make sure you "Subscribe" to our channel to see all the new videos. Wishing you all a Happy upcoming Thanksgiving and a wonderful prospecting season. Hope you all have some lunkers under your coils this season! Rob

I don't care what you own, like or swing. I know who the King of detectors is at Rye Patch. Over 60 nuggets on my last trip there and part of the time was even after record 100 yr rains saturated the soils. The Minelab GPX-6000 owns Rye Patch for Success and no other detector made (including the GPZ-7000) can get these results. I just love the characteristics of NV gold.

I recently was looking at a new place when I was hiking and found some interesting samples. I bought a cheap digital microscope to get a closer look and think I found something good but want some opinions before I get them assayed. Anyone want to help?

Thought I would share a few Christmas Ornaments for all of you prospectors out there. I realize this time of year is rough on some of us, as the ground is frozen and the gold is hibernating below. If anyone wants to add some pics to spice up the tree, please do so. After all..the heavier it gets, the more it shines. Whoever adds the most interesting photo will get a free Minelab hat (US mailing only). Merry Christmas from Gerry's Detectors

Hopefully this link works. Was said found using a dredge and he spotted it. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=4810499562315206&id=100000656292999

Had another good month hunting the low tide wet sand slopes at a few local beaches. Some large surf eroded out a few areas, lots of black sand and lots of targets! Spent half the time in "All-Metal" and half in "Tone Mode". For me, tone mode comes in very handy when weeding out those annoying pesky tent stakes when there is an abundance of them on the beach. I ran stock settings for tone mode and it worked out great at one of the beaches I was working that was littered with tent stakes! The find of the month was a nice 14k LeVian ring, the surprise find of the month was another gold tooth crown, which makes my 3rd for the year! Acid tested it and confirmed it's 18k. I see Compass found one recently too. You would think the cremation process would completely melt the crowns into blobs, I guess the heat doesn't reach that point? Anyway it was a fun month. I went out recently after the oil spill for a night time negative low tide hunt, beaches were pretty sanded in unfortunately. I did encounter some tar blobs on the beach, but I always wear muck boots when hunting the wet sand anyway so I had no issues with oil on my feet. I was surprised to see a surfer out in the night time waters and also someone walking their dog on the shore.. So totals for the month were: 10k - 2.1 grams 14k - 15.7 grams 18k Dental Gold - 4.1 grams 925 - 3.65 oz Thanks for looking, GL & HH out there!

check this nugget find:

It’s been a year of not doing what I want to do when I wanted to do it due to delays on work and home projects, i.e. little time for prospecting. So when I had an unexpected free day yesterday that coincided with a weather window I jumped at the chance to get in one more day in before things freeze up solid for the year. I went back to a spot in a canyon where I had detected a picker a month ago, and started swinging. I got a loud signal right away and started chopping into the frozen ground with a rock hammer. Thinking it was another chunk of rusted iron I wasn’t working too enthusiastically, but to my shock there appeared flat 1 gram nugget buried in the tiniest crack in the bedrock. I’ve never found anything bigger than .25 of a gram in this area so I let out a choice expletive did a happy dance. Not far from where I found the nugget, I got another good sounding signal in the slate bedrock on top of quartz seam and started hacking away. I was having a hard time pinpointing where the signal was and kept digging deeper and wider into the bedrock, fortunately it was decomposing, but it being frozen made it harder. After spending a half an hour working on this new slate quarry of mine I was surprised when our popped another 1 gram nugget. Omg, best day ever. It was getting below freezing so I was considering packing up but checked the hole before moving on and was surprised with another clear signal. I expanded the hole and after another 15-20 minutes of chipping away bedrock I had finally moved it. I couldn’t pinpoint it by waving handfuls of broken up rock over the coil so I kept dumping the rock into the pan till I got the signal in the pan. Of course I’d forgotten my rubber gloves so I panned it out in the icy water with my bare hands. When I panned back to hr concentrates there was another 1 gram nugget. What?! I was starting to lose daylight so I had to pack it up as hiking out of the canyon on ice and snow in the dark isn’t high on my fun list. Now I have to wait 7-8 months to see else is there!

Video on it's way soon, I promise.

Just sharing an appealing little alluvial worn twinned crystalline nuggie i detected today. (3.6 grams NSW Australia. 7000 with the NF coil)

Had a repeat of yesterdays BEAUTIFUL day today! Took this snap of a gorgeous Montana morn on the way to harvest more yellow tiddlers!!!! Love this time of year.....

I enjoy bright Full Moon hunts, seems the gravitational pull of the Moon moves me to the Goldfields. You’d think I’d park my rig to avoid the big spot light in the sky to sleep better. But, it gives me a half sleeping moment to pounder the mornings gold location. This hunt I was accompanied by and old Buddy from California. Steve, was tutored on some of our hot and old patches in California, with his GPX 5000. He quickly learned from us the many ins and outs of his machines and the fine techniques of putting nuggets into his poke. He moved with us as Minelab Technology advanced to keep a smile and rattle in the poke. He now owns a very nice stash of nuggets. This Hunt we set our eyes on the outlaying areas of Rye Patch! I had my RZR for mobility as we have many patches close by to just scoot to with it. It’s still warm out in the High Plains, but very doable compared to my last visit there. I pulled into the first location and ran into and old Buddy and his friend calling it a day. They showed me their poke and I recognized the gold same area as I wanted to hunt! Well, I arrived and unloaded and went for a short hunt and nailed one amongst the many footprints and dig holes. Still color left and no one gets them all. I rode around in my RZR after that till dark as Steve hadn’t pulled into camp yet! Next, morning I gave Steve the pointy finger to the patch and I set sights to a nearby spot I had luck on several years prior. Still within eyesight we waved at each other with a pumping fist to indicate a score of a nugget at the same time! At the end of the day we had several nuggets for our efforts. Now, I’m still hitting old haunts with the new 6000. So next morning after a couple more nuggets each. We load up and off to more old haunts. Next spot, didn’t disappoint us either! Only problem was I didn’t fill up my RZR and that prior days joy riding looking at Antelope and Wild Horses and new spots eat more fuel than expected! So we had to stay within eye sights of our camp just in case my Buggy ran out of fuel. We hit the old patches and found nuggets and then hit a new spot. The new spot, Steve was in the sweet spot and as you know the 6000 doesn’t play well with other 6000’s nearby. To end this trip, Steve out shot the Sensei and well done by him as we ended with plenty to cover expenses and another memory of a Harvest Moon Hunt! LuckyLundy

I was told the title needed to be revised. 🙂 SG is 10.04 OZT. Total 17 OZT. GPZ 7000. Humboldt Co Nevada

We had a 3 party hunt scheduled Condor, LuckyLarry and myself. I set sail East Bound and down on I-80 to Rye Patch from Reno. I texted the Boyz and received a text back from Condor that his Truck was sick and couldn’t make this trip! Well just meant more Rib Eyes on my dinner plate! LuckyLarry, was on his way from Elko to Rye Patch and the timing was perfect he followed me in to our camp site! Temperature Gauge was a solid 97 at the 3 O’Clock hour. Larry, hunted out here in the Hey Days of Rye Patch. He was just learning Gold Detecting back then and scored many nice nuggets! But, ended up being a Top Notch Relic Hunter. That’s how we met. We met on the Internet with me needing some old Relic’s ID. He was my go to guy to tell me the history of anything I’d dig up in the Goldfields of California. Of course, I avoided these extra trashy old camp sites and would pass the location to Larry for his Relic hunts when he traveled to California. We set up camp and hopped into my RZR Buggy into the heat to swing our 6000’s on my old patches. Finding left over nuggets that our older models missed, but the heat! Had to hit a 100 before some clouds moved in to cool things down! Them clouds had rain and in front of them was the wind. Headed back to Camp to beat the rain, as I left my Trucks Windows half open which was the way the wind and rain was blowing in. Made it back to camp wet Windows up with a gust of wind that had to be over 50 mph. Well early to bed with showers on and off and the next morning with more rain to heavy to detect in which gave us time to eat some cookies and for me to remember where some more old patches where at to swing on. Gone for 4-Days with 2 1/2 days of good detecting! We ended up with 20 Dinks each! Two Lucky 🍀 guys with plenty of smiles for our efforts fighting Mother Natures last blasts of Summer! I figure I’m now about 80% done with having the 6000 over our old patches in Rye Patch. I’m sure we left gold in the patches we hunted for further visits…never can get them all and every day is a different day! Until the next Hunt! LuckyLundy

I almost threw out this tiny gold nugget while panning cons, thought it was a trash rock, but it caught my eye for some reason.Held it up close to eyeball and it was golden metallic yellow, NOT sand, and bounces an inch when dropped in my gold pan. I got it sluicing gravels with my home made electric 18 inch long sluice/banker, like 10 feet from the creek where I found a gold gravel deposit with my map dowsing . About the size of 2 pinheads side by side, dime for comparison, casts a shadow in gold pan... came from central Indiana near Attica....

We've been in a bit of a Covid lock-down recently and during that time my Garrett 24k arrived so I wasn't able to use it in the gold fields straight away, it was quite painful to look at it knowing I can't go and use it, fortunately we came out of our lock-down and as took off for a prospect with the 24k as soon as I could. I ordered a White's 6" concentric coil for it to tie me over until Garrett and with any luck Nel come out with other coils for it, I hope they continue with the 6" Concentric as I'll buy a Garrett 6" Concentric as soon as they release it. It's a remarkably sensitive coil, I expected it to be less sensitive than it is as it's quite big however it surprised me and matches or exceeds smaller coils on other high frequency gold detectors. I've always been happy with Garrett coil quality so upgrading the Whites to a Garrett would be worthwhile I think. In saying that, neither the 10x6" Garrett coil or the Whites 6" coil were at all bump sensitive, not one bump noise the entire day. I'm so used to coil bump sensitivity from the Equinox and Gold Monster it was a rather pleasurable experience being able to scrub the coil on the ground like mad and bump it around not setting off the detector, giving me a distinct advantage over using bump sensitive coils. I started the day using the 10x6" Coil as I wanted to see how it goes and I was going back to a spot I'd found a fair few grams of gold in the past, about 30 or more nuggets using the scrape and detect method taking off layers of soil at a time and detecting it. The initial nugget which was just under half a gram and a fair few more were found using my GPZ including a 4.2 gram nugget and then I brought in the Equinox with 6" coil to clean up as a majority of the nuggets were very small and the VLF's tend to do better cleaning up these very small nuggets. I'd even gone over this little scrape and detect area with the Gold Bug 2 however it was a bit of a nightmare as the area is absolutely full of hot rocks and the Gold Bug 2 in heavy hot rocks isn't a good detector in my opinion, it's too busy making it's response noise to the hot rocks to worry about the bits of gold next to the hot rocks so you miss nuggets if they're near hot rocks. The problem is this spot is loaded with hot rocks all through the soil of various shapes and sizes mostly a green type of schist that is all crumbly and broken up and detectors love to sound off on it. It's likely there from the old timers, it's basically some old workings where the old timers left their rock pile in a little gully, and right on the lower downhill side of the rock pile was my little scrape and detect patch. Even the GPZ struggled with all of the hot rocks so I was quite pleased how the 24k was coping with them, sure it was sounding off on some of them too but it wasn't too troublesome and seemed to ignore the little broken up bits and very usable. I ran the 24k with the sensitivity maxed out, Sat on the middle setting and audio on Boost 2. The ground balance was quick and easy then I switched into the Locked balance mode. If the broken up schist bits of hot rock were too severe I left it in tracking which helped to knock them out. I gave the 6" Concentric coil a quick try and it struggled more with the hot rocks and i didn't want to lower my sensitivity down so I reverted back to the DD which appeared to handle them better and is still remarkably sensitive. So I just started scraping back layers and detecting taking about 2 inches off at a time knowing the gold here is likely going to be very small and it will be stuff I've missed in the past as I've scraped this spot out before and back filled it so I was essentially checking the same soil all over again for anything I missed. I had high hopes I had missed some as all it would take is a small hot rock to be sitting on top of the bit of gold the previous time and I'd likely miss it or just the bit of gold on it's side being a very thin one or any number of reasons, even just at a depth too deep for the size of gold with the detector I was using. It wasn't long and I had my first piece. Quite a decent size one too, I was baffled at the time why I'd missed this one in the past. The 24k had now found it's first gold, highly likely the first piece of gold found in New Zealand with the Garrett 24k, a badge I'll wear proudly. 🙂 Next up was a reasonably faint but very repeatable signal with no target ID showing, I delicately used my scoop to scrape soil away knowing this was likely a very small bit of gold and it sure was... my smallest bit of the day too and surprised I managed to find it with the 10x6" coil, I don't recall ever finding a bit this small using the 10x5" type size on other detectors. Can you spot it? 🙂 There it is! 0.007 of a gram, not bad for the 10x6" coil, especially in this hot rock infested ground. I always check targets in case they're odd little bits of metal with my pick magnet, and you'll see it was quick to build up black sand, this soil has plenty of it in it. I kept scraping down layers and found another. Quite small too... but a bit more meat on it than the previous one 🙂 I'd had enough of the scrape and detect spot by now and wanted to go explore a bit to see how the 24k performed for general detecting so I walked for about 10 minutes to another spot I'd found some gold in the past and detected for about an hour digging plenty of shotgun pellets, completely normal in this area as there is a rabbit plague that causes countless thousands of shotgun pellets to be distributed all over the place for me to clean up 🙂 I didn't have high hopes as myself and a friend (JW) have absolutely thrashed this area but it's always possible to miss gold when there is so many pellets. We generally scrape a few times and if the signal persists dig it, if it moves after the first scrapes ignore it thinking it's very likely a pellet. A few pictures of the sort of terrain I was detecting. My batteries went down to 2 bars quite quickly, within an hour. I assume as they're rechargeable and run at 1.2 volts instead of 1.5 volts for standard AA's but it stayed at the two bars for the entire day so still plenty of life left in them yet by the looks of it. Pretty wild rocky terrain and only really suitable for smaller coils. The GPZ with it's stock coil is terrible here, the smaller the coil the better in general. I did manage to find a piece though, after a lot of pellet digs 🙂 Not a bad size bit for the area too I now decided I'd put the Whites 6" Concentric coil on and give it another go as this area doesn't have near as many hot rocks as my scrape and detect spot. I found a bit of raised bedrock and had a signal that persisted down into the schist. At this point it almost had to be gold so I started filming. And it was gold 🙂 I had to break up the schist to get it out. A nice little piece too, a roundish flat one. This area has plenty of black sand too, this was my pick after checking that bedrock in case it was a steel shotgun pellet. It was getting near time to go get some dinner and I was pretty satisfied to even get one nugget in this area but I kept going a little while longer and it paid off. I like the bulls eye sight on the 6" coil, it really is the hot spot too, great for pinpointing. I had a signal that persisted down into the gravels on the bedrock. And got this one! It's hard to tell the depth in the photo but it was a reasonable depth. A few inches anyway. And that was it for the day, I was starving! So, do I like the 24K? You're damn right I do, it certainly exceeded my expectations and will now be my primary VLF gold detector replacing my Equinox which replaced my Gold Monster, and the Gold Bug 2 was just not for me, I didn't gel with it at all especially with the masking from hot rocks. I look forward to getting more coils for the 24k, especially smaller ones, and judging by how well it handled the hot rocks I wouldn't mind a larger size coil for ground coverage too. The total for the day. Very happy with the results.

really hard hunt. got in the wash at 6am very few targets over the first 1/2 mile. on some bedrock i got a bit of a waver in the threshold, after moving it i could tell it was small. i called my friend over to recover it with the monster, so i could keep moving. it was about a 1 grain bit. it was about 930 and it was starting to look like a skunk day. started moving very slow maxed out on manual with the threshold wavering i got a repeatable signal that i would have missed without headphones on. got down to 6 inches in the crack and it got loud. flipped the coil to slide in to the crack and it got really loud. 2 more inches and it was out. very nice 9 grain nugget. stuck the coil back in the crack and there was another target a nice 7 grain nugget. after that i found 2 more small ones and my friend got a few small bits with the monster. over all a nice day. 19 grains or like 1.2 grams im saying 8 inches, but it might have been a bit deeper. my scoop is about 12 inches, see pic.

Just helping out a partner 🙂 More photos on Gus's site. https://www.naturalgoldtrader.com/222-p-98-Gram-Humboldt-County-Nevada-Big-Gold-Nugget.html

I wanted to share some pics of my last hunt with the GPX-6000 as it was fun to dig a little bigger and deeper gold. This site was much different than my previous 2 gold hunts (Success in Dakota & Wyoming) as it produced quite a few hot rocks for a PI detector. Now yes I can easily spend the time to do the "lift coil as I swing across signal and listen to how fast the signal target dissipates" method (I'll post it later) or I can easily change the multiple of Settings on the GPX-6000 (very confusing detector)🤔 with the 2 timings (Normal or Difficult). Anyway, I pushed the pad on the LDC screen to DIFF and the hot rocks where gone. Pretty easy there. I ran SENS/GAIN at 10 -which is MAX and had THRESHOLD on. After about 20+ small lead birdshots (this detector is a birdshot king), I get a little stronger-slightly more broad of a signal. It immediately sparks my interest as it's a big different than the lead pellets. I book scrape the 1st inch and target is still there, boot another almost inch and still there. Now I pull the pick and take another 1 1/2" off and now am actually into what I consider virgin layer. Quick swing and yet the target comes through very easily. So as to make sure I catch it on video, I hike back to my wheels and grab the cell phone and another water. Trying to dig with an APEX (best pick on the market in my opinion) in 1 hand and the cell phone in the other, while trying to keep the phone on the hole is harder than you might think. Probably why so many people don't catch as many live digs, as you really do need a 2nd person to get the quality. Well no quality here, but I hope the video shows it? After a few digs, swing, digs swing t test and digs, I finally get the target out of the hole. I'm really excited at this time and just so sure I have my 1st really nice 1/2" nugget. The depth of the hole was approx 8" deep, maybe 10", but it was not the 12" I had said in the video as I thought a water bottle was 12" and afterwards my tape showed it to be 8". But I know the detector easily heard the signal 2 to 4 " above the target before I started digging. This piece of gold is not a solid 4.5 grammer, but is mostly gold on the one side and host rock on the bottom. A dense solid nugget of 4.5 grams should easily be able to respond much deeper as I have done it on many older SD/GP and GPX detectors. Hope you folks much success this Fall with your detecting adventures and I look forward to seeing your heavy yellow metal digs.

Ahoy! Most of you do not know me. I'm relatively new to the forums and don't post very often, so this is also an introduction. I am a recently retired veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard and the new Mining Manager for Alaska Mining & Diving Supply. I had the good fortune of being invited to a very special place. While my pictures aren't as pretty as Steve's gold, I was honored to have spent the time with him. My take came from a combination of detecting, dredging, and high-banking. Detectors used were the GPX 6000, the Equinox 800 with the 6" DD coil (talk about a scorching machine for that smaller stuff), and the new 24K from Garrett (super impressed with it). Anyhow, enough TLDR out of me... Fair winds & following seas, Bryan

Yes I posted this video last Fall and have not watched in many months. Not sure why, as this is what dreams are made of. Every one of us thinks about the day this will happen and I just so luckily was there to catch it. Even though it's not my own find, don't you think I too was a little excited. Someone is going to post a video this year of a monster found with a GPX-6000, it's just a matter of time. This particular piece would have been heard with a GPX-6000 and or any other big Minelab PI, so part of it was just getting your coil over. Realize you better be in shape as well since there was some serious hard digging going on. Man it just excites me to watch it...enjoy.

Here are some recent finds using the the Minelab GPX 6000 with the 11” monoloop coil and the Gold Monster 1000 to finish the job. What was impressive to me was how small and rough/reefy/prickly/spongy were the pieces. The location was on an extensively worked, old club claim likely pounded by every previous detector. I collected very little trash. In a half day of work, there were only two pieces of bird shot, 3 pieces of rusted iron flake, 3 bits of aluminum, and many small hot rocks found. The small hot rocks were picked up when trying to localize the targets with the Gold Monster. Only a couple larger hot rocks were heard by the GPX. This would have been different if there were much ironstone. So far, it has seemed to me that the new GPX really prefers the signal from rounded gold. Nevertheless, it was able to sniff out these very rough pieces even at sub-grain weights. They were mostly only ghost-like deviations in the threshold betwixt the warbles. (You know the kind of change that is so subtle that only your subconscious brain picks up on, but then when you focus with your conscious brain you’re not really sure, so you decide to dig anyway.) I was pushing both the machine and my attention pretty hard. This is the same area I’ve previously mentioned that causes a lot it EMI for the 6000 due to heavy overhead air traffic. The settings were Auto 2, either Normal or Difficult ground, and with the threshold on. The two largest pieces are just over 2 grains each. The rest were less than a grain each. Impressive machine.

About 80 hours of detecting in Alaska with the GPX 6000 and Garrett 24K, gold cleaned by shaking in water with soap. 1.86 Troy ounces total, much of it found by using my "scrape and detect" methodology. Garrett Goldmaster 24K at work