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This is from ....prospectingaustralia....

These 2 were detected with my Nox 800 in a hole with approx. 1ft water & 5 inches muck. Trying to dwn load short video of session but keeps getting kicked back even after trimming. On my way south in morning maybe figure it out and post later.

JW and I went for a bit of a gold hunt a couple of days ago, he managed to do well considering the area we were in and found three pieces, two of which were decent size. JW used the 15" Concentric coil on the GPZ as he was hoping for some deeper gold in the deeper ground. I was in the mood for exploring around and having some good ground coverage so I used the 12" Spiral coil rather than my usual smaller coils also on my GPZ, although this area is quite suitable for larger coils with minimal obstacles to cause problems. Here is JW's gold for the day. 0.70 of a gram. I didn't do near as good but in fact we were both pretty surprised to get anything where we were so we can't complain and at least it means there is gold there to be found, although a lot of it probably disguised as pellets 🙂 I think my focus was too much on smaller targets as I spent a lot of time digging and recovering pellets. The 12" spiral gives the typical good double blip on small shallow targets so surface pellets are easy to ignore but if they live past a scrape or two I tend to recover them just in case but the 12" can give a double blip on quite deep little pellets. I think in this case I probably should have ignored the double blips entirely and aimed for the deeper targets and not wasted so much time on the pellets 🙂 And this was ignoring the surface first scrape or two pellets so really, I ignored 3 times as many pellets as I recovered, at least. My only nugget of the day, better than a skunk! It was down a few inches. It sure wasted a lot of my time that was probably better spent looking for bigger deeper stuff, but then I may have had a skunk as the one piece of gold I did get could have easily been dismissed for a pellet. That's the advantage to less sensitive detectors and coils I guess, they fly blind over a bulk of the pellets, but often miss the smaller gold too. JW being smarter seemed to deal with the pellets a lot better than I did, he didn't get too many at all, and got more gold so his method clearly worked better. If anyone has suggestions for dealing with spots like this loaded with pellets that potentially have gold that would be helpful, probably a less sensitive coil would be a good start I guess. On the plus side, I'm helping clean the lead out of the environment.

Been camping out in Grizzly country since May 22,2022. The 6000 is killing it on the gold. Before here I was in Radersburg MT. My buddy saw a Griz, he figures was about close to 4 ft at the hips. I have been lucky not to have seen any. Did see three black bears and a Wolverine. Got game camera's up all over my claim. Won't tolerate claim jumpers. So if you hunt in Montana at all don't try to find it. I'm there every day. Next book is coming along nicely with the writing.

Hey Guys, Well I'm not sure if it's just un-motivation, heat, humidity or what, but it's been a slow summer prospecting for me to say the least. Prior to the summer, up to about May-June a partner and myself were still out hitting the goldfields religiously. I put down the GPZ 7000 for a bit and wanted to give the Minelab GPX 6000 some time, so that is just want I did prior to Summer rolling in. In just a month or so on the weekends I rounded up a nice little batch of nuggets, roughly 1.66 ounces, mostly smaller gold. I was getting really adjusted to the lightweight unit and its ability to find small gold really well. Well, now its summer, heat up to 110-115 plus high humidity, my interested drastically dropped. I have been out a few early mornings before the Sun popped up hitting some new spots in hots for a new location or patch. I found 3 lonely nuggets in 3 new locations, really thought one of them would pan out into a good spot. I couldn't tell you how many lonely nuggets I have found over the years in new washes, benches or hillsides where I spent the rest of the day thinking I was onto something. Many of the spots over the years I have returned thinking I must have missed something or just overlooked the obvious ... NOPE just not there (or within detector capability to find). I'm excited for the cool weather to roll upon us soon. There's a lot of new stuff to play with, including the new Garrett Axiom metal detector, Coiltek GoldHawk coils for the GPX 6000, Nugget Finder coils for GPX 6000 (coming soon), along with the Nugget Finder 17" Elliptical for the GPZ 7000. We carry all of these items for anyone that might be looking at some point, look us up if you don't have a source already. Here are a few pictures of some of the gold I rounded up, nothing to write home about, but it still gets the "Gold Bug" biting. P.S. I remember an old prospecting buddy, now passed once saying "Every Summer as you get older gets worse!" I think I'm starting to understand more as I get older, the Summer seem longer and hotter, maybe it's just comes with age .... Keep the coils swinging, Rob Rob's Detector Sales

Gooseberries & Gold. Went out scouting for some Gooseberries and Elderberries to make jelly. The gravels looked really good in the area for detecting, so I broke out the detector for a few hours and got a few small nuggets.

Had a great time out with a good friend and great prospector yesterday. 1st target was a pc of bird shot with Minelab Gpx 6k and stock mono coil. 2nd target was a 2.3 gram jelly bean nugget;)) Then came the onslaught of fencing and wire plus more bird shot. Second pc of gold was in a clod of hard pack mud and rock. The 1st glint of gold was a pc of slate rock that did not signal over the coil but had visible gold, in the scoop was also a small nugget that rang out over the coil. I think the 2 pcs were smashed together for a very long time and the gold imprinted onto the rock. What do you all think of this, any ideas, ever seen this before?

nothing special but these guys today put me over 1000 bits so far this season. A new personal record I was happy to reach. Last season I got close at 992. Piece count good...weight this season not too good so far, fun factor...great. I went to a spot I haven't worked for 2 years where I've pulled 300-400(?) bits a couple seasons back. Decided to get into the fringes and slow way down, beat the brush, detect the steep stuff, and basically try and slip that coil where most would avoid and got a few. Think I'll hit it again tomorrow and see if I can turn up a few more stragglers.....???

One of my lady diggers was with us in Oregon on the Field Training and getting kind of frustrated at the others finding gold. She found out it's all about the numbers. Golden smiles all around. Peg, You remember your 1st one some 15+ yrs ago up there with me?

I was recently shared some pics of GPZ-7000 gold finds from the lower 48. My customer pulled half a pound of Au last year and here is some of it. Just goes to show getting off the beaten path might find a new patch. Love the rounded slug of a whopper. I'm trying to generate GPZ-7000 buzz so I can sell the used ones I recently took in trade. The prices these used units are going for is just amazing. If I keep sharing GPZ-7000 finds, maybe the price will go up long enough for me to sell them and I can buy a few more Axioms for my customers.🤣 Hey, I've said it before. If you are happy and successful with your detector, then keep being happy. Thanks for allowing me to share some Success Bill.

Been 106 degrees or so where I live but I think I'll try and get out early to see what I can find before my upcoming knee surgery next Tuesday. I know if I don't, then I'm going to beat myself up thinking "now I have to wait and wait before I can go back out". This is an area I have found 2 nuggets, the largest 34+grams. I have 2 people with 6000's who want to go out when temps are cooler who will split the 'finds' with me and also let me try their 6000. In reality My EQ800 is more suited for the area as there is a LOT of small wire, tacks, hot rocks etc. BUT the 6000 detects WAY deeper, so what to do? I think I would maybe regret buying a 6000 as where I detect is so full of hot rocks and trash. In the past I had a 5000 and as I have said on DP, I really really regretted ever buying that machine! I sold it and the guy I sold it to sold it and bought a 6000. The only way to justify the expense in my mind is to travel to areas like Nevada and Arizona.....still thinking this strategy over. Will post pics of all the trash I find as well as hopefully some gold. Here is a pick of my latest find this year with EQ800.

Just looking over all the gold I have been able to recover with the new Garrett Axiom and this one kept me intrigued. Finally noticed an award I won at a metal detecting hunt back in the 90's and it's the Legend Jimmy Sierra Normandi. If any of you were able to meet the guy and or better yet, hunt with him, you know you were walking among Legends, now we realize. The Axiom runs smooth, is one of the faster Ground Balance high end PI detectors and has been able to handle the soils in the 3 states I've used it, with ease. If any of you knew or know of Mr. Normandi, you're blessed. We detected England together for a few years in the 90's Hats off to Garrett again for another fine detector and one that is very comparable to the higher end detectors from the other manufacture, but at a better price point. If you are wanting to get on Gerry's Detectors list for the new Axiom, let him know. Yes he'll be offering the new Military 15% discount as well. I used the 13" DD coil, GAIN at 6, FINE GOLD Timing, Ground Tracking Off. Nugget was only 5 or 6" and clear signal. This kind of gold is not really dense and so many PI detectors have issues with it when compared to a dense nugget.

Early morning dive today and second time on the seabed with the D2. Nothing to say about the Anderson shaft...Just amazing. Talking about the D2,I found useful to use the pitch tone and the treshold to make it as similar as possible to the analog oldie in my hearth... I'd say that numbers are almost not relevant, cause with this machine I just dig it all now... Happy for the first piece with it, especially for the damn place where dozens of competitors already sucked dredging all the shines days ago...This actually means that with proper tuning and some luck, if there's something more,You can still pull it out with the D2. Really scarce time for me now and no video for today... Sorry... Cheers from Europe Skull 💀

Halfway thru season now. 834 micro bits from private property. GPX6000 got 5-10 of these before I parted ways with it, the rest using tools in pic. We'll weigh up the totals around Thanksgiving.... Good luck out there......

Hey Guys/Gals, Here in the Southwest, it's now hot (over 100+ degrees) and higher humidity due to the Summer Monsoon storms. That being said, many are still out roaming the goldfields during the early morning hours in hopes for a few gold nuggets. A friend and I are still out and about, hunting in the morning hours until the heat/humidity or the storms run us out. Spending most of the time in the gully bottoms, the bedrock can get as high as 140-150 degrees making it difficult to stay on the ground too long. This has been a weird year, we have yet to see a single Rattlesnake to date. I have seen just about everything else, lizards, small rodents, bugs and other snakes, but no Rattlesnakes to boot. I'm not sure if it's the drought or what, but normally my friend and I would run across dozens of Rattlesnakes by this time. I'm not complaining, just seems weird this year, but maybe we just have been lucky to miss them. On another note, I stumbled across this nice gold nugget a few weekends ago. We were metal detecting with the Minelab GPZ 7000's in a new area and I got this faint signal right in the center of the wash bottom. I almost didn't dig it, as I haven't found a single nugget prior to this targets, so normally I'm not going to dig deep targets right out in the center of any gulch unless I have a reason to believe there is gold. I guess I have to be happy about this one, it was well over a foot deep on bedrock. The nugget was just over 1/4 ounce in weight, nothing huge, but sure was a surprise to say the least! The nugget lead us into a new area that has potential and paid for gas (almost $6/gallon). A few other smaller gold nuggets were also found not shown. Keep in mind, hunting this time of year, make sure you hydrate well, wear light clothing, pack enough liquids, wear sunscreen, gloves, hat and snake gaitors. These are just some recommendations for all the years of searching the desert regions during the Summer. I also recommend also hunting with a friend if possible and carrying 2-way radios so you can communicate back in forth and tell your buddy when you find that big gold nugget! Wishing you all a beautiful gold nugget under that searchcoil. Keep it swinging, Rob

Gold prospecting hobbyists find moving further afield in the Kimberley still pays handsomely https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-07/prospecting-for-kimberley-gold-outback-rise-metal/101209176

yesterday i got out with the 6k for a 4 hour hunt on an old patch i found 27 years ago or so and was able to find an extension of it. got 4 for the day.the biggest on on top was the last one of the day. the other nuggets in the pic are recent finds. mostly with the 6 but a few crumbs with the monster. a lot of my hunts only seem to be 1 or 2 bits and that's it. the 2nd pic is me looking rough after a hot hunt. my buggy, set up for prospecting.

13 oz @ 24" with the 6000 11" coil. Who said it was just a flys*t detector? :) With property owner John: Ended up 10 ozs after the acid bath with approximately an oz in detached bits-

Don't know this guy (think i met him at a detecting rally). This clip seems to go nowhere then wham, big nugget. Way to go Chuck. Edit, seem he changed clips will ad it if found. It's about a four ounce nugget that he got soon after they started swinging.

I saw the weather report was going to cool off from 100+ degrees to less than 90 with a nice breeze today so I got up at 4AM and went to the El Paso mountains (Randsburg side). Metal detected with the EQ800 where I found 2 nuggets before (34+ grams this year) to try my luck again. I found the largest nugget dead center in a "wash" so I went back over the wash using 'all metal' and discrimination again. Then I went up and down the sides that drain into the wash quite awhile. I found lots of targets and will post a picture. I dug way more than necessary...once you've got a reading on some targets you really don't have to dig more of the same! However, to 'fill-in' the picture I dug more and also I find a 22 bullets read about the same as gold so I dug them too. Notice all the teeny tiny bits of wire...I am told these really set a 6000 off..I know my EQ has a robust sound! Could have skipped some of those! PS: Got a reply from someone that only 2 nuggets doesn't justify the expense of a 6000 and he is correct. The biggest concern is all the trash in that area and I thought that the sides draining into the bottom of the wash would be good to detect with a 6000 as there is way less trash. I found this to be correct however there are still a LOT of bullet/lead pieces. I know the 6000 goes WAY deeper than the EQ so at some point I will take some "volunteers" back there to go over the sides with their 6000's.

I have been in denial, but with temperatures hitting over 100 degrees on a daily basis I finally have to admit the winter detecting season in the Southern California and Arizona deserts is over. It has been a fun year, and I have met a lot of good people through the clubs I belong to, Bill Southern's YouTube patreon group and just randomly in the middle of nowhere. I have detected mostly with the GPX 6000 and GM 1000. I just love getting out into nature. The thrill of being in a beautiful area with the sense of adventure and the chance to find stuff is exhilarating. My best gold finds were a patch of eight small nuggets in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains, a 4.1 gram nugget with two small nuggets (.2 and .3 grams) each nestled less than six inches away near Yuma, a 17 gram complete chondrite meteorite with regmaglypts and contraction cracks from Coyote Dry Lake, a "perfect" old tin can with solder seam and applied top, a mule shoe found at the top of a high hill in the middle of the Vulture Mountains in Arizona and a bird band in Gold Basin that I reported. I got a bunch of other small nuggets but the artifacts and animals really help me get through those days when I get skunked. I will be making trips to Northern Nevada and the Yuba this summer. See you there!

Last night I got this very strong feeling that I should go hunt a local beach. Memorial Day weekend is over, and most people have left this area. There is a very small beach near me, it's only about 200 feet long but it's public. I was here last fall and cleaned out most of the junk. Today started out pretty cool but it's going up in the 90s. I got out early hoping no one would be there, and no one was. Got out on the beach and almost immediately got a 13/14 on the Equinox (I didn't want to take time dressing up the Deus 2), and dug my first gold ring, this band with Roman numerals: guess it's a custom date ring or something. I see them for sale for about $350. I swung back over the hole, and got another 13/14, couldn't believe it. I dug a few more inches down (they were 6-8" deep) and got another one! It's a 14k Keepsake, probably from Walmart. No matter, it's gold. Got a total of 5 grams: Covered the whole beach, including the water to about knee deep. Saw some young jellyfish in there so I didn't venture out too far. Got a couple of toy cars, a Matchbox and a Hot Wheels. Here's the trash: I managed to wipe this place out in the 3 hours I was there. 😀 people started showing up so I left. Settings: Beach 1 Sensitivity 24 on the dry, Beach 2 sensitivity 22 in the water. I found nothing in the water but the sinker and a rusty nail. Follow your hunches, y'all... 🤣

Yesterday JW suggested we take our GPX 6000's out and compare them to ensure mine is now working properly as I've had no confidence in it after my woes. Unfortunately we were unable to compare our 11" coils like for like as his coil is still away for warranty replacement, it must be 3 weeks now and no sign of a replacement, they just have no stock to swap it for which is pretty poor, but with the number of faulty ones I've seen on Facebook I'm not at all surprised they have no stock as it's not a coil they'd make a lot of as extras seeing everyone gets one with the detector. JW suggested we go to an area he's used his 6000 a lot with the 11" before it died so he would know how mine should behave to see if anything is out of the ordinary. I just wanted to use his detector for a bit to see if EMI was as troubling with it as it was with mine, so I took it for a spin with the Minelab 17" coil on it, I found it was no different with it's EMI behaviour to mine, in fact I thought it was worse but I guess that's to be expected, a bigger coil. We were quite close to a standard normal power line, not the high voltage transmission ones like at the other area that I wanted to wrap the GPX around a tree and say goodbye to it for good. JW had a fair while on mine checking it out and doing factory resets and just experimenting with it, he thought it ran similar to his with it's EMI behaviour so I guess it is how it is, he had my threshold running reasonable, much better than it was at the other location that's for sure. The other spot with the transmission lines is my favourite area but it just suits the GPZ better as it doesn't care at all about the transmission lines, even right near them its as if they barely exist and you can run it with the normal coil you'd use and your normal settings. The GPX requires the DD and adjusted settings so it makes no sense to use the GPX there, the same reason I didn't like using my 4500 there. Once JW had approved my GPX I felt a little more confident in it, knowing that more ratty threshold is normal, I'm just not good on ratty detectors and feel I'll always miss the faint targets with them by comparison to more stable detectors where as JW doesn't mind a more ratty detector, experience level differences I would guess. I had another confidence booster, the Avantree Torus speakers, I've never been much of a headphone person and the ML-100's that come with the GPX have a high pitched hiss all the time once connected to the 6000 which would give me a headache listening to that all day but the Torus speakers are perfect sound, no hiss and very clear audio and easy to hear even in a noisy environment, where we were has a rushing river nearby with quite noisy water sound in the background but the Torus was fine, perfect in fact. Quick and easy to pair with good sound quality and volume level, I was able to turn the GPX volume right down to minimum to stabilize the machine even more and run the Torus on the volume level that suited me. One thing I will point out is with the Torus on you'll like finding 22 shells, sure the noise is booming but the Torus gives you a shoulder massage every time you sweep over one so you'll find yourself swinging over them multiple times enjoying the vibrating massage 🙂 I like the Torus so much I'm going to use my Bluetooth transmitter on the GPZ and use them on it too, so I can finally retire my harness that was only there as a way to hold my SP01 and speakers. The neck gap on them is huge, designed for someone with a neck like Shrek I think and my Pelican neck is a bit skinny for them but they held on perfectly fine and I had no concerns of them coming off. I'd highly recommend anyone considering these things to give them a try, I doubt you'll be disappointed. They even talk to you 🙂 It started to rain a bit while using them and they're not water resistant but I just put my jumper over top of them and the sound came through it perfectly fine (not sure what Americans call it) and Kiwi's never even know what I mean when I say jumper as it's a Queensland/Australia term as far as I can tell. Once we'd done tinkering comparing detectors we started detecting, I wandered off 20 or so meters away from JW so I didn't interfere with his detector and started detecting some bedrock. I was running my GPX in Auto as if I tried manual 10 or Auto+ it became a bit too unstable for my liking I guess due to the nearby power lines. It wasn't long and I had a good target noise, super faint but very repeatable and after scraping away all the soil off the bedrock I was pretty sure it wasn't a pellet, I started breaking away the schist to try get down to it, I was attacking for for about 20 minutes and I guess JW noticed as he came over, I told him what's going on and showed him my target response at that time, it had improved to a point it was very obvious after smashing some bedrock away. He said lets check my 17" coil over it and see how it responds, so he waived the coil over it, nothing at all, he pushed the edges right into the cracks in the bedrock and nothing, he spent a bit of time trying to get a response from the target and he couldn't get one. We fired up my GPX again and waived it over it and straight away a reasonably good response. After seeing that I'm glad I didn't buy the 17" coil seeing we mostly hunt smaller gold it's not near got the sensitivity of the 11" on this stuff. to be completely blind to this piece when the 11" was getting it pretty easily. JW had also lost a couple of targets he was recovering with the 17" coil so we went over to them with the 11" and tried to find them, the 11" found one of the two lost targets straight away. JW then hung around to help recover the target, he's a lot better at getting gold out of bedrock than I am, I'm not aggressive and hack away at it slowly as I'm so scared I'll lose the nugget, it's happened before 🙂 He just smashes the hell out of it and gets it out quickly. It didn't take him too long and he had it out, as per usual with the GPX once the target is near the coil it ROARS on it, a few inches away and it's a quiet response so once out we had it in no time. The dug out bit of bedrock is below the coil in the photo above. The nugget circled. That's where it was, I was so surprised the 17" coil had no response on this nugget when in there, it was probably on its side in a layer of the schist but still, the 11" performed so much better. This is the nugget. I'm confident the GPZ with my favourite little 8" would have hit this far easier than the GPX did, it wasn't what I'd call deep but it was faint on the GPX and missed entirely by the 17" even with some of the bedrock broken away. Next up I kept detecting around this same bedrock and it falls off a bit of a cliff down to the river below, it's pretty wild on the way down but I went off the edge a bit as I could see an area I could start to get down and detected one of the many ledges on the way down, I found a few pellets down there but also a nugget. It was very shallow and a louder signal than a pellet. It was really only a couple of pick scrapes to remove the grass and I had it, it's lucky I wasn't being lazy ignoring the first pick scrapes assuming they're pellets. The reason I didn't ignore it and I ignore many pellets is the pellets the GPX finds harder to detect, sure it booms on them when you first go over them as they're close to the coil, you do a couple of pick scrapes and move the pellet into a pile of soil and the target signal drops off dramatically to a point they can entirely disappear or be very hard to locate compared to the screaming signal when they're near the coil so you find yourself flattening out the pile. It's a bit of a giveaway with lead pellets I think as gold tends to remain a decent signal as it's not as difficult of a target as a small sphere like a lead pellet. Here is a video of the spot the nugget was, not usual for me to go off edges like this I usually leave the mountain goat stuff for JW 🙂 My threshold was pretty savage in this video, I did a factory reset not long after this as it was starting to go wild. Good ol' Geosense. It's amazing doing a factory reset fixes it up when no amount of noise cancels will. I hope its a bug they can fix and a firmware update comes out some day. I decided I'd go back up to where I found the first one and give it another go, a couple of meters along the same run of bedrock I found another faint target signal that lived beyond clearing the dirt off the schist bedrock. Because I'd just only done the same thing I knew this was going to be gold so I did some filming. I didn't film the entire process as I'm very slow getting gold out of bedrock 🙂 This is the better video of the two to watch as it gives a better idea of the recovery I switch to manual 10 in the video from Auto and you'll see the target response improve, I just preferred hunting in Auto while I'm still getting used to the more ratty threshold of the GPX over the GPZ even though I know I'm taking a performance hit doing so. And the happy snaps. This one was a bit deeper than the last one, took me a long time to smash it out. A bit more of a ball nugget, again the GPZ would have hit it easily. It was now starting to rain a little bit and likely snowing on the mountains above us so our day we nearing the end, we only started around Lunch time so I was pretty happy with my results. JW at this stage had given up on the 17", I guess seeing it entirely miss the first target I got wasn't really encouraging. He'd put on the 14" DD now, I'm sure he wished his 11" wasn't away on warranty at this stage as he'd not found anything yet. I went back towards where we stored our bags and started detecting around there and found my last nugget of the day, another very simple target, it was in someone elses dig hole spoils, they'd dug up the nugget and rejected it, I guess they thought because it was in soil and not on or in the bedrock it wasn't gold, so I recovered it and it was my biggest of the day 🙂 It was right near where the cliff drops off to the river below. I checked with JW, it wasn't his dig hole so someone else had been there, he did point out when we arrived it looked like someone else had been there recently as there was dig holes that were not his so someone donated me a nugget. So overall my GPX was working much better at this spot, it still had its Geosense quirks and is nowhere near as stable as the GPZ, and the GPZ I know is just as sensitive if not more so than the GPX when its using small coils on the GPZ, it'll be interesting to see the improvements with the smaller coils on the GPX. Where the GPX appears to be more sensitive is small pellets near the coil with the way it really roars on them, but any depth on those little pellets and reality sets in, it's just hyper sensitive to targets close to the coil, it'd be good for bedrock hunting with that behaviour. My total for the afternoon. We bailed out because it started raining and only started at lunch time so a good result for me. JW found one little guy at .19 of a gram and that was once he changed over to the 14" DD, he was certainly digging away all day though, I could hear a lot of smashing on the bedrock! Damn pellets! My junk level was really low, I was rejecting known pellets by the strong pellet signal dropping off to next to nothing in the dig out pile quirk the GPX has. Those 22 shells give a nice massage with the Torus 🙂