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  1. Yesterday, JW and I went for a bit of a hike to a remote spot in the mountains, I hadn't been here at all since my GPX 4500 a few years ago, and JW had been a small few times since trying out his GPX 6000 and found a few bits. The hike in is what puts it on the backburner all the time 🙂 It's a close drive from JW's house, but a big steep uphill hike, and from my house it's about an hour's drive so by the time I get home I'm stuck to the car seat, man it's hard to stand up after a massive hike and an hour's drive home after a day's detecting with the hike back to the car, at least the hike back is downhill all the way. I ran the car's seat heater the whole drive home to help the muscles recover! JW has a few years of age over me, but he is certainly fitter. It's a really cool place to go though, with great views of the surrounding mountains, unfortunately I can't put up scenery photos for fear of revealing the location to prying eyes, as you can work out the basic location by using the bigger mountains to get an idea of where I was. There has been a bit of mining in the area, and reworked in the depression years, but the earlier mining was done with a lot of work and water monitors (canons) blasting water at the hillsides to recover the gold. The Chinese hit it pretty hard too, staying longer than the other miners going over it again. It's interesting how they get somewhere, then just stop. The soils an interesting colour, almost white. Quite the drop off here down to the ground below, but oddly at least I think you'd be crazy not not to detect these high areas, as gold often pops up in the most unusual of places. My first bit of gold for the day was a bit of a surprise to me, it was a fairly faint signal, yet it was very shallow, I thought it is more likely a pellet although this area barely has any pellets at all, in fact it barely has any targets, if you get a target the chances are high its gold, aside from the occasional old bit of miner's junk like cans and a few nails most targets are gold so it's certainly a dig it all location. I took a little video of the target, so weak of a signal for the size of the gold I thought, although I'm more used to using the 10x5" Coiltek which is more sensitive but still, I was pretty disappointed. This is the little scrape of a hole it came from. The piece of gold. And its weight, quite a reasonable size piece for me, anything over .1 is pretty decent size for me 😛 I was so taken back by how weak the signal on it was I tested it this morning with the Algoforce to see how well it would do, even though it has the larger 10" round coil on it, I thought the Algoforce gave a better signal response on this particular piece. It's a bit of rough looking piece. The other interesting thing is it was right next to someone's previous dig hole, probably JW or I, we were likely using older technology at the time, as I'd only been here with my 4500 which no doubt would miss this piece of gold. It's very unlikely this person didn't go over the nugget and they missed it. The joys of newer technology. Next piece was in the path you walk on to hike to this area, there are tracks all over the place, mostly from old miners I guess however now they're hiking trails and go all through the area, you can even walk from one of my favourite ski fields to this area on tracks. This is it's dig hole, another very shallow target, an OK signal. This is the little guy Smaller than the last bit, but a much better signal. Just ignore the shaft twist in this photo, it's a feature of the 6000 🙂 After that I was walking along detecting the path, but no other gold to be found in that particular area, I did find old boot tacks though which is pretty cool, one spot had a bunch of them in one hole so I gave up recovering them, that miners boots must have fallen apart at that spot 🙂 The gold spot is the dig hole just above the pick in this photo. Here is a little video of it, I haven't watched the videos back yet but it likely shows this one had a better target signal than the previous bigger bit I found. It was pretty easy to film gold finds here as there is so little junk about, so filming bits of digs is worthwhile knowing they're likely gold. Next piece was on top of a little ridge It was my biggest bit of the day, had trouble carrying it for the hike back to the car. Deepest of the holes too. A smooth bit. This is its spot. And a little video of it, the second target next to it was one of 2 pellets I found all day. That was my last bit for the day, the day felt like it went really quick though, we finished up detecting about 7pm, but both of us didn't realize the time and thought it was about 5pm I guess. A benefit or a negative depending on how you look at it coming from the GPZ and GPX 5000 is the 6000 can have the pick so close to the coil it's not funny, it always surprises me how close the pick can go, even when you lay it down recovering targets so while using it I have a belt attached pick holder and in this location I am glad I did, as sometimes its half an hour between targets so nice to holster your pick. The super strong magnet I've got in my pick handle makes life easy too, if I'm using it more regularly, I can just attach it to my pick holder using the magnet to save the effort. It stays there when walking around as long as the pick doesn't bottom out on the ground. So other notable things from the day, this piece of quartz was so weird, it doesn't show up as well in the photo but its flat smoothed off and much like a tile or bench top, and really glossy, so weird. You can see the shine on that one side, but the entire flat surface of it is like that, and its smooth and flat although the photo doesn't show that well. It's like someone's cut it smooth and painted it with polyurethane. And my junk for the day, there was also a nail which I left behind and you can see why I say it's a dig it all location. I'm used to digging hundreds of pellets on the farm land locations, this spot, 2 🙂 Both big pellets too. And last but not least, some old miners' tins I found, I left them where they were, a bit of history. I think this tin can was never opened. This one looked like a giant sardine tin. I think I'll get a bit fitter so the hike and day of swinging a detector around going up and over hills and mounds of soils doesn't wear me down so much and go back to this spot more often, I do really like going there, it just takes it out of me. It's very difficult to E-Bike there too as much of the path is on a cliff side with a big drop and very skinny path no more than 40cm wide in many spots, I've done it before but ended up walking the bike much of the way as I wasn't crazy enough to ride it through the steep drop off areas. Today I'm completely jelly legs and walking is a challenge 🙂 JW doubled my gold count, he came away with 6 pieces, pretty small ones too, he was using the GPX 6000 and 10x5" Coiltek coil, a better choice of coil for the day, I think. I only had the NF coil on as it was left on there from a previous time. It was good to take the 6000 out though, leave it much longer and the old motor may seize from lack of use.
  2. I recently had some doubts in using the main detector and was pondering the possibility of eliminating some by selling. In detail, I complained of some high ID response that I accidentally dug up in the absence of decent signals. The last victorious session, brought me a 6.49-gram 18K wedding ring and by sheer luck, with an amazing 80, I deigned to dig it out. So this morning I decided to go out with a dear old detector, one that doesn't mess around, and the numbers are shocking considering the spot, the devastated condition of the clay and rocks, and lousy visibility. After 4 1/2 hours on the bottom, thanks to the use of hooka compressor, I flushed out 4 pieces totaling 20 "dirty" grams. The numbers speak for themselves, and I am beginning to have clearer ideas.... I will add no more...
  3. A Kiwi boy in far north Queensland. D4G
  4. Just curious of people's opinions of what size gold is too small to mess with detecting. What size piece takes longer to dig, than is worth your valuable time searching for larger pieces? Does it depend on the history of the size of gold in that area? Is every tiny bit as satisfying as the next, or do you feel some are a waste of time? Are you in it for the challenge, or trying to make a profit? I'm not trying to come to any conclusions from this post. Just curious how people look at this hobby, or profession (if your fortunate enough to call it that).
  5. Crikey Dickin's! ....Steve is at it again at Palmerville
  6. Thought I would share a pic of a 1/2 ounce slug I found one afternoon this week. We have a gold area here in my home town which is called McDonalds flats, some really nice decent sized nuggets and specimens have come off here with metal detectors over the past 20 years, my biggest being a 4 ounce piece which I found with the SD 2000 in 1995. We have had some extremely hot weather here the past few weeks but thanks to a rainy spell the temps have dropped dramatically, so I've been enjoying the cooler weather before the mercury starts to climb again!! I suppose you could say I went to McDonalds and got a McNugget!!
  7. In the common imagination, beach hunting is based on the first few feet of shoreline, sometimes at the top, sometimes at the edge of an eroded step, sometimes in flooded pools after a decent tide. All of this in my area is out of the question and being forced to enter the water and totally submerge, today, after three sessions I summarize what I am observing. On the first day, in a spot I hadn't been to in over 10 years, I pulled out a triple ring and amazingly not far from where I found a twin 10 years earlier. Finally, the first piece of 2024🤔. On the second day, a really thin ring, different spot, and really unusual water depth. It all ends today, with the third session in the same spot as yesterday, but this time even deeper at about 5 meters and very far from the shore. A man's wedding ring, after a century of other much thinner and lighter finds. The outer sandbar may remain the final frontier. Rarely, pits can open at such depths, and if they do, it is generally because of a play of currents with which one should not mess around. I am considering a floating platform of the bodyboard kind, to be kept on the surface as a safety device for a return to shore or at least to have something to cling to effortlessly and return to shore with the help of the board and fins. By the way, finally some shines.
  8. Today I took the Algoforce for a gold hunt, it wasn't the location I was wanting to go to as the one I wanted to go to I had more confidence of finding something, its temperature was going to be too hot, then I saw a closer spot right near JW's house was cooler when I checked its forecast, I couldn't resist and decided to go, although I had little hope of finding anything, being so close to home for JW and his uncanny ability to find all available gold he doesn't leave much behind. The first thing I did seeing this area has powerlines right through it was to test the Algoforce under them, results can be seen here, I must say though, very impressed! I had a hunch it would be good, it's one of the few detectors and only PI that I have that I can use inside my house for testing. I next found a 22 shell, pretty typical here and generally screamer targets, sometimes I'm lazy and reject them, risky move but I can get lazy in the heat. Seeing I was digging it all, the general rule for a new detector I dug it up, pretty neat video, a 22 shell comes up with a Target ID of 22 😛 I later tested the same 22 shell on the Sadie, and was pleased to see it came up 22 on an entirely different coil, a 10" Spiral vs a 8x6" bundle wound. You've probably heard me whinge about the green hot rocks in the past, so I wanted to see how it goes on them, the 6000 can't balance them out in normal but does to a degree in difficult, not completely gone but better than normal, The Algoforce on the other hand, bang.... gone! bye bye Green hot rock! To top it off once balanced out I put a little shotgun pellet I'd found on top of it, a giant big green hot rock and it still was able to detect the pellet as if the rock didn't exist. I notified JW I was there seeing he lives very close nearby and he popped down for a detect and to catch up, he had his 6000 and 10x5" Coiltek with him, a good combination for the area. He was also kind enough to bring along an assortment of GPX coils that I don't have to try including the Sadie (mine still hasn't arrived from the NZ Dealer) and a 6" Coiltek round mono. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to test out the mono which I'll explain later but quickly swapped over from my 10" X-coil to the Sadie to try it out, seeing it was the manufacturer tested coil on the detector I wanted to see how it goes. The Sadie is very light, quite nice to swing such a little coil in the rougher areas, knowing it has hot edges is a nice attribute too. In my first video up the top with the 22 shell I explain about the coil cable and how the Algoforce detects it when you pick up and put down the detector with the 10" fitted, I even accidentally left pinpoint mode on when sitting it down and the detector screamed, it was sitting there pinpointing the coil cable and had an ID for it 🙂 Seeing the pinpoint mode doesn't need motion it just screamed on the cable. I later discovered when switching to the Sadie the coil cable doesn't get detected near as much, those with a Sadie probably will barely notice when lifting up and putting down their detector, whereas with the 10" spiral it screams. Pinpoint mode will obviously behave the same with the non-motion. The 10" spiral is much more sensitive than the Sadie, but I already knew this, if someone's after maximum sensitivity to small targets size doesn't matter as much as windings do, the Coiltek 9", 10" X-coil or 12x8" EVO will likely be the most sensitive, never used the 12x8" EVO only owning the 14x9" Evo but I'd likely give it the tiny target sensitivity over the Sadie too. That's not saying the Sadies a bad coil, its edge sensitivity will give it great benefit over the far less sensitive edges of the spiral coils so if golds up against rocks it will win, it's also good for poking and prodding with the sensitive edges and it may handle some bad ground better too. I found a little bit of gold under a rock not long after putting the Sadie on, It wasn't detected from above the rock, I was just lucky enough to flip a rock that had a little nugget (flake) under it. JW had also recovered a little nugget, one he had detected some time ago in the schist bedrock with the GPZ and I think it was the 15" CC, he ended up not being able to find it, thought it was lost and moved on, the coil was probably just too big and awkward for his little dug hole in the bedrock or something to get close enough to it, but it was gone, today he managed to get it with the 10x5" Coiltek on the 6000 smashing out more rock. It was smaller than the one I'd just found, quite a bit smaller. Time went by and nothing for either of us, so I explored further and climbed down a bit of a ledge and found a target, I was trying to get it out and it sank down into a hole in the rock of the ledge to the next layer below, I was trying to get it out learning right over hoping I don't fall into the prickly briar rose bushes below, I'd be in big trouble then, and I kept poking the Sadie in under the layer and it kept sounding off so I thought I was hitting the target, so I'd slowly slide out some soil and it would keep sounding off the same, it turned out it wasn't sounding off on the nugget, it was sounding off as the coil cable was getting crushed down and touching the coil. It is vital with the Algoforce to have a nice secure coil cable that can't go near the coil, it just shows how sensitive it is, the GPZ with small coils like the 8" and 10" is the same especially lifting up and putting down the detector so I'm a bit used to it. I gave up that method and risked climbing down to the bottom of the little ditch in among the prickles, sadly 3 of them stabbed into my hand, I plucked them out one by one but by the 3rd one I had a problem, it had stuck straight into a vein, when I pulled out the rose thorn a big squirt of blood shot out like a jet, then it swelled up rapidly like a balloon under the skin, it got quite big, about half a golf ball, then in a seconds the swelling went down a fair bit to a blackish lump, and its stayed that way. I felt quite sick at this point, really dizzy, so I just used the Sadie from down there where I could get into the gap between the rocks better, retrieved the target and climbed back up the ledge leaving my detector and pick on the ledge to collect from half way down from the top, I climbed up with my scoop in hand with the target in it. Once at the top I was so dizzy I just sat down for about 10 minutes with the scoop sitting next to me hoping it wasn't some junk. Once I recovered enough, I climbed down and retrieved my detector and pick and climbed back up to recover the target from the scoop. I was so pleased it was a piece of gold after all of that. Here is the video of it all, I quite big bit for what's left in this area, that's for sure. I felt really weird sort of dizzy sort of drunk but it could be a combination of heat exhaustion along with the weird injury so I walked back to JW and told him what happened and showed my nugget, he suggested I had a sit down which I had planned to do, I sat another 20 or so minutes and just felt worse so I call over to him that I'm going to head home cutting my day short, I stopped for a snack on some wild black berries on my walk to my car as I hadn't yet had lunch. I felt horrible the entire drive home, almost vomited half way home going around the lake which is a very bendy road for about 30 minutes along the side of the lake. I'm coming right now, no longer dizzy that I've cooled down and had a long cold shower and plenty to drink, I had run out of drink very early in the day too so perhaps I was dehydrated. Next time more drink bottles coming than just the one little one. So here is my hand now A bit black and swollen still. I really like the Algoforce, it's an incredible detector for the price, a real game changer for people that don't need the absolute best of the best yet still want a very high-performance PI machine with cool features and at a very cheap price. The more I use it the more I like it. I really hope I'm the first paying customer that's found gold with the detector, that'd be pretty cool.
  9. This one will put a smile on ya dial....biggest piece Lee has ever found Savage Prospecting Click to 7.30 to get the best bit 😉
  10. I was called by a successful client old pupil of mine and he was telling me to start a new thread as I had posted this to a recent post. Only reason I even wrote the reply was one of the forum members had asked the questions. I realize there are many states, counties, areas and minerals in the USA and not all tailing piles are the same. But in all honestly, I've probably hiked of while swinging more than most of you and in many different areas. Heck I even wrote an article many years back in a magazine (when they existed) about how I hunt such piles. Not sure where it is, but many new machines I've tried since then and I still come up with the same conclusion. So here goes and I hope others will chime in with their experiences. Heck, I even know of a few of you who have found your biggest gold with a certain detector, even though you had a bigger one...and yes you also took our 3 Days Field Training. Hopefully some of you newer folks will learn from this and who knows, maybe an old salty member may as well. The majority of my bigger gold finds have come from tailing piles. I've detected dredge and hand placer digging piles in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Nevada with success. If I were to hunt California, Arizona and Wyoming tailing piles, I'd do what I've learned in the 30 years of chasing bigger gold and do what I usually do, I'd run Discriminating VLF's and find even more. Yes I have used PI's and even ZED with Success at such locations, but I run out of energy much sooner, as shovel heads at 3 1/2 feet are Ball Breakers, grease buckets over 4' are heart attaches. Here's the funny thing about the bigger machines. I've yet to actually find a bigger chunk of gold beyond the depths of my VLF's capabilities. I'm sure it has been done by someone, but my Success speaks for itself. I run into folks in the field on occasion and they swear up and down, those said sites can be PI'd. OK, then why is my VLF Success 10X of theirs???? Sometimes a little Success with a PI in tailing does not mean that's the best way to do it. Problem is, some folks are happy with a little bit of Success and too hard headed to learn and or teach themselves a new style. OK with me, as I'll keep doing what works for me and they can keep doing what works for them. Not all tailing piles are the same and many are not even in good size gold nugget/specimen country. Many folks forget this fact. In many of the tailing I detect, the highly mineralized soils have already been removed, so the VLF's capabilities are optimal which = a closer performance comparison of said VLF vs PI. Again, different parts of the country in the US, the piles vary. It's just that in the regions and states I've detected tailing piles, I've been able to get best results with the Discriminating VLFs. - A lighter and faster VLF detector can be used for longer periods of time - The Iron ID VLF's save time in identifying ferrous and non ferrous targets. - Today's newer discriminating VLF's with target Identification can be taken a step above and helps me separate the nonferrous targets and saves me more time not having to dig certain non ferrous targets. - In many tailing piles, the mineralized dirt has been removed and performance of VLF vs PI is not as big a difference. - Very important and not mentioned by most. Invisible gold - It's out there in way more places than most realize, but you don't know as your detector can't see it. Many older PI detectors and even a couple current models can not see or will respond to such gold. I have numerous multi ounces pieces a VLF responds to and bigger detectors can't or do it but not as well at a depth as the VLF. I love detecting tailing & hand work placer piles. I highly recommend to those who have not done so to try it and be open minded when doing so. There is no right or wrong way, but do what seems to work for you. If you have a bigger PI or ZED and don't own a VLF, I know you're missing gold and in some areas, you could be missing the best gold. No sales pitch, just what I have learned from being in the field for many years. Heck I couldn't believe my own eyes when I 1st witnessed this 25+ yrs ago. Now I take a big machine and VLF everywhere I go Here's some pics of finds with a variety of detectors that I have been successful with and all were from old workings.
  11. Well, it was early, and we wanted to get out to the hills, but we had to wait. It was an election day, and you know we had to wait so that we could do our patriotic duty and vote for the lessor of two evils. Voting done were off, of course we forgot half the stuff that we normally take. We have talked about making a check list of things that we need every time we head for the hills. This particular day we are looking for a mine that we found on a map on the internet. Once in the hills we have no problem finding the site, as we are guided by a reference satellite photo and info from DEQ. After looking things over and making plans to come back we are off looking for other mine sites. We are following the road till we are at its highest point when we come around the corner and low and behold there is one snow drift (the only snow drift left on the mountain) about 40' in length, course back about 100 yards there is another road that goes around this spot. But no, we stop to size it up and I says to Ralph (my prospecting partner) (name changed to protect his identity), go for it Ralph, you can make it. He locks in the 4-wheel drive and off we go. Once we get a full pickup length into it, I realize, faster Ralph faster. We get to about the middle of the drift, and oh crap, there we stop, dead in the middle. Now this is the only sight of snow left on the mountain, and we had to find it and we only have one shovel (his). After digging for a while, we find out the wheels don't touch the ground, they just go round and round, we are high centered. After digging all the snow out from all 4 wheels we gather some wood and rocks and filling in the space between the tires and the ground and after a few tries we did make it out. To pooped to go far so it was time for lunch. A little later after touring around and looking at old mine sites we set our sights on a dig hole and drag out the detectors, lots of old square nails and positive hot rocks. I'm using the GB2 with 6" coil and Ralph is using the GM4 with regular coil. After a few nails and hot rocks there's this nice Zippp zipppp and flipping to iron ID it sounds good, (just like big nails) and after thinking it's another nail out pops this little golden picker, a 4.5 gm piece. Hey this is alright. I rake some more dirt down and tell my partner, you’ve got a bigger coil, check this hole now see if there anything left. He digs a few more nails and then he moves to another spot and continues detecting, so I go back to the hole and then ZZZZZIIIIPPPPPP ZZIIPP. dang another big square nail, right! Dig a little more, run the magnet through the dirt looking for the nail, still nothing ZZZZZIIIIPPPPPP ZZIIPP now this sounds good, and I grab a hand full of dirt, check the hole nothing, got it in my hand, Hey Ralph look at this, is this what I think it is, Yup, where'd you find it, In the hole you just checked. Anyway, out pops this little, bigger picker, a 30.6 gm. Nothing else found that day. But it was a good day. Allen C
  12. Went back out to a spot where I dug a nice 1/2 oz nugget last year , had to go home a couple days after so never got to finish the dig anyway got back out today and dug up the rest of the rock and dirt a got another 6.25 grams out of the hole the small speci piece on the right came from a spot further down the wash. so all in all 7.87 grams today , a good day out in the desert today.
  13. Yesterday was a sunny day here in Eastern Oregon, but cold. I drove to the hills anyway and despite the snow (about 3 inches on the hills), was able to pull out three pieces of gold in some hillsides that were melted by full sun. Got a .7 gram, a .2 gram & and a two-inch specimen, that I guess has about .25 of a gram. Total about a gram. I'm sure there are other members that are having withdrawal symptoms like me, so I guess there is hope. It is snowing here right now, though, so we'll be shut down hereabouts for a couple of months. Was using the 6000 and swinging very slow, due to the EMI. Lots of deep trash, mostly shotgun pellets, bullets, shoe tacks, etc. I'm really pleased with this detector and the Bluetooth headphones. (A Gerry recommendation.) Had to clean the Trailblazer today though. The sun melted the roads to a muddy mire on the way home.
  14. Yesterday I went out to find a birthday nugget. I hunted all day and barely got a .11g nugget. The most significant thing was that I got it with the 15" CC Xcoil at 4-5 inches. It disappeared in the hole a couple of times before it came out. I didn't have hearing aids in as my new ones are on order.
  15. Hey guys, been a while since I've posted. Work has finally slowed down enough for me to get out, and I got to detect some places me and my prospecting buddy Josh have been researching. I've been learning a LOT, and getting deep into research. The gold is still out there, just hard to find sometimes. Here is just under a half pennyweight in chunky Oregon gold I found on Jan 3rd, 2024. I figured it would weigh less than that but it's pretty fat and surprised me when I dropped it on my scale at home. We don't always find gold, and come home with more skunks than an Alabama bloodhound. But as a lot of you know prospecting is about a lot more than finding yellow rocks. I'll post the video if it's cool with Steve!
  16. I haven’t had much luck on the gold so far this year, a few days of nothing but junk, so today I gave up exploring and went back to my best patch find for another try. I was there a few days ago with the 6000 and 10x5 and spent the day to find nothing and wanted to move away from the patch into the deeper ground but all the 10x5 will do there is find me pellets so today I tried the 12x7. The detector ran perfectly, such a contrast to prior to the EMI fix. I had spent half a day or so in this deeper ground area a year or two ago with my GPZ and 15” CC and found a few bits, one very deep one too so I had hope there was more if I spent some time there and after plenty of pellets my first 2024 gold, only shallow and small but a notch on the belt. In the hole with it a tiny pellet, not sure if I first found the pellet or the gold 😁 What I like about the 7000 and DOD coils I really miss on the 6000, the double blip it does on close to the coil pellets, saves so much time. With the 6000 I have to scrape the ground clear of grass then check it, faint target ok then scrape more soil away in this rock hard ground even though only less than an inch the faint target is now loud, and of course being so shallow a pellet, all of that avoided with the GPZ double blip. It’s truly odd how faint targets improve so much on the 6000 with so little soil removed. I gave up on the deep ground as I was only finding pellets and even larger bits of metal were quite shallow yet started off rather faint and brighten up quickly with some soil removed. I was in normal max manual sensitivity and well ground balanced. I decided to go back over my patch that I tried the 10x5 on the other day with no success, hoping the 12x7 may find something but an entire afternoon of nothing, I guess the 15cc and 8” got it all that I can find, you may remember the videos of the patch with those coils a year or so ago, ended up about 16 grams over 40 or so nuggets I think it was. I think I’m done with the 6000, I’ve given it a good chance but just prefer the 7000 especially with the 8” and 15” concentric coil so next time that’s what I’m using, hopefully my luck returns for a good 2024 on the gold.
  17. Just got back today from a trip to Nothern Nevada with my son We got several nuggets on this trip but the most interesting was the one pictured!! After my son got a very weak signal he dug out both the nugget and the scorpion at about 10 inches 1.2 grams and the biggest scorpion I have ever seen in Nevada--He was in hybernation and very much alive --but the cold slowed him down to almost a stop. We put him back in his hole unharmed --hope we dont run into him in the summer.
  18. I think my last days detecting for 2023 is now done. Gotta head off to catch up with Family for the next 2 weeks and take stock of what I'm doing next year. Single again, homeless and unsure of what direction to take. 2024 is gonna be interesting! But, my gold take has been an eye opener....almost exactly the same weight as last year, around 5.25oz but the number of pieces of gold has skyrocketed! Last year I managed to find 774 pieces...this year its 1604! Over double.....no doubt attributed to the GPX6000. Next year, I'm gonna dabble with getting a Legacy Minelab PI modded up and using CC coils or anything else that gets me depth on the big stuff. By this time next year, I'll see how that has panned out. Think I'm gonna need the money somehow lol. Just putting up a few pics of just some of the gold I've found this year. How has everyone else done? December is 'pic time' 😉 Merry Xmas everyone, and here's wishing you all a golden 2024!
  19. This time, with the newly arrived hooka compressor, I went exploring for another bit of coastline. At first glance, there was little to be done, given the imense amount of new sand underfoot and that horrible feeling of tender ground. At that point I adopted for the only decent opening, just a few meters wide and...Again a surprise✨ https://www.instagram.com/reel/C01lqe-qYcc/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
  20. My Buddy LuckyLarry’s little 9x5 coil has been on Fire, since the No-Where Patch Story! We both swing this little guy on our 6000’s. It’s very sensitive and has fair depth, for Northern Nevada’s shallow placers. But, in open Country it’s like Paddling your Life Boat in the middle of the Ocean. This hunt we started hitting the old Horse Dung Ridge Patch. It’s a Mile long Ridge that I never swung the entire length only stopping at its first patch. Larry, has some legs I’m about to the end of Horse Dung Ridge I pulled my second nugget about 10 ft apart. I turned to signal Larry of the fast two nuggets and head my way. He wasn’t on the ridge hunting the left side as I last seen him. I dug up 4 more nuggets very fast and looked for him again. I just caught a glimpse of him swinging over another Ridge way out of voice range! Back to digging nuggets and it seems like the next thing I know someone’s voice scares the hell out of me. It’s Larry with a big smile on his face. He said, looks like you found a patch as I settled down from the scare of being lost mind and tuned into my detectors sound for the next nugget. Larry, said he thinks he found a patch too and produced some very nice Quartz with ample showing of Gold. We walked back to my Buggy leaving my little patch to hunt the newly named Big Specimen Nugget Patch! Upon arrival he showed me the shallow hole that all the pieces came out of and we set off grinding the area. We swung that Ridge for 1 1/2 days with little joy! We know and inch is a Mile in this Hobby and haven’t giving up on this depleted Quartz Vein. Larry’s Specific Gravity weigh in for these 3 pieces was over 45 dwts. Mine on the left received and honorable mention 😂 But, when Two Lucky’s are on the hunt, finding that Needle in the Haystack is possible! Until the Next Hunt LuckyLundy
  21. MY GOLDEN STORY; PART TWO! MY GOLDEN STORY(PART TWO) IF YOU HAVE ALREADY READ PART ONE SCROLL TO PART TWO!!! Hello my name is Allen, I grew up in Mariposa and I’m still here(I don’t think il ever leave) I’m 29 years old and I have been prospecting since I was 13, it all started when my dad took me to the gem and mineral show at the county fair grounds. There was a roaring camp Recirculating sluice box display and a man was giving tutorials on how it works. When he saw I was curious in the item he gave me a quick demonstration. He then proceeded to try and sell me one(I was broke like most 13 year olds) I went to my dad and asked him to buy me a gold pan, I already knew he wouldn’t buy me a 100$ sluice box. he quickly said no, my dad was never into gold prospecting. Upon hearing that the man who was giving the demonstration of the sluice box came up to me with a brand new gold pan. He handed it to me and said go find some gold. I thanked him and when I got home that afternoon I immediately went down to the creek below my dads property. I dug out a pan full of material from the inside bend of the creek like I heard the old man explain earlier in his demonstration. That pan yielded me nearly 2 GRAMS!!! ADDICTED TO SHINY YELLOW ROCKS I was hooked immediately and in the first 6 months panning after school and weekends when I had free time I was able to pull 2 &1/4 ounces of placer gold from just that inside bend! All of the gold I had panned was sharp which at the time I never paid any attention to; but we’ll get to that shortly. When I was 15-16 years old in 9th grade I was really into prospecting, by that time I had been able to buy my own sluice box, 5 gallon buckets, and classifiers. I had gotten a few more ounces out of the creek and the alluvial placer deposit seemed like it would never end! BUILDING A GOLD TROMMEL One day I was told by a family friend that a nearby mine owner (it’s now a gravel plant) was told about my passion for gold prospecting and he offered to sell me a cinnamon grinder which I could turn into a trommel for scrap price. I paid 2,000$ for the 26 foot long barrel and I- beam contraption I knew nothing about. We got it home and the fabrication work began. Over the next 8 months my dad (who was now seeing I was actually pretty good at finding gold) taught me how to weld and how to make anything I ever needed from scrap iron. He is a real McGuiver, the hopper is made from welded together propane tanks, and the cut 4 foot x 2 foot slabs of 1/4” steel that came from the areas where the 3/4” expanded metal screens now are. The trommel came with a 35hp 3-phase electric motor. “That won’t work”, my dad said. So I started. And I began my search on Craigslist for a gas motor. A week later I found a 65 horsepower Wisconsin 4 cylinder engine in Sonora for 150$. It wasn’t running and the seller had no idea if it would run at all. I got a ride to acquire the engine and upon arrival I made sure the engine wasn’t seized and took it home. Growing up riding dirt bikes on a dusty road I knew how to rebuild carburetors like a professional. So I did just that and the engine started right up! The sluice box and hopper for the sluice were then added. Everything fabricated by me and my dad based off of what we had learned and inquired from the internet. RUNNING THE TROMMEL FOR GOLD!! We got a 1602 permit after finishing the trommel and getting it set up, and we ran 50 feet long and 10 feet wide of the seasonal creek I had been finding all of that placer gold in. This task took us one weekend to complete and when we cleaned out the 2 sluice boxes there was an astonishing amount of gold in the first, and none in the bottom! How much did the first sluice box obtain? 27 ounces!! Most of which was very sharp nuggets/pickers and a few jagged eraser sized quartz specimens. METAL DETECTING; Metal detecting for me wasn’t very exciting in the first 12 (YES TWELVE!!) years… I had started with a Garrett gold stinger 2 and knew absolutely nothing of how to find areas good for metal detecting that have indicators for metal detectable gold. I gave up on detecting for a few months and went back to my prospecting in creeks with a gold pan/sluice box. MINELAB; if only I were had the knowledge of how to properly run the gpx5000. I bought and sold 3 whole sets of minelab gpx5000 due to me getting discouraged when going for months in a row nearly every single day with no return. Okay now let’s get to the INTERESTING part of this exciting stories of mine which are such great memories now. SAME MINELAB; COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MACHINE! I would try for the next few years repeating my buy-sell cycle. Looking back now I would tell myself not to get discouraged. Because you might just give up on the MOTHER LODE! on September 9th of last year(2022) I had gotten the itch to prospect with my gpx5000 and look for the famed “nugget patch” everyone is so eager to find. I wasn’t 500 feet from my dads doorstep walking behind his house when I got a signal. That signal turned out to be a 2.3 gram nugget of rough gold! FINDING THE NUGGET PATCH This is where it got tricky, I had a friend of mine come over and examine the area where I found my first metal detector nugget. He had a minelab gpz7000 with a gp19 coil. He also knew a whole lot about gold prospecting, hard rock mining, geology, and metal detecting methods. He was the previous owner of the famous colorado quartz mine. Located in Mariposa California. When he got here we spent three hours metal detecting 100 feet up the slope where the nugget was found; aswell as 50 feet on each side looking for the brothers and sisters of my exciting piece of gold. When he had gotten tired he decided it was time to go down the hill and give up. “That nugget must have fallen out of some poor miners pocket or slipped out of a burlap sack full of gold.” DONT GIVE UP!! The following week I would spend some time every day walking the hill sides while swinging my gpx5000 which I had finally gotten my college degree to know how to properly tune & use it. One day I had gotten another signal, thinking it was going to be trash again I slowly proceeded to dig it up from the ground. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I pulled out a solid round 1 inch quartz-gold specimen weighing in at 13 grams! The hunt was on.. I COULD GO ON… I could go on and recount every single one of my finds and the excitement that came with them, but I could write a book by then. Long story short, It has been 1 year and 2 months since my first metal detected gold nugget, and my specific gravity gold total is over 15 POUNDS!!!(gold weight only) most of which is coarse-big nuggets and crystalline gold quartz specimens. Very few are placers. My passion has always been learning something new. CONCLUSION so here we are coming to the end of my story. I will give updates and add a few more memories a few days a week. Until then, REMEMBER, BE SAFE AND SWING LOW AND SLOW…..OH! and if your an alluvial placer lover; heavy pans!
  22. I've noticed my gold finds are changing as the detectors evolve. Back in 1996 I think, the year the SD 2000 was released I started detecting for gold. It was all solid chunky pieces then. It took me years to find my first specimen piece, only thumbnail size but I was over the moon. As the detectors progressed my finds started getting smaller but more of them. For years I couldn't better the 39 gram solid nugget found very deep with a SD 2200. After an extreme, then a GP3000, I bought a GPX 5000 and it was game on. Probably found more gold with it than all others combined. I finally got a deep 78 gram solid piece with the 5000 and 18" nuggetfinder advantage coil , and it's still my best nugget to date. Here in central west NSW larger pieces are rather scarce, for me anyway. I get to the golden triangle in Victoria and tibooburra now and again but haven't been to QLD or WA yet. Now that I'm swinging a GPX 6000 and recently a GPZ 7000 the golds getting smaller, and lighter. Mainly porous spongy gold and lots of species. My mate hates me whinging about the species because of the work getting the gold out. He reckons he would take them any day. I only do it to annoy him LOL. I'm sure there's a decent nugget with my name on it, I just haven't found it yet. Some of the GPX 5000 gold and some GPX 6000 finds and the GPZ 7000 5 OZ of the processed species And another 3.5 OZ ready to sell.
  23. We did our annual Baja trip a little early this year. We had all but written it off after last year, but Pacific hurricane Hilary this summer, gave us some hope that enough flooding occurred to open up some bedrock and loosen some trapped gold. We cleared the border at Algodones, just outside of Yuma with no problems. Our only other concern was the annual Baja 1000 offroad race and its associated racers, spectators and chase trucks. We made San Felipe and topped off our tanks. Many racers and their scout vehicles were already there warming up for the race, but we were still ahead of the pack. Our only misadventure was day 3 with me taking a bad step coming off a steep hill and spraining my knee. We made the placer zone by early afternoon, set up our camp and started scouting our old routes up the canyon. Hilary hit the Baja peninsula on the Pacific side within miles of this area, although the placers are technically on the gulf side. Still, plenty of water had come down the canyon as evidenced by the debris line of tree trunks up 8 to 10 ft above the bedrock. My Polaris RZR 900 was definitely going to get a workout. Our first obstacle was one we tackled every year, but things had changed from our last path. Up a couple ledges, straddle a bedrock spine and try not to fall into the abyss on either side. Fortunately, I had all new tires with some superior grip tread. Getting down off the spine was the most difficult obstacle we encountered. There just weren't enough flat rocks within carrying distance to build a proper ramp, so we used some of the Elephant tree trunks and put the best rocks in the most crucial tipping points. White knuckles the first couple runs, then learned to trust the RZR as a surefooted machine. One other ledge upstream required some ramp building then smooth sailing for a couple miles, but then full stop. The old route left the main wash up and over sandhills to bypass impassable canyon ledges, but the flood had wiped out the route. Where once had been a small sand dune was now a 12ft deep pit where floodwaters had blasted through and formed a whirlpool clearing out any hope of getting upstream in a motorized fashion. Back to old fashioned travel, and we didn't have any burros. Our friend Kevin the hiker, from past misadventures, met us later that afternoon for 5 days of detecting. Day 1 of detecting was remarkable for my friend Dennis. Since we were going to need to shuttle 3 of us in a 2 seater RZR, Dennis opted to get out at the first obstacle to avoid too many trips past the white knuckle zone. He decided to run the 7000 over bedrock that we had detected dozens of times in the past and wait for me to return. I ran Kevin up the canyon then returned for Dennis once he cleared the obstacle. He had already found 2 nuggets, one over 6 grams and another near 2 grams. He always celebrates his birthday, a week away, at these placers. A happy early birthday, and a great start to the trip. More later.
  24. This is what I am finding with my 5000 in the Gold Basin/ Meadview area with my Gpx5000, three different days out detecting, recently.
  25. During a recent detecting trip to the Rye Patch region of northern Nevada, I was intent on searching for the ever elusive large nugget at depth, wielding the Minelab GPZ 7000 equipped with the GPZ-19 coil, set to Extra Deep Gold Mode in Normal Ground Type. This combination of Gold Mode and Ground Type handles the local alkali ground very well, allowing the faintest signal responses to be heard; and good thing, too, as I would have certainly missed a couple of nice bits had the threshold been variable due to ground noise or EMI masking. They were buried at a depth of 18 inches and recovered from cracks within the weathered shale bedrock. A friend who was detecting with me swung over the undisturbed target zone with the Minelab GPX 6000 and 17-inch mono coil and there was no discernible response, so that added to the anticipation of deep, chunky gold…not exactly the large gold I was looking for, but at 3.3 grams and 2.2 grams, I'll happily put them in the poke any day!
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