Search the Community

Took a long boat ride on Saturday with the intention of doing some surface and water artifact hunting and hitting a relic site with the detector but the deus never came out.I did not find much but had a good time and never seen another person but did encounter some interesting critters . A decent somewhat toothy point with very minor tip damage. A drill or awl again with slight tip damage the waves take their toll. A beautifully flaked blade that either the otters or raccoons scratched out. The piece of steatite in my opinion is an unfinished charm-stone but one could argue that it was a tool. The bonus of the day was the wildlife encountered. Other than a bald eagle and the two otters that surfaced in front of me and crawled up on a log one with a still alive large fat crappie in its mouth the real treat of the day was the first California roadrunner that I have seen since 1978.Unfortunately I keep my digital camera in my backpack so that I do not lose a second one overboard so no pictures.The roadrunner was much darker in color and with different markings than the one pictured below. Didn't see any coyotes?

I did another trip yesterday to my patch. I left at 4.30 am and got to my parking area at 8 am, then I had to do my 2-mile hike. It was unpleasantly cold (25 deg F, -4 deg C), and by the time I got there I was pretty much frozen. The first thing I noticed was fresh bear scat on my patch, it looked like the bear just left. Well, not a company I was eager to have, in particularly not while being all by myself. I began to detect, and after a few square nails I had this mellow low/high signal. It sounded just like another nail or iron trash, or perhaps mineralization, but it turned out to be a 1 /2 oz nugget (kind of looks like a frog). Interestingly, the channel never flipped, and it was a low/high signal all the way until I had it in my scoop. It is good to remember that deeper bigger nuggets can give low/high signals just like iron trash does, in contrast to shallower gold targets (and lead...) which mostly give high/low signals with the 6000. This is another reason why I personally don't distinguish targets by sound, I have been wrong so often by now. The nugget was about 14 inches deep and was clearly audible with the headset. This is another good example of how well the 6000 with a round coil can punch, despite the rather small coil size (settings: manual 10/normal). In total, I recovered around 19 g today, with some really small pieces as well. In total I have recovered a little bit over 110g during my past 5 trips (the frog-nugget had to hop from the scale since the scale tops out at 100g). This has been the most interesting patch, which I accidentally discovered while hiking with my Manticore (always in my backpack). What strikes me is that the patch is confined and rather small, with all nuggets in an area not more than roughly 40 feet long. In the picture you can see that the area stretches out with gravel/sand deposits further in the back, but I never found any gold there. For whatever reason only the front part, which I have heavily worked by now, has gold in it. The ground is packed sand with river gravel. It is not really loose sand but rather pretty tightly “conglomerated”, with many tree roots in them, and it takes quite a bit of work to dig the holes. The challenge is to find these patches, and before finding it I searched for many days up there without any luck. This is typical for glacial deposits where gold can be scattered all over the place. Now snow will come soon, and this has likely been my last trip there for this year. Next summer I will be back with heavier gear (6000/17 inch coil, 7000 etc). Let’s see how much the patch still has to give. And if I ever find another one up there. GC

I'd been scouring the beach cams for several days waiting for a chance to do an exploratory shallow water hunt on one of our local beaches. Swell was down to less than 1 metre, nice off shore winds and the tide was on the way out......as good as it gets for this particular beach. Anyhow, I strapped on the Excalibur and proceeded into the first cut just off the beach. The cut was about a metre deep and maybe 3 metres wide before forming a sandbar with only a foot of water over this area. Conditions were good with little effort to either wade or swing the detector through the water. I proceeded "up the lane" enjoying the calm and very relaxing conditions. The cut produced nothing but I noticed a fairly narrow break in the sandbar that looked very promising and thought to myself, I'll check this out on the return sweep. I carried on up the cut for another few minutes with nothing to show for my efforts. Before swinging back the other way, a series of waves broke further up the sandbar, probably 200 yards away and well away from me. In fact, several surfers had positioned themselves there already. Now these glassy waves were only about 3-4 feet in height and I didn't think anything about them. At this time, I swung around and proceeded in the direction I came as I wanted to check out just the front of this channel. When I got to the channel, water depth was still only about a metre deep and very flat and calm. I decided to go out just a bit further with the water at rib height to see if there were any signals.....and there was. It was a comfortable depth of water and I started to scoop away into the shelly sea-floor complete with high expectations. It was at this time that the huge volume of water from the waves that had broken some distance from me needed to return back to the deep ocean and we all know that the path of least resistance is where water likes to go. The water had piled in over the sandbar and was now flowing strongly down the cut towards me. Well that nice little channel that I had found in between the sandbar was now where millions of gallons of seawater decided it would like to be as well. I felt the slow surge of water behind me. They say never turn your back on your ocean, well today I really wished I had as the power of the ocean was coming from the beach behind me, a distance of only 10 yards away. By the time I looked back toward the beach, that distance had doubled and I was shocked. Sure enough, there was no sand beneath my feet and I was going further out. I knew I was in trouble. A detector in one hand and a steel scoop in the other doesn't make for good swimming in 10 feet of water. The beach was fairly quiet but to my good fortune, a lone person had just jumped onto his surf-ski and had begun paddling out into the water. He hadn't seen me at this stage and that desperately needed to change. I was reasonably calm but made the mental decision to jettison everything if I couldn't get his attention. So with my hand in the air waving frantically and with a loud voice, I got his attention. He was alongside me within 10 seconds and had saved my arse......he grabbed my gear and lay it across his lap whilst I hung on and got my breath back. He paddled us back to shore and within 10 seconds, I felt the amazing sea floor once again.......can't describe that feeling after being deprived of it for just a minute or two. I'm still in shock in how all of this developed so quickly. I am very familiar with the water and know what's safe. I was never going to drown as I planned on dropping all of my gear and just floating easily in a full wet-suit until Mother Nature decided she was bored playing with me. So that series of several waves plus an outgoing tide and strong offshore winds plus being in the entrance to that small channel all at the same time caused my situation. Some carelessness has to come down to me but I got a little unlucky as well. So as always fellow shallow water hunters......you be careful out there please. I wonder if that target was a pull-tab or big chunky gold ring.

Milestones to make and break! My Old Buddy Mike and I hit the High Country of Sierra County, California. Just a short drive from my place in North Reno. Parked and Geared up, we split off for the hunt. My first target, was a solid repeating, I sat my detector down and it rang off, moved it again and another target was under the coil! I didn’t think much into it was these woods have been mined and logged since the 1850’s and there is tons of trash. Well back to my target and six inches down this 1 dwt’er shows it’s self to my smiling Face 🤗. From experience you can love or hate your first target being gold or not. I’m very superstitious of these nuggets…it could be the first Nugget of a new patch or the only Nugget of the day! This nugget was surrounded by trash targets and no friends or Kin Folk within the 1/2 mile hunt! 🙁. But, we got home and tossed it in the scale and then I checked closing Fridays Gold Market 😳 $2,621. Wow, my first Nugget at this hefty price…just wish it had 19 other Friends that wanted to see the light of day! Until the next Hunt! LuckyLundy

had a pleasant 2 day hunt. weather man was saying mid 70s. well it was. in the shade. but in the direct sun light, it was hot. i have done 4x4 trips in the area a few times and helped doing some dredging with the Road runner club back in the late 90s so i knew there was some gold. we had only seen the deeper tributary's, on google earth. its somewhat remote with lots of hiking. it would be a 4 or 5 mile hike out for help if we had truck problems. full size trucks are a bit spooky on these trails. should have taken the buggy. we used a lot more water than i thought we would. 40 pack of 500ml bottles. no danger of running out of water though as i carry 10 extra gallons in totes, but still we were very thirsty. first day my partner got 2. a .1 and and one at .3 and i got 1 small bit at .1 Next day we got 1 each. .5 and .8, lots of bullets. we did not set up a tent, used a 12x12 pop up canopy for cover. weather man did not predict rain. well we had a rain storm. i think it was about 3am coming down hard. we really need the rain. it is so dry. really feel bad for the animals that are out here. all of the water holes/tanks are dry. we were using 2 gpx 6000, but the gold monster found the biggest flake. the 1926 dime was found nugget hunting a small wash early this year in a different area. i think i know who the miner was that lost it back in the 1930s. interesting bit of history to it. has been a long hot summer. didn't find a lot but it sure was good to get out.

Hi Folks, A few months ago my detecting mate Joe and I had a lot of fun searching for gold in an area that produced a considerable number of small nuggets on a consistent basis. After many trips to the area, the gold tally started to diminish in both size and number. We ran both the 6000 and the zed across what seemed like every inch of the gully exploring every conceivable possibility of recovering the hidden treasure. Towards the end, we got to a point where any small piece was considered a victory for the day. Finally, we decided it was time to move on and start prospecting some country that we’d never looked at before. We spent a couple of months researching, discussing options and exploring areas that showed potential. Unfortunately our hard work didn’t really pay off and we ended up finding very little for our effort. There we’re some tremendous days out in the bush and we saw some amazing country but the the gold was a bit thin on the ground. With spring arriving our serious prospecting would soon taper off until next winter. It has been dry for a couple of months now and many of the intermittent streams have stopped flowing (including the gully that produced good gold for us in the early parts of the winter). Joe and I had a discussion about the dry creek bed and we decided that there could be some possibilities worth exploring in the old area. There was one particular section of the gully that produced some nice gold for us but much of it came from a pool of water that was about 3’ deep in places. It was difficult to detect with both the GPZ and the GPX as the gravel and soil on the pool bottom was quite mineralised and made the detectors very noisy. Holding the coil down was also an issue with the 7000 as it is quite buoyant. We decided that if the pool of water had dried sufficiently, we may be able to detect the area again and also move a bit of gravel around to allow the machines to sniff out any deeper gold. The plan sounded quite reasonable so last week we decided to hit the area with the Coiltek 10x5’s attached to the 6k’s. When we made it to the gully, it was as dry as expected. We decided to stop for a short while at a rock bar that had produced some small pieces on earlier trips. Large rocks were moved and some gravel was raked to expose rocky areas that were under water earlier in the season. A few micro specs were detected which was enough to get us inspired. A short walk upstream put us at the waterhole that given up quite a lot of gold over a period of time. The water level had dropped leaving just one small pool that was about a foot deep. The areas that had provided nuggets in the past were now dry and we were able to run a detector over them without the constant protest of an unhappy, spoilt child. A nice little nugget was soon taken from its home which set the tone for the rest of the day. The plan was to use one machine and dig out gravel and move rocks from the exposed areas of the pool. As the creek had been hit by a couple of major floods in the past 12 months, there was a lot of gravel that had moved around and we knew that small gold would be held in or below some of it. Joe and I would clear about 3 or 4 inches of gravel from a small area and then detect it. If a target was heard, one person would wave the stick and the other would dig the piece out. When the cleared area was carefully detected, we would dig a little deeper. We soon discovered that this procedure was starting to produce some nice little pieces of gold. As we dug a little deeper we would eventually hit a sticky clay layer where some of the bigger pieces would hide themselves. The gravel above this layer was quite loose and was obviously deposited by recent floods. After exploring the areas that were exposed, we detected the rest of the pool and also moved some gravel around. By this time it was getting late and we were tired. On the way home we debriefed and talked about the outcome of the day. An area that we thought was finished came alive again due to a bit of hard work and perseverance. We knew that there was plenty of gold beneath our feet but the detectors were not going to tell us about it unless we helped to make their lives a bit easier. It was decided that a follow up trip was required just to ensure that we’d picked the area clean. 20 small pieces and just over 3 grams put smiles on our dials and made for a memorable day out.

The week just past, remains more a symbol to pay attention to, than anything memorable in terms of finds. A few coins, found at times when having to stay away from the water and walking along the shoreline, some appearance of a new stretch where to take action soon, but other than that, just great risk and quite a bit of road traveled without fruit. Last Monday, as always at dawn, I enter the water at one of the spots I have been alternating for months. Although the forecast was not so clear, within a quarter of an hour the waves became heavy, then high, then threatening. I get out with difficulty and before I do any damage to my equipment, I abandon the spot and return home. Once again, the surface compressor must have "ingested" water and although this is a brand new engine, problems with the volume delivered begin. Tuesday morning, same spot on the shoreline, but a worrisome new layer declares the games closed. I'll save you the trouble of reading further and end with Saturday morning, then yesterday, with the last area I imagined productive, which exposed some lead, a fake gold earring and little aluminum. No miracles, no conditions...The sea won this time. Good Sunday to all of you.

Last month I noticed some excavation work being done on a local beach. This is an old beach, but trying to find older coins is really hard, especially at the top with deep sand. But as the work area was repairing a small section of an old slipway, they did dig deep for the concrete sections. The dugout mound of sand contained clay, iron & masses of coinage. What made it so special, was the volume of silver compared to the copper coins, never had anywhere like that. It was not difficult to get well over 100 coins after each tide for a few trips. The excavated sand was banked up temporarily to keep the water out of the excavation as long as small tides came on. After the coins started to thin out considerably, I waited for the bigger tides to scour the bank. It was the same all over again with a new crop of coins & other bits of interest. Jewellery not so common, but a really small 18ct Diamond eventually turned up - really low but good sounding target. There's always a chance of competition so I absolutely battered it for the four days the excavation existed. The last big tide flattened the whole thing with a lot more stuff appearing. What was noticeable was the larger easy targets disappeared quickly on the first passes with the next run having more smaller items. Initially, I put on a turn of speed - but accurate hunting, with very very quick target recovery. The last time I went for the final hunt, I took it very slowly and carefully puling out small items & deep ones which the Deus is easily capable of. Green stands out well in the sand, so no pinpointer required mostly thereby slowing me up. The area was quite large taking three hours to cover completely, or less if the tide swept over. All too soon the job was over & things look just like they used too. I have an idea though that during winter storms, some more stuff will appear as there was some parts I couldn't get to because of the work zone. I've used the D2 since its introduction as is my favorite machine. At the moment, though, I do use the Manticore with the M8 coil for iron spots (not forgetting the little Tesoro!) especially with the shape of the coil. Its all just personal preference. I feel I can do better with the D2 - I've called it a bag filler with me covering large areas quickly. Also, a simple thing as its perfect shaft design helps a lot over the other offerings being completely strain less. Photo 2 is the bank washed out. 3 is the cleaned silver, top part is 50% (1920-46) silver the lower part 92% (Victorian to 1919) Photo 4 shows green corroded silver coins before cleaning. 5 is typical hunts copper coinage from 1860's to 1960's I might now call the Deus the Silver Scythe.

Now... It was almost two years ago, October 23rd, 2022... I had two years of great old finds using the Garrett Apex on a friend's large property, but this day would be different. I was working an old grove of trees when I got multiple high tone responses that collectively nearly knocked my headphones off, yet there was an iron tone mixed in. Right away we all think "aluminum can" given the signal intensity, but you learn from past experience and you dig. I started to recover several modern Lincoln cents and thought, "Oh well, that's nice"! But there was more... Like all over and concentrated! One after another, until I had unearthed 149 Lincoln pennies (Wheat and Memorial) and one Jefferson nickel! Along with the coins were 6 pieces of Crayons and one rusted jack knife. The newest and best conditioned penny was in the early 1990's. They were likely buried 30 years ago in two plastic bags by perhaps some children playing "Buried Treasure". Although very new and worth only face value, I had found my first intentionally buried coin cache in 56 years of metal detecting! Today those children are probably in their late 30's and have long forgotten what fun they had that day. Then... In contrast, it was 44 years ago, the 4th of May 1980. I had been metal detecting for only 12 years and was using my new (beloved) Garrett A.D.S. Groundhog. I was hunting an old homesite foundation amongst the forest. While working around an old Forsythia bush. I got a powerful signal not bothered by my discrimination setting which immediately dropped me to my knees. Back then you didn't try to guess a good target, you dug it. I was still developing my pinpointing and recovery skills, so a larger plug and careful use of a "Wilcox" hand-digger was the norm. Out of the ground first came a coin purse frame, fully intact and closed. Pretty exciting already, but the next recovery stunned me... It was a deteriorated leather side of the change purse... I could see the impressions of coins in the leather of a filled coins purse! I sat there for a moment and fantasized that I might have found an entire coin purse! Shaking my head in disbelief, I continued to unearth 19 coins in the same hole... 17 Indian Head Pennies and 2 Liberty "V" Nickels! The oldest Indian was 1891 and the newest was 1903 and literally in the condition it was minted in. What you see was never cleaned, the leather (now shrunk and not all found or disintegrated) had preserved the bulging coins that had made the indentations... I had indeed found an entire coin purse! What an unforgettable day with a new detector!! Even today, I can't help but wonder about the anguish the person who dropped this purse must have felt. That was a lot of money to the average worker in 1903 to never recover. Right then I knew I was hooked on metal detecting forever. This is why you don't ignore big, good loud signals!

4th of July fun with friends/family, favorite finds is what the holiday is about. Hopefully you were enjoying the 4th with family/friends and were out there making favorite finds with you detectors as well? If not, then try to make it a habit in the future to enjoy the holiday. Pics of a few my captured on film, MD’ing finds from the 4th of July holiday hunts from past. Some are more impressive than others, but it’s the family/friends and comradery of the MD’ing vacations, that’s most memorable. After all, when finding a cherished 1st big old silver or gold nugget and nobody to share it with, is kind of a letdown. My 1st summer back to Idaho (where I grew up) after my USMC time and our family was up in the back-country for a week of detecting. We had a few locations selected around a mining town of Salmon, on the eastern Idaho/Montana border. This was my 1st Barber Half Dollar, a 1905-S. It was recovered with a White’s Eagle-II and using the small 600 coil. Oh I was so close to finding a 100 yr old silver half, but just missed it by 5 yrs. It was the best coin find of the trip though, not the oldest. 4th of July weekend, one of my Field Staff Experts and I are detecting in Oregon with the big detectors trying to get max depth. The amount of trash at this particular site was more than I could handle, so I hiked back to the truck to and grabbed a VLF. Only an hour later, I’m holding a nice 2 gram placer nugget with just a little white quartz. No monster, but I was able to make a decent find for my special weekend. The wife and I spent 4th of July in Sumpter, OR with our dog and a few friends. We hunted gold and found a few small ones (nothing worth taking pics over) and then on the actual 4th of July we took a few back trails to a ghost town site. I say site, as the only thing remaining is square nails and glass bits. I saved this beautiful 1862-S Seated Liberty Half Dollar with the Minelab Explorer-II and small 8” coil. It was the only coin found that trip but boy was it a good one. We had a scorching summer heat that holiday and since my place in Oregon didn’t have AC, the wife decided we stay in town (Boise, ID). I remember waking up that day and being bummed as last year I had found that seated half in OR on 4th of July. My gut is telling me I need to go detecting, but where? Because of the extreme heats, I decide to go somewhere close by and so I called an old friend and my brother. Both agreed to do a half day hunt so we could be back in town for the late afternoon picnic with family. Our goal was to detecting this old mining town and try to find a token. This particular town and was very short lived and the few tokens known are quite rare. Long story short, we didn’t find a token, but they must have thought I did when I started hollering and the echo is bouncing off the canyon walls. Anyone that knows me, my USMC vocal cords are not the norm. This is only the 2nd gold coin I’ve ever recovered and it was practically in my own back yard, only 25 miles away. The 1902-S $5 Eagle still has that little iron stain on the side of the date. 20 yrs later and I still detect with those 2 guys as the memories made that day were incredible. Another 4th holiday finds me in Eastern Oregon again with a few friends. This chunky 1/3rd oz nugget was dug right in the middle of the road. I had been walking past this chunk for at least 10 yrs prior. Having heard of a few nuggets coming from the road and seeing the occasional old digs in the area, I thought why not. Went back to the truck and put the DD coil on my GPX-5000. Since many nails were also on the old mining road, I figured the DD coil and blanking off iron signals could save me some time. It most certainly did and that was the biggest nugget found that weekend. At my Sumpter, OR place on 4th of July and this young buck in velvet is hanging around the neighbors cabin. How patriotic is that. This specimen nugget was recovered here in the Boise Basin (outside of Boise) on one of my customers claims. It was in his throw out pile as many specimens can do. The White’s 24K was my weapon of choice this holiday weekend. Kind of an ugly piece of gold, but at least I had a decent find for the holiday. Drum Roll please, It's the most valuable find of any 4th of July hunt and I with my father was still around to be part of it. Luckily, I had wife/friends...on this 2024 4th of July holiday. Some friends and my wife/I decided my place in Sumpter would make a great mini vacation. We didn’t actually detect today as it was more about playing around the old mining town (Sumpter goes back to 1874), smoking some great meats for plenty of eats and drinking cheer with best friends. We decided tomorrow (July 5th) would be the day us guys would detect. Since I know Sumpter well, I gave plenty of options and told the guys what they were. Options are… 1) Go find gold at a for sure site, but the gold would be small. 2) Go a little father and try our luck at a site that has produced decent size gold but hunted hard. 3) Go in the direction of one of my previous monster gold finds. It would be one of those Bang or Bust locations and since 3 of us were swinging, I told them a 50/50 chance of a 1 ounce price. We’ll they decided the Bang or Bust would be most exhilarating, so that’s the direction we went. It’s always a thrill when going to an older location that’s produced big gold in the past. You know in the back of your head, the next dig could actually be a Monster. Here’s our results for 2 days of hunting the site by 3 guys who know gold detectors better than most. 3 guys, 2 days and only 1 piece of gold being recovered. Luckily it was an exceptional find that topped off the holiday trip. Near 9.5 ozt and with a specific gravity just near 2 ozt. Most amazing about this find. It was in the middle of hot rocks and even after I removed the specimen chunk, there was still a hot rock in the hole that had me wondering. Knowing how to tell hot rocks gold rocks is very important. 10 ounce specimen getting ready for the dolly pot….haha. You know the size of a silver dollar, so this gives you a reference. Decided to do a little spit shine and I think it looks just fine now, probably pass on the crusher and keep it as is. Your thoughts? The monster I recovered yrs ago that had my Field Staff team of the mindset to hunt for Big Gold. Were you able to get out for the 4th of July and swing your detector at all? Happy Hunting my DP friends and may the next swing be Golden. Gerry

I started again last October to hunt full time almost every day, storms permitting and with a bad back. Like every year, this period of heavy sand accumulation on the beach finally arrived I would say late. For about two weeks now, the only targets within reach have been a few really deep coins and an inordinate amount of aluminum. Although I always manage to find a depression or an eroded section, these are a few obvious and over-beaten spots, the same ones that first ever allow fresh drops to be recovered but not even in this case have I been able to encounter new material. It had been seven years since I had experienced this feeling, very similar to stepping into the ring at dawn and taking punches, then starting again the next morning and yet another one to follow. We'll see when the next piece of gold shows up....

Yes I have missed DP forum and friends....but for reasons that I bring upon myself. This is a 3 part post. As the Lower CF rods Soap Opera started, I was in NV detecting old sites trying to find a certain coin, a US Seated Liberty Silver. Well my 2 buddies and I started on the East size of NV and worked out way West. I eventually called the trip and end near Reno when I hunted Virginia City. 3 guys, 5 days and near 1500 Miles with no such luck on the Seated Liberty Silver. I did manage to pull a good coin though and some may even say it's BETTER than a Seated Silver. 1882-O Morgan Dollar. Yes it was an ugly one, and quite hard to clean, but the after pics are much better. Was my trip worth it? Any chance I get to detect with old friends is more important than the find. I really do enjoy the hunt. Then I'm off to Easter Oregon to train. I provided 1 day Field Training to 3 customers in Sumpter OR for Father's Day. All went home w a little gold, most importantly, they learned their detectors at finding gold, what sounds to ignore or dig, self confidence & more. Jim CO, Errick East ID & Duke Boise area, all smiles. Jim scored 2 with his GPX-6000 but I only got pics of the 1. Errick was outgunned with his Equinox 900 but did manage 1 small picker at the end of the day. Duke pulled one with his 6000. All 4 nuggets. Jim, showed me his double gun case and how well it holds his GPX-6000, headphones, chargers, 2 batteries, pointer, both the 11" coil and the larger 17" coil is underneath on the left. That's a fantastic was to travel and keep your detector from getting damaged. I've never been a fan of the overpriced detector carry bags. The 1st time I ever used an AlgoForce was last week. I hunted a really old site from the 90's that produced small GB-2 pickers. I thought maybe there could be a couple left behind but all I found was small #7 1/2 bird shot, # 6 shot and larger lead sliver. I could easily hear and tell the difference of bigger iron square nails after digging a couple. They make a reverse signal, so those used to the old Minelab PI's will know what I'm saying. The small test nugget and the birdshot all made the traditional Weewhooo sound. I was only there for an hour and then had to be somewhere else. It was not the ideal testing site, as I pounded it many times over years ago and that old Gb-2 sure does not like to miss gold near the surface. 2nd site was an Ore Dump Pile. I had never hunted this pile before but I figured why not. I spent an hour going up and down the pile to only dig a few 22 lead bullets with ease and a couple reverse signal chunks of iron. After an hour I thought it might be best to try the Manticore with M8 coil. As luck would have it, right at the base of the pile and actually in a bunch of rocks, the Manticore sounds off with a good low # reading. So I grab the AlgoForce and it too sounded off. So in reality each detector heard the target. I dig it up and it seems to be a specimen with a lot of black material on it. I can see with an eye piece there is 1 small spot of gold. I'll clean it up (the specimen) and give update to what it turns out to be. After some time hunting the base of the pile with the Algo and no luck, I decide to go back to the Manti. Sure enough, about a 1/3rd of the way up the steep pile I get a very weak but repeatable #1 reading. Before I dig it, I go back down, grab the Algo so I can check it. No luck with the Algo even with a SENS of 20 setting. I dig it up and about 2" down is this little piece of wire gold. I dig one more smaller one and that was it. The picture with the penny is to show how small and rough the ore dump wire specimen gold is. There is no mass, glob or thickness at all and so I do not expect a Pulse Induction detector to find it. The AlgoForce didn't either. Also, that longer piece on the screen of Manticore is so delicate, it broke. Does that mean I found 3 and not 2? One thing to point out though. The more yellow and dense little picker nugget is what I use to tune and test my GPX-6000. The AlgoForce signals and responds. Just like with any other hunt and or desired target, certain kinds of detectors and technologies do better at one task and not so good at another. Hopefully I'll be able to get more time on the AlgoForce next week, as I might run over to Oregon for a day. Until then, thanks for being patient while I was running around on the hunt. Can You Dig It - I do. Gerry

A couple of weeks ago a friend of my grandfather asked me to help his wife to locate a gun she dropped in the woods. I agreed and took both of my detectors so he could also join in on the fun, he was using the Tracker IV with new batteries, all metal mode, and the sense all the way up. I used the 800 in field 2, sense set at 20. I was ground balancing about every 50 feet because of the ground and all the trees that I had to go around. We started out following his wife who swore she knew her exact path through the woods she and her dog had taken. We found many objects but none were her gun that she had lost. I don't think that I have ever heard so much noise from the 800 before while hunting in the woods, and tried to keep pushing through the brush, poison ivy and berry bushes. We had been out there for a couple of hours when they decided to head back towards the house, so Doug had sat the Tracker IV down next to a tree to talk for a minute. I had cleared the area, so I thought, but when Doug picked up the detector he got a hit. He moved some leaves and sure enough there was her gun. I could not believe the 800 had not picked it up where it was laying, so I tried an air test on it. That little Ruger 380 had to get almost 3 inches to the coil before I got a hit. The Tracker IV could pick it up at almost 11 inches, and I really don't understand the reason for it. But the most important thing is that the gun was recovered and the wife is now happy.

I haven't been on here in a little while. I got talked into leaving Meadview and Gold Basin for Franconia Wash area by Havasu City. This area is far worse off than Gold Basin and Meadview for hitting on gold. My first week there was a solid skunk. Just 50 cal. and 30 cal. bullets. I had a trainee come down for some training and I took him out to show him what I do at times to get onto gold. I led him out into an area that was heavy on my mind every day when I got back to camp and we stopped to give an area a swing. My hunch payed off as I found us a patch of nuggets. Video of that hunt will be in the works a few weeks away. We went back the next day and only one nugget was found a little ways away from the patch. The next day after we hit a wider area and couldn't get onto any other gold and then I went up a short feeder wash and found another patch with my Gpx5000. I had my trainee (Gold Dozer) come in with his 6000 and showed him how I work a spot like that with a dig and detect operation. I had pulled 3 nuggets out of this wash and he got 2 nuggets. It was a great time. We had three F-35's fly over us at very low altitude and that was way cool. The next day an F-18 Hornet flew over at very low altitude for another spectacular show of fighter jets. My time here is done and tomorrow morning I am pulling out and heading down to Quartzite to detect there until the Gold Show. I will have a table at the show again and possibly will be sharing a booth with Dr. Eric Melchiorre - Geologist, again. We will see what gold I can squeak out of the ground there. Jan 1, just before we headed out for Gold Dozers second day of training, I had gotten a call that my father had passed away at 10:27 that morning. It was not good news right before training. If anyone is down in Quartzite and wants to say hello at the Gold Show or before get ahold of me. It was good to get out and do some detecting with BMC as well. He is in the picture with Goldie the Roadrunner.

This in many ways is a repeat of my 2018 UK Adventure except two weeks this time instead of three. The 2018 thread is loaded with details and very many local photos that I will not repeat here. Go to the link for the "full tour" with location and travel details. I booked the trip last year as is pretty much mandatory for the Colchester trips. There are only a limited number of trips available in the spring and fall and with so many people returning every year you really have to plan ahead. Mindy had a 10 day opening so I jumped on that as a week is just not enough in my opinion. With the benefit of last years trip experience I was able to weed my suitcase down to 40 lbs including two complete Equinox with 15" coils. Had it about perfect except for a couple shirts I never did wear. I was packed well in advance, and had great connections, so was looking forward to a relaxed trip. I had an afternoon flight out of Reno connecting in Chicago with an overnight to London. Perfect for me to sleep away a lot of the 10 hour overseas portion, and arriving in London in the morning. The plane was half boarded when they announced boarding would halt while they evaluated a flight advisory just in from Chicago. Massive thunderstorms, all flights in delayed for three hours - just enough to miss my connection! I have to give American Airlines credit, they automatically booked me into another flight just two hours later than the original connection, still arriving in London plenty early. We land at Chicago and the plane taxis forever. Finally the pilot announces the gate is blocked and he has driven past it twice. I'm looking at my watch thinking "this is going to be close!" Luckily the gates were close together, but I literally got off the one flight and walked onto the other. I was pretty sure my bag was not going to make it. Well, the flight was fine but less seat space than any overseas flight I have had yet. Price was great though so oh well. I can't say I was shocked to find my bag had been left behind in Chicago as did prove to be the case. Still, all we were doing was booking into a hotel next to the airport before heading out next day, so I hoped my bag would follow on the next flight. No such luck, so next day on the first hunt in the afternoon I was in my travel clothes and on a field with a borrowed Equinox. Thanks Tim! Luckily in a group of seven people somebody always has spares; just as I always travel with a spare, so do others. My very first target that I dug was a full British Crown, I believe a 1937 George VI. Not that old but a large coin and 50% silver. I made some other finds but was hampered a bit wandering around in corn stalk stubble in street shoes. Can't complain though... I was happy to be in England and out detecting! 12th-14th century St Mary the Virgin's Church, Little Bromley Again, American Airlines came through in the end. They actually delivered my bag that afternoon the 99 miles to Colchester (their limit is 100 miles) at no charge. So it really was just a minor snafu of no consequence, mainly due to good weather and a spare machine being available. We had a really great group, four guys and three gals including Mindy. Mindy cooks in each evening except for one pub night out. There was also an optional museum tour for one day later in the trip. I wanted to wait and see how my finds were doing before deciding about that. Weather for the first part of the trip was the best I'd ever seen in England, about 70F each day. It made for really pleasant field hunting. I was as always hoping for a gold coin, with anything else accidental by catch. I was making nice coin and relic finds, including a couple hammered silver coins. A few days into the trip, good buddy Tim, he of the gold ingot from last year, was nearby when he scored his second Celtic 1/4 stater ever, a real beauty. Not minutes later Mindy found here first ever Saxon sceat, a small rare coin that was one of her last "bucket list" items. Lots of smiles and high emotion in the group that day! This may not seem real but the fact is I come very close to liking somebody else making a great find as making one myself. I was right there, got to see the finds right out of the ground, and shared in that "great find high". It's one of the best things about hunting with a group in my opinion. I may never find a Celtic gold coin, but I have been right there when it happened several times now, and that really is about as good for me. Tim and Mindy's finds - Celtic quarter stater and Saxon silver sceat A few days later we were hunting a field right across the road from a small town. I was getting some nice buttons and 1800's coins but nothing spectacular. Late in the day I got another typical button signal of about 17 on the Equinox. I proceeded to dig but the hole was getting deeper and wider with no button found. One of the things I like about the 15” coil is I can pinpoint fairly well with the tip or heel of the coil, and nosing around in the hole revealed the target was deeper and larger. At over a foot the target was squealing, and I was sure it was a large iron target or possibly even an aluminum can. There have been times and places where I have kicked the dirt back in the hole and moved on from such targets, but not in England where you never know what might turn up. I was however getting near the plow line now, the point below which the ground turns rock hard and where due to the rules we have to stop digging. I worked round the center of the target and gave a last scoop, and there sitting in the bottom of the hole was a large green item that tumbled out of the shovel full of dirt. I’m no expert at this kind of stuff, but it looked like a Bronze Age ax head to me. This was not something that I had ever expected to find and so my brain was not really processing it. I wandered over to my buddy Tim who was nearby and asked “is this what I think it is?” I swear he almost fell over, realizing the import of the find more than I had, and assured me I had found an excellent condition Bronze Age ax. Better yet, it appeared to be intact, as many of these that are found have been broken. The final verdict was that my find is a Bronze Age palstave, a predecessor to the modern ax. A palstave is a development of the flat ax, where the shaped sides are cast rather than hammered. My particular find has been identified as a Bronze Age (circa 1500-1400 BC) cast copper alloy primary shield pattern palstave, dating to the Acton Park Phase. In other words about 3500 years old, and about as old as anything that can possibly be found with a metal detector! I never in my wildest dreams ever thought I would ever find anything so ancient while metal detecting, and the fact this ax is intact and in good condition makes it the find of a lifetime, and that is no exaggeration. I have always been looking for that gold coin, but after all the gold I have found in my life and now with this I am officially saying "good enough". Anything I ever find from here on out in my detecting career is just gravy, my detecting bucket list is complete. Bronze Age (c.1500-1400 BC) cast copper alloy primary shield pattern palstave, dating to the Acton Park Phase (photo of Steve by Tim Blank with permission) This trip was extra good because everyone in the group was making some really great finds, many in excess of what they were hoping for. After many years detecting these huge fields are far from hunted out, with many of the best finds coming from fields that have been hunted well over a decade. Still new ground does come online regularly, and those fields add a little extra fun in the form of the unknown, especially as regards possible horde finds. There was one set of new fields that another group had found a lot of Roman stuff, including a really nice Roman silver coin and some good condition bronze coins. The trip was over half over and our weather had turned rainy. Not too bad really, just passing storms, with two hours of solid rain the worst I saw. Still, this limits some of the hunting as some fields with a lot of clay content get really nasty. After my ax find I had four days of mostly newer 1700s and 1800s coins and various widgets, but sort of a four day dry spell. So Tim and I passed on the museum tour and braved the rains instead since time was now running short. That plan paid off for me in a couple more hammered silver coins, bring my total for the trip to four. The hammered silver are kind of the standard prized find on these trips, rare but not so rare that most everyone has a good shot at some. Most date from 1200 to the 1600's after which milled silver coins replaced them. I found them off in one corner of the field and as the day wore on decided to head back to the area where all the Roman stuff had been found. There were many footprints but lots of gaps and so I hunted in the gaps. The day was almost over when I got a strong signal and dug up an odd looking lump. At first I had no idea what it was, but suddenly as I cleaned it a head and shoulders resolved into view. I had what appears to be a small bronze Roman bust! There is no real way to date the find, but it definitely looks like a Roman noble of some sort, and was found in the middle of a lot of other Roman finds so it is 90% certain to be around a couple thousand years old, maybe 100 AD going by the coin finds. I am in some ways more pleased by this find than the ax head for some reason. It’s almost like I am talking to that old Roman. I wonder who lost it and what it was. Decorative? A child’s toy? There was a Roman barracks in the area so military related somehow? It is just a great find and I am not aware of anything like it being found by the club before. Small bronze Roman bust found by Steve As noted I was running the Minelab Equinox with 15" coil the whole trip. In retrospect I wish I had brought steveg's new rod with counterbalance as my upper back would have thanked me for it the first three days, but it was a bit too long for my suitcase. Since everyone always wants to know, I basically used the same settings this year as last year with one minor tweak. Last year I ran Recovery Speed 5 and this year lowered that to 4. I normally run with nothing rejected, full tones, but have the Horseshoe button set up to reject 6 and under. This eliminates small stuff, maybe even small silver cut coins, but anything round will still ring up. Target ID 1-6 gets all manner of really tiny stuff almost always small lead or brass fragments. Stuff that’s also slow to recover. So as I say I normally hunt wide open and dig it all, but if time is limited or I am just tired of tiny stuff I hit the Horseshoe Button to go to “Cherry Pick Mode”. Park 1 Frequency Multi Noise Cancel 0 (adjust as needed) Ground Balance Manual, 0 Volume Adjust 20 (adjust as needed) Tone Volume 12, 25, 25, 25, 25 (Steve 4, 25, 25, 25, 25) Threshold Level 0 Threshold Pitch 4 Target Tone 5 (Steve 50) Tone Pitch 1, 6, 12, 18, 25 Reject –9 to 1 and Accept 2 to 40 (Steve Reject -9 to 6 and Accept 7 to 40) Tone Break 0, 10, 20, 30 Recovery Speed 5 (Steve 4) Iron Bias 6 Sensitivity 20 (Steve 22 to 25) Backlight Off Just a really great time with great people and some fabulous finds. I will post a complete set of pictures at some later date when I get the export listing, but for now here are a couple of my favorite hammered silvers from the trip to wrap up this report. Submitted to Minelab for the Find of the Month contest so we will see if I get lucky there also.

Thought I would recycle a previous post from a now defunct forum showing a couple of detecting trips and the end results of getting stuck while crossing a steep and narrow creek in the Bradshaw Mts of AZ. Awhile back, a couple of friends joined me to check out a hand dug hard rock mine/prospect in central Arizona that I had recently located but not had a chance to detect. No claims records or markers could be located and it didn't appear to have been worked in years. The previous miners had crushed the ore and shoveled it onto the crude wooden ore chute that snaked down the side of the ridge to the creek below. The country rock of the prospect hole appeared to be a mushy red quartz conglomerate that looked unstable. No hard quartz lead was observed. After several minutes of examination, and detecting around a large, indignant pack rat that currently occupied the prospect, we decided to depart the area. No gold was found but in the interest of keeping morale up, we decided to drink some of the "we found gold" beer anyway. The next day, I soloed to an area where I'd previously had good luck. It had rained a few days prior to my arrival and the ground was dry on the surface, but still damp a few inches down. I got into the area OK at first, then ran into a heavily washed out cut across the road, so I turned around going back out and as I angled down to cross a steep "V" shaped creek where I'd had no problem coming in, the mushy schist bedrock crumbled and dropped my rear bumper down enough where the Pintle hitch of my military style cargo trailer buried up, causing the bumper to be high centered with no rear wheel traction. Bummer. I cleared part of the hang up with a sledge hammer and chisel but finally had to resort to a high lift jack and stacked rocks for clearance and traction. While I was gathering rocks in the creek, I noticed that part of the bank appeared to have recently eroded and collapsed, exposing a couple of large rusty, vuggy chunks of quartz which looked interesting. After I was able to get my truck unstuck and up the road a ways, I grabbed my EQUINOX 800 and went back and started detecting the stretch of the creek downstream from where I had found the rotten quartz. Most of the pieces were on a shallow compacted layer of gravel in the narrow stream bed, and a few were on top of flat rocks covered with sand and dirt. After I started finding those little dinks I forgot all about getting stuck!

This is Day 2 of my trip to Nevada with Steve and Steve. On day 2 after having some gold in the poke we decided to pull out the VLF's for a while in the trash to see what we could find. The Legend was running version 1.06 which I later found out had issues and noticed the machine was running kind of funky at times. But still managed to pull a small nugget with it. Wasn't long before I went back to the GPX 6000. Love that machine, never thought I would own one but now that I've used one I think I'm going to have to get it.

Summary of Gerry’s Detectors last 3 Days Field Training at Rye Patch, NV of 2023 for the customers. We’ll still offer 1 day 1 on 1 this Winter in AZ, all the way into March for those who prefer Individual hands on. I think due to the cold weather the previous week (lows in the teens & highs in the 40’s) with snow cover peaks... half the class cancelled. This put me in a bind and as soon as I realized how small the group was, I called 2 of my Field Experts and told them, not needed. Something about cold in the desert that just does not sit well with a few. Actually, the weather turned for the good and we had some of the best possible temps one could hope for. Sure the low temps were in the upper 30’s/low 40’s but the high temps were optimal at upper 60’s and low 70’s. Yes, the Nevada desert was shining brightly with hardly a breeze and way warmer than expected, as a few of us got too much sun having fun while learning/listening and enjoying the group session. Even had a few unexpected guests getting the last of the warm sun-rays for the year. I won’t go into details on what my Field Staff/I share the 1st day as it’s hard learned from many hours of us in the field with a variety of detectors, coils, settings, sites and kinds of gold. All I know, is the customers certainly do appreciate what they see/learn with their own eyes and that’s exactly what we want. We finished the day with a quick Proper Detector Setup so those who want to enjoy the evening swinging or before class the next morning. Soon after one of the VLF detectors (Equinox) and it’s owner from NV scored a picker nugget (sorry Floyd I didn’t get a pic). It’s nice to see/hear of gold being recovered the 1st day, especially for Rye Patch for anyone who knows how hard that area has been detected. Not much time after, Duke from Idaho was giddy with joy seeing his 1st NV gold, just a picker....but gold. This guy Duke, was a hard nut to crack as he is prior US Military Special Forces and an Expert Coin Hunter who’s retired and puts in 40 hr weeks swinging his NOX. He’s well over $1000 in clad alone. This summer he’s spent so many trips in the gold fields trying to find some Au on his own and it just never happened. Duke called me the week before saying he was cancelling as the weather was cold, his ego was bruised and his tent/sleeping bag was not designed for such weather. He had just returned from a multi day hunt looking for the shiny yellow with ZERO results. After that trip he concluded maybe chasing the elusive heavy metal was just not his cup of tea. I accepted Dukes words and removed him from the list. Not 10 minutes later my gut told me to call him back, so I did. It’s not that I wanted to see Duke fail, but more about his background and how much alike it is to mine. I’m prior USMC and for 25 yrs was a heck of a coin/relic/jewelry hunter. I thought I knew metal detectors inside and out and since my Success was so great, I just assumed the pursuit of gold nuggets would be the same. Boy was I so far off base and wrong, but at least I didn’t give up. I had a long talk with Duke and told him…most of his no gold problem was the Success of his coin hunting. Two totally different styles of hunts and target signals to be listening for (plus a bunch of other things most don’t understand). I promised if Duke would show up with an open mind and... if he could accept personal criticism from my Field Staff/I, as well as he change his habits, he would learn the ropes for this new chapter of using a metal detector. As for the tent/sleeping bag, he showed up with more blankets, but forgot his coffee making essentials (that’s a totally different story). Those who understand morning coffee, must know. Anyway, long story short, Duke did in fact learned/listened and found gold. He was totally surprised at how different the Au hunt is, but he accepted his bad habits and shined above the past. I can tell Duke will be a great nugget hunter if he desires to stick with it. Just before the day ended Mike from Idaho came up to me with his 1st NV gold and I was a little surprised all the previous classes had left a nugget for his GPX-6000. It just goes to show, even the best of us can’t find it all. Day 2 we stayed near camp as it seemed to be producing some nuggets. We hunted the wash near by and could see plenty of recent dig marks. There was much exposed bedrock from a recent rain and I knew there was gold to be had, but also some spots of heavy trash got scattered down the wash as well. It’s tough in those situations but those who persist and learn to use their tools properly (super magnet) can save time and hopefully be rewarded. That’s one good thing about trash areas in old gold producing prospects, you know there’s still gold left to be earned. We managed a decent picker in the wash with GPX-6000 but not much more gold from there. One of my previous customers hunted near camp on day 2 and he managed a a few with his 6000 as well. Remember, he's a previous customer and has already taken the training. The pic below is the same customer and his finds from this year in 5 months of swinging for gold. It seems the new improved GPX-6000 is the best at what’s left at Rye Patch and we were starting to see that. Yes we had two Axiom’s in class and even though they were able to hear most of the targets before we actually dug them, they had yet to score their own gold. Day 3 the final and usually the best day for Success. The students have had multiple 1 on 1 times with my different Staff and plenty of tutorial. It seems the knowledge is most remembered (repetition) and best coil control, ear’s listing to the right sounds vs the wrong sounds…is being accomplished. I can assure you of 10 trips, 9 of those the most gold recovered is on the final day, which should make sense. It just goes to show the advances and progress the folks in the class have learned. As the man in charge, that’s exactly what I want to see and it keeps my Staff/I happy. Up until this time on the 3rd day, Minelab ruled the gold count. Most of that was due to the number of Minelabs in the class vs other brands. The two Garrett Axiom guys were getting a little antsy and I could see it in their body language. I made sure Lunk who owns the Axiom with great success was on them aplenty showing the capabilities of what I consider the best value Pulse Induction gold detector on the market. Is it the best for all scenarios, NOT AT ALL and no detector is (that’s an upcoming write up). Axiom’s come shining through. That’s exactly how the last day of the training ended. The students are putting everything they’ve learned together and so their chance of Success is 10X or more of when they arrived. To start the Garrett glow, Frank all the way from Colorado is swinging an old push windrow and his Axiom lights up a beautiful Rye Patch type character piece of gold. It looks to be just the right size for a dainty pendant down the road. Frank was all lit up and smiling as he explained how he thought the sound of that target was so smooth and clean, he was pretty sure it would be nonferrous. It’s just a matter of it being the right kind of non-magnetic metal, and it was. The other Axiom guy, poor Randy from Oregon, we noticed his detector on occasion would act up and then work fine. We limped him through until the 3rd day when Lunk handed him his own Axiom detector. Thanks’ Lunk for doing so, as Randy didn’t even purchase his unit from me. Hey, that’s just part of why I and many others feel, my team of Experts is the best out there. Having a detector run flawlessly is a big part of self confidence and if you are newer to the game, it’s such a letdown. Well Randy didn’t have to worry now as Lunk’s Axiom is a proven golden winner and those Special Settings Lunk has hidden in the menu (just joking) came through 2X for Randy. Randy with new confidence in a properly running Axiom digs a nice chunky, semi rounded, solid, Rye Patch nugget. What’s even more impressive is about 5 minutes later and less that 5 feet away is his biggest prize, see pics. Yes that’s a water worn, thick, soft, yellow, heavy metal, 3.2 gram, gold nugget. Randy is a mostly quiet kind of guy changes to a little more bubbly of a character while he explains to the rest of us how he found his 2 nuggets. It sure will be a nice drive home for him as he rattles his container with gold and confidence in his abilities. Mike from Idaho was the last student that I know of to find another nugget with his GPX-6000. After that I know of a few my Staff recovered as the training session winded to a close. Did all customers find Gold? No Sir, and we are quite blunt about the odds up front. But most did and that’s a good thing. Did everyone get to hear undug and unknown targets with their own detectors? Yes and that helps build confidence for those who may not be so lucky to go home with gold. Remember, my Field Staff/I provide the location and detector education. We have no clue who will find gold and not, as we don’t know the students and or their capabilities. We promise each person will have a greater understanding of their detector and it’s capabilities, both good and or bad. No use in using a particular detector in a situation where said machine is weak for such task. But, so many people unknowing do so and when your detector doesn’t beep on that kind of gold, you’ll never know, because you missed it. Detector Knowledge and Self Confidence is a big part of Golden Success and not knowing/having it, is like playing poker with a guy who has an Ace up his sleeve. You don’t believe me, lets play… it’s your deal. Thanks for taking the time to read and any questions, please ask. Thanks, Gerry 208-345-8898 Gerry's Detectors http://gerrysdetectors.com/ Gold Nugget Detector Field Training

Sometime in the mid to late 1990’s, I read an article in Western & Eastern Treasures about the tailing/dredge spoil piles in Murray, Idaho left over from the dredging of Prichard creek. The focus of the article was about how the rock/gravel from the tailing piles were being used to build a road to Wallace, ID, a distance of about 19 miles, and how good sized gold nuggets had been found by detecting the unfinished roadway. Seems that an experienced metal detecting couple from Arizona was on vacation and had been driving through the area when they noticed dump trucks carrying loads of gravel from the miles long tailing piles and depositing the gravel in the roadway which was then being flattened by a compaction road roller. Over the weekend when the road crew was not working, the couple proceeded to metal detect a stretch of the newly graveled roadway under construction and apparently did quite well. I happened to be visiting Murray, ID sometime later and, although the roadway was finished and paved, miles of the tailing piles, (as shown in the post card photo), still remained. I spent several fruitless hours pi$$ing in the wind, trying to detect some of those piles without any success. The detecting part went fine. The recovery, not so much. As has previously been mentioned on the forum, detecting in loose spoil piles of that magnitude was literally impossible. It was almost like trying to dig in a pile of jelly beans. I tried using a GB-2 with a 14” coil and a ML 2200d. I could only excavate to a depth of several inches before the gravel sides would collapse. Starting over just led to the same result every time. Eventually I gave up and drove over the newly constructed road into Wallace where I stopped at a local pawn/prospecting shop. I told the store owner what I had been trying to do and his face lit up with excitement! He asked if I would like to see some of the nuggets the Arizona couple had found? He then went into his safe, pulled out a few trays of nuggets and sat them on the counter. The biggest nugget was quite a bit larger than a silver dollar in diameter and flattened out to about ¼ inch thick. It appeared to be solid gold, as were the rest of the numerous nuggets in the collection. All were flattened to some extent but none were very thin. We both had a good chuckle over the daring and audacity of the AZ detectorists and wondered how many more nuggets they had found. Finally, I thanked the exuberant storekeeper and drove the road back to Murray with renewed interest. To this day, I sometimes still wonder how many gold nuggets there must be underneath that 19 miles of asphalt. 27-29 oz

One day, Jimmy Sierra and I were operating a booth at a gold show. Two guys came up, and one asked me for the formula for Aqua Regia. I gave him the formula, and he thanked me. I asked him what he was going to use it for, and he said he was going to use it to burn the quartz off some really nice gold specimens that he had. I told him that was the wrong thing to do, to remove quartz requires Hydrofluoric acid, not Aqua Regia, which would dissolve the gold. The men began to scorn and belittle me. No matter what I would say, these guys did not listen to me. To them, I was an idiot. Suddenly, Jimmy piped up and said to me "Jimmy, Jimmy, you are always getting it wrong. They're right, yes, Aqua Regia is what you use to remove the quartz from gold specimens." He then directed them to the chemical dealer across the aisle, whom he knew stocked the ingredients to make Aqua Regia. I have often wondered how using Aqua Regia to remove quartz from gold worked out for them...

Recovering from a record breaking Winter of Snow, now we are suffering from near daily Rains. My Theory is there is so much moisture in the Sierra’s coupled with warm Spring days turns it into afternoon Thunder Storms. Anyway a person addicted to our hobby has to get out and search for their fix. This story is about my 3rd trip and just like the first two trips knowing that the ground was subpar for detecting…but, it’s the hunt and hunt we must! Met my Pard Lucky Larry out of Elko, NV we quickly hoped into my RZR and hit the trail. Notice I didn’t say Dusty Trail. We hit several old haunts with limited results at each. We ended up hunting some new ground, I dropped Larry off on one side of the hill and I drove over it to hunt the other side. Hour later, I went back to my RZR to pick up Larry and my trusty machine would not start! During the over a mile hike back to my truck, I figured it was my Fuel Pump…of course no Shade Trees out in the high Desert to confirm my diagnosis. Lucky I have a winch on my RZR as we would have never got her loaded up, didn’t bother trying to crank it before loading as I knew I’d need every bit of my battery to load it. It rained on and off as we drove back to camp and continued thru the night. Next morning we drove to a nearby patch and pulled a few more dinks before I loaded up and left with rain drops just starting to fall. Back home with my newly Amazon delivered fuel pump, I hoped in the bed of my truck where I left my RZR. Let’s see if the battery recharged itself, the sucker cranks up! I unload it and take it for a ride in the back 40. Cranked every time I turned it off too! Still no shade trees, but in my garage I thought maybe it was Vapor Locked? I read up on it and it’s not uncommon…so if you see my little Red RZR way out in no-man’s land laying in a puddle of oil, know I shed a tear! It’s Memorial Day and according to Weather report 3 more days of afternoon thunder storms. Rye Patch area will need a few dry days to get the ground settled down to hear them dinks, but there is always some shallow ducks to get your coil over until better conditions arrive! Here’s our loot for the day and a half trip…yes, my poke is on the left. Both Larry and I used the 10x5 Coiltek on our 6000’s…great coil. Until the next hunt! LuckyLundy

Well today I had the rare chance to get out for a sort time and do some hunting. Just as I was walking out the door my wife tells me to take the dog with me. This is a small dog who is hyper as a butterfly in a wind tunnel. All the way to the ball field I wanted to try Rusty was being very good the whole time, and I am thinking that just maybe he was going to be good. When we arrived at the ball field he stayed close to me as I retrieved the old Tracker IV out of the trunk. I started to head to the field and he takes off like a rocket. I let him run for just a couple of minutes while I got the detector ready to start swinging. I called him over and to my surprise he came running back, and I am thinking that he is finally going to be good. I start walking in the direction that I had been wanting to search and get a wonderful tone sounding in my ears. I start digging my hole and look to see where Rusty is and he is on the other side of the field. I call him back again, tell him to sit, and start digging again. I pull out a dime (1967) try to show Rusty what I found and to my surprise he's gone again. Once again I look for the darn dog, and now this time he is on the opposite side of the field, so I call him again and he comes back. Fill in the hole and stand up. Now where is that dog? Yep he is on the other side of the field again and it wasn't 20 seconds since I last saw him. This time when he gets back I really scold him and I thought he got the message. Nope he didn't, just as I have another target to dig, so I stick my sod cutter i the ground to mark the spot to dig. I get Rusty to come back to me and we start walking back to the car so maybe I can find a leash for him. I look down at him and in his mouth is my sod cutter. Yep he pulled it out of the ground and carried it back to the car. I put him in the car with the windows half way down and walk about 30 feet away from the car and hit another good sounding tone, another dime about 6 inches deep. This one was a 1983, but in usable condition, nothing special about it just dirty and slightly tarnished. Within another 6 feet a really good sound that I had to dig, but it came out to be a Falstaff beer bottle cap. By this time Rusty is crying so bad I let him out and he really tried to stay by me until I found another target which turned out to be a soda can. Needless to say it was a very short hunt as I gave up after only 25 minutes. Lesson of this story is that never listen to the wife and never take the dog again. The old tracker does find good targets and junk so you never know just what will show up. Bounty Hunter Tracker IV metal detector Bounty Hunter Tracker IV Owner's Manual

Since there are many members here from different countries and points of the compass, I thought it may be interesting to start a pictorial thread. Show us favourite pics of the countryside you pass through or hunt in for gold and relics. I will kick it off with these from country South Australia. The Flinders Ranges.

Over the last couple months I've met quite few folks new to nuggetshooting. Many are frustrated at not finding gold, but are finding a lot of trash targets, including lead shot, and I find myself confessing that it took me more than 2 years on the calendar and 30+ days of detecting to find number 1. Part of my pep talk is to explain that this is a common experience, so stick with it. So the point of the question is to encourage newer detectorists stick with it and learn whatever they can from the real pros on this forum.

Another year and another trip to Baja. Our premise this year was simple. We'd re-visit an area that had been worked pretty hard over the past 20 years, but possibly had some big rains last summer and moved some gravel around, plus I thought the 17" CC XCoil might hit some deeper nuggets in one of the main washes. A trip to Baja always has its hazards. I drove 12 hrs from N Nevada towing my RZR, arriving in Yuma at 1:30am. The next morning we crossed the border just outside of Yuma at Algodones. First complication at Mexican immigration. I left home with the wrong registration for the RZR. Mexican authorities are somehow sticklers about registrations. They turned us back to the US. In Yuma, we scrambled to get a current registration and went back to the border. All went well with registrations and Tourist Visas. Algodones is an old town with very narrow streets plus it is packed with visitors seeking dental care, eyeglasses and prescription drugs. Algodones is a Mecca for Americans wanting to save money. Dental clinics abound and the pharmacies are always packed this time of year. I was driving careful pulling the RZR with my big ole GMC 3/4 ton crewcab. My friend was behind me driving a Toyota truck and camper shell. 4 way stops are merely a suggestion for Mexican drivers, so I was really watching the traffic and pedestrians. Somehow the Toyota was now 4 cars back after a couple 4 way stops. I got to the edge of town and could no longer see the Toyota behind me. I found a wide spot to pull off thinking he might have taken a wrong turn. After a couple minutes he called me on my cell phone and said he'd been in an accident and for me to come back. My mind raced at the extreme possibilities, but found that it was a simple fender bender. The Mexican driver had pulled into the Toyota blind spot as he was turning left. The Toyota rear tire caught the front bumper of the Mexican car. The bumper and grill were all plastic and the whole mess was laying on the ground. Coincidently, a Mexican policeman was parked right there. As a retired federal investigator, I'm not much of a believer in coincidences, but it's Mexico. No one spoke English and my Spanish is very rusty. We discern that the Victim wanted $250.00 for the damage to his vehicle. It seemed reasonable under the circumstances, so he was paid in cash and goes on his way. The policeman tells us we must accompany him to the police station where a judge will determine the fine for an accident on a Mexican highway. He suggests that the Toyota may be impounded as a result. We're sweating this out and follow him with his lights flashing through dirt road city streets. After a few random turns, he turns off his lights and calls us over. He can make this go away for $600.00. Naturally, the old Mexican "mordida" game but we're not anxious to see how far this ploy can go. We pool our folding money and come up with $260.00. We explain that's all we got and he graciously accepts and sends us on our way. It's Mexico so we chalk it up to the cost of doing business and get back on the road. To be continued...