What's Best, Cruising Or Crawling? My Last Day Gold.

[Gerry in Idaho]

Fred made a comment on one of my posts to Mitchel and I feel it needs more input from a variety of hunters and their styles.

This is results from my last day at Rye Patch (last Saturday).

My 5 days of hunting had me doing the hoping and looking for an indicator nugget...and I also snail crawled.  Here are my results.  The 2 days I want Prospecting and covering a lot of ground produced 1 nugget.  The 3 days I snail crawled with 7000 produced 25 nuggets.  In fact, my last day was spent in a very small area of approx. 20' x 30' and I found 12 pieces of gold.  10 of those were signals most others have missed and including myself a few times missing them, as I have detected that exact same piece of ground twice.

I'm much more fortunate than most folks who hunt Rye Patch, NV as I've been doing it for 20+ years and I know the history of the old patches.  Sometimes I go back to those old patches, pick a small section of ground and work the crap out of it.  I especially like sites where I was pulling deep nuggets in years past, as I know those deepest pieces of heavy metal might only make a peep within a small 1 to 3" width.  Don't ask me how or why, but overlapping at least 1/2 and sometimes 1/4 of coil size, per sweep with the 14" coil on the GPZ can produce.

Lunk and I spent the last day crawling with our 7's and here is a photo of the results.  Both of us and some other well known hunters have been in the wash before.  The old saying it true "You can never get them all".  I just want to make sure I get my share.  

How do you other Prospectors do it and what is your results when covering ground and snail crawling with a detector?  I look forward to hearing everyone's comments.

Nuggets on top of dime are Lunk's and the ones on bottom were found my myself on the last day.

[fredmason]

Well I just depend on the whims of the Gold Gods....

However, when that fails I return to the basics. 
Also, I often hunt where others walk/ride by.

but y’all find way more gold than me...

fred

[Ridge Runner]

Gerry  

 I don’t know why you post your gold with a also new dime being it’s a 42 and I pop my head out in 41.

 Great looking gold !

 Chuck 

[cobill]

Gerry,

Great post and beautiful RP gold...you know that area better than most hunters. This year I crawled and gridded small areas using orange cones to mark off areas( Lunk's recommendation), overlapping by 1/2 or less and it works, if the gold is in the ground!

Like Mitchel, I may need some more training by the pros in those special RP areas.

Bill

[LuckyLundy]

Yep, it’s hard to explain what a slow swing is!  I tell fellow detectorist swing as if your Shoe/Boot Laces are tied together!  No one gets the last nugget in a good patch, slow over lapping swings will always produce one or more on each visit.  Even with the same machine, same settings as your last visit  “Every day is different” is my saying!  This is another hint, when swinging on any old patch in Gold Country!

Rick

[Jim McCulloch]

Ger, LOW and SLOW has always worked for me. Good gold for both you and Lunk, well done guys! HH Jim 

[Steve Herschbach]

No right or wrong, it purely depends on the situation. Are you trying to find a new patch, or trying to extract gold from a known patch? Are you hunting a natural gold patch, or highly disturbed ground like tailing piles?

If I am hunting a known patch I am like Lunk, crazy methodical slow. My normal mode is to hunt a week at a time, on one location, basically not moving at all. I find most people can't stand this and want to run all over the place or hop in the car and go someplace else after a day. Not me, just leave me in one place for a week, as long as I know there is gold there. The old saying is "never leave gold to find gold" and as a rule I find it to be good advice.

But put me in Alaska hunting tailing piles looking for lost over-sized gold and it is all about ground coverage. The nuggets are few and far between, not in a limited area like a natural patch. And miles of ground usually. Low and slow is not the way to go.

If you are hunting for a new patch in a desert, better have a large coil and cover ground like no tomorrow looking for an indicator nugget. Low and slow is no good in 100 square miles of desert.

Patch hunting versus known patches, real world result. I spent exactly a month of hunting days in Australia, with JP putting me on a known patch every day. Dawn to dusk. I was in Australia to find an Australia sized nugget, you know, the fist sized type. I figured the pounded patches were not a good bet for that, and so I devoted dawn to lunch each day on a long loop swinging an 18" coil on my GPX 5000. I don't take breaks, I swing for the 4-5 hours I have. I covered about 5 miles per half day on each of those loops. Then after lunch it was hit the patch low and slow.

At the end of the month I had 2.33 ounces of Aussie gold. If I recall correctly, like one or at most two of those were found on my exploration trips. I would have bet, did bet, that I would have found some tiny patch or stringer of gold somewhere off the main patch locations. Instead I essentially wasted half my trip for basically no result. I can't say I regret that - go big or go home - and I do have to learn some things for myself. But in retrospect I could have easily have doubled my gold take just by staying on the patches. And frankly maybe got a whisper that proved to be the big nugget I was after. If I go back to Australia again, unless it is specifically a trip to find new ground, I would stay on the patches 100% of the time and give it my all. If I have done that last trip I would probably have found 5 ounces instead of 2.33 ounces.

2.33 ounces of Australian gold

I do quite a bit of wandering in Nevada, and have found quite a few isolated nuggets, which apparently are far more common in Nevada than Australia, or at least where we were in Australia. Just one nugget, then hunt there for two more hours and nothing else. And I did find a little virgin mini patch once that gave me about an ounce of gold. But more normal was one week I spent in a gold bearing region but not on a known patch, just hunting dawn to dusk trying to find that fabled virgin patch I know is out there someplace still. A solid week, one nugget of a couple grams. Man I was excited when I found it, but once again it was a one off.

It is very hard to patch hunt like that knowing you can drive a few miles and be on gold. But if you want to be that person who really, and I mean really scores, you have to give it a go every once in a while. But realistically, getting on known producing ground with the absolute best machine possible and hunting as slowly and methodically as is humanly possible is what puts gold in the poke these days.

Unless you are in tailing piles in Alaska! 

[flakmagnet]

I hunt slowly. I concentrate on coil control and intuition. I crank the settings up but spend my time listening carefully. I always investigate signals that sound "different" or only sound off on one part of the swing. I usually find something.

When I find myself being sloppy in any of the above - I take a short break.

And then some days I just totally suck at everything and hope I get lucky...

[DigsAlot]

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

No right or wrong, it purely depends on the situation. Are you trying to find a new patch, or trying to extract gold from a known patch? Are you hunting a natural gold patch, or highly disturbed ground like tailing piles?

etc.....

Two points, first I would love to have found that amount of gold in a month. Second, good way to explain the difference between models of hunting. I slow only if I find two in an area. Otherwise it is patch hunting speed. I do need to try this 1/2 coil overlap. 

[alaskaseeker]

Stumbling slow and LISTEN...