Quarter Ounce Day

[Lunk]

Hi all,

It’s been awhile since my last post, but I’ll be sharing some knowledge and anecdotes more often, now that my summer job is a thing of the past and I’m free to once again roam the desert southwest, wielding the power of the mighty Zed to unearth nature’s golden treasures.

I was carefully gridding (or - in deference to Gerry in Idaho - crawling) an old nugget patch during a recent trip to the far flung reaches of Nevada’s golden triangle, when the hypnotic drone of the threshold was suddenly broken by a sharp, double “wee-ooh, wee-ooh”. This type of response typically heralds a small and shallow target, usually within six inches of the surface. “Most likely a boot tack or bird shot”, I thought to myself as I crouched down and scraped an inch or two of the dry and dusty desert soil away from the target zone with my pick. Another swing of the detector coil indicated that I had moved the target, and a quick sifting of the material with the hand scoop revealed a small yellow nugget...the first catch of the day! A few more of these shallow pickers were dug during the the next couple of hours, and then I heard a faint, single “wee-ooh”. Knowing that this meant a bit larger target at depth, I went to work hacking into the densely packed soil with my pick until...well, I’ll let this short video tell the rest of the story:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzmm1pgdrpaswe7/Nugget dig.mov?dl=0

The actual weight of the nugget turned out to be 5.6 grams, bringing the total for the day to over a quarter of an ounce of the good stuff!

[Lunk]

I love every minute detecting with the Zed, Phrunt. We let the dog smell and taste the nugget, but for some reason she seemed more interested in flushing out a nice jack rabbit from the sage brush rather than digging up a piece of gold. 🤔

[alaskaseeker]

Nice finds, patience and perseverance wins.....

[IdahoPeg]

Beautiful nugget! Enjoyed the video. Have fun in the goldfields this winter! 🙂

[Glenn in CO]

Nice Nugget! Great way to start your mining season. Thanks! for sharing,

[cobill]

Great nugget and video Lunk! Can you share the settings you ran on the GPZ in NV?

Bill

[Hardtimehermit]

Right on, nice nuggets! 

ht

[Lunk]

1 hour ago, cobill said:

Great nugget and video Lunk! Can you share the settings you ran on the GPZ in NV?

Bill

The settings I use are well suited for the current dry soil conditions. They may seem counter intuitive at first, but, as you can see, the proof is in the pudding.

Gold Mode: High Yield, Ground Type: Normal, Sensitivity: 8, Volume: 20, Threshold Level: 27, Threshold Pitch: 25, Volume Limit: 3, Audio Smoothing: High, Ground Smoothing: Locate Patch.

 

[mn90403]

Well done Lunk.  Keep them coming this winter.

Gerry will be watching!  haha

So will the rest of us.

Mitchel

[flakmagnet]

Thanks for taking the time to show us your find. That's a deep target in anyone's book so nice work. I was wondering why you use Audio Smoothing on High? I am always interested in learning from you...