Condor Tries On The Insanely Hot Settings

[Steve Herschbach]

It gets real good on day 2. Details to follow.

The suspense is killing me!

[Tortuga]

0.4 oz is a nice slug of gold.

Maybe nothing special for Australia but in the US bigger ones are getting harder and harder to find.

[Condor]

Sorry I didn't get to the second day of my experience with the super hot settings.  I got busy helping an out of state hunter trying to fill a Desert Bighorn Sheep tag.  We filled, not a trophy but some hard hunting involved.

Nevertheless, here's the rest of the story.  On day 2, I was heading for an area I explored about 10 years ago with Rob Allison and Bill Southern.  The road was rough and rocky so I pulled up short and decided to explore some gullies nearer the road.  My main goal was just to keep trying out the settings and maybe get over some gold.  I prospected for nearly an hour and was getting pretty frustrated with kicking a lot of hot rocks.  The area was littered with volcanic rocks and the new settings were really lighting them up.  I turned to make a loop back to the truck and pushed up a steep gully.  I got a loud tone that really sounded like a nail, but since I was experimenting I thought I better dig the target.  A very shallow nugget less than .2 gram popped out.  I thought maybe this will work out after all.  I continued down the ridge to a small wash with a few drywash tailings.  I pushed up that a short distance and got a solid low tone.  Low tones out here are usually bullets, but again I dug it up.  6 inches down a really solid half gram nugget came up.  The shape, density and super hot settings made this small nugget sound off with a low tone.  I continued up the wash and 20 ft away I got an iffy signal.  I had already dug so many hot rocks that I was not much convinced but I started digging.  After pulling off about 6 inches of rocks and soil the tone cleared up but the hole was choked with interlocked rocks.  I kept thinking any one of those rocks was the culprit but kept digging.  I punched down between 15 and 18 inches to the clay layer checking every rock I pulled out.  The tone kept getting louder and louder in the hole.  Because I was so deep the hole was too narrow to try and pinpoint so I just kept expanding the hole.  At one point I was about to go back to my truck and get the big pick and shovel I had spent so much time on my hands and knees digging and prying rocks, but I kept going.  Now the signal was booming, so I turned the sensitivity all the way down to 1.   I'm thinking I must have missed a piece of trash in the sidewall, but kept digging.  One more big rock and the target was in the loose dirt in the hole.  I started scooping and waving over the coil and boom.  Out she came, 11 grams of golden beauty.  My biggest this year. 

Here's my take on Steve's Insanely Hot settings.  They're great if you are in a known gold producing zone and have the luxury of moving really slow.  They will drive you crazy with noise if you're in the gold prospecting mode and need to cover a lot of ground or if you're in very mineralized ground.  It takes a pretty good while to adjust your hearing to ignore noise that isn't a target tone.  The machine is going to meow and growl every time you raise or lower the coil as the ground balance and threshold try to catch up.  It seems to me that after about a half hour the machine smooths out a little or maybe its just my brain smoothing out.  The 7k is super sensitive to ferrous targets so you'll be chasing some very tiny pieces of old cans and the shavings off heavy equipment tracks and blades.  I'm to the point that if the target moves with a boot scrape I don't bother.  I may be leaving gold behind, but my knees and back don't appreciate the ups and downs to dig trash. 

I'll post the photos after my phone charges. 

Bravo Zulu to Steve's shared settings, they certainly have a place in the prospecting quiver. 

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

"11 grams of golden beauty.  My biggest this year."

 

Very nice and just in time with the year coming to an end. Though I guess it is prime time down your way - go find one even larger!

[Rob Allison]

Hey Condor,

 

   Is that that general area 10 years ago where Bill had all the secret maps, but we couldn't see them? 

 

Remember that gully I hit all that gold in?  Did you try that again?  I haven't been back to that spot since I found it, so its well worth running the GPZ there.  

 

Congrats on your success!  Would love to see a picture of the 11 Grammer you hit.  

[Tortuga]

11 grams is real nice nug. Can't wait to see the pics.

[Condor]

My phone crapped out, I'm barely computer literate enough to get the photos out, but I managed.  I took a picture of the hole I dug, but the photo doesn't do justice to all the big rocks that I had dragged out behind me, but you get the idea.

Rob, yes I have been back to that area and a years ago I found one big 1/2 oz slug, but otherwise a few half grammers, all with the SDC last year.  This year nothing.  This nugget came from the road in from the canal near the power lines.  The so-called nugget patch that Bill told us about where the guy allegedly found 40oz looks like a moon crater now.  Everybody and his dog has drywashed that zone.