Short But Sweet

[oneguy]

Nice pics and writeup.... that hog nugget and it's friends are impressive...good job!!!!   Keep the pics coming to help us northern boys get thru winter....

[beatup]

well done good thing you thought of that old patch , some good looking gold was found.

[flakmagnet]

Not only are you a top of the heap detector operator but you have that additional ingredient that makes you unique; intuition

 

[mn90403]

20 minutes ago, flakmagnet said:

Not only are you a top of the heap detector operator but you have that additional ingredient that makes you unique; intuition

 

Actually Lunk is like Captain Phil from the Deadliest Catch.  He can smell the nuggets!

I don't know how he can do it and maybe he'll pass on some of Smokey's secrets but until then we'll just have to imagine that it is something like this:

 

[Lunk]

Well Mitchel, congratulations, because you've definitely hit onto a well guarded secret to successful nugget hunting that was related to me by the late, great and legendary nugget shooter, Smokey Baird. I first read about it in an ancient magazine article, circa 1996, titled Dinosaur Gold, written by a reporter that interviewed Smokey en route to one of his Rye Patch area nugget patches. The reporter had asked Smokey how he thought the gold had been deposited there geologically. After first meeting Smokey, I asked him about the magazine article, and he replied that his response to the reporter's query had been heavily edited, and so he proceeded to tell me the real story, and it goes something like this:

Once upon a time, the entire area was covered by a huge inland body of water named Lake Lahontan and prehistoric birds swam in the lake. Now if the diet of a bird and the soil conditions on the bottom of the lake were just right when that bird took a sh!t and it hit the lakebed, it would form a nugget. And, when a whole flock of these prehistoric birds were gathered together in a cove protected from the wind and a dinosaur suddenly came up over the ridge and scared the sh!t out of them all, that made a nugget patch.

The funniest thing about this explanation is that it works just as well as any geologic theory about the deposition of gold in the area, so all you have to do the next time you're out patch hunting is to figure out where those coves are.

[Randy Lunn]

Lunk, way to go!!! Totally awesome haul. It is amazing how the proper weather conditions and your skill can combine to yield such great results. You give encouragement to us all.

[Walker]

Ahhh! So good to see this! Just about to get my season started and now I’m motivated. Good work!

[mn90403]

These came from an ICMJ article but I don't know the date.

[Jim McCulloch]

Keith, maybe we ought to change your nickname to "Smokey Jr."

[Lunk]

Mitchel, that was back in 2002, when Jim “Tailgate” Straight and his sidekick Jerry “Sandtrap” Balcer joined Smokey and myself for a nugget hunt. As you can see, I had found one of those prehistoric bird coves.😀Good times!