Nugget Hunting With The Deus

[abenson]

I'm no nugget hunting expert. But the Deus will pick up the small bits of gold about as well as any gold hunting VLF. Hot rocks in the area I was hunting were fairly common. But that's were the gold hides, in those areas other avoid.

[Contraption]

Depar is the same as the Gold FIeld program. That's where it came from. I like Gary's video. Best one I have seen. Very good for someone who is learning the program. If you have a beef with Gary please don't take it out on me. I got enough of my own pain and misery. 

 

I'm one of the few people I know who even use the Gold Field program. Most people got the All-metal phobia. It's super deep and other programs can't touch it, but it does hit on deep iron. Listen for the Zip Zip. 

 

If I'm in a city park I cross check deep targets with another program. If I can't hear it I don't dig unless it's a really hot area. I learned it by taking an hour each time out. That's about all I can handle in trashy area, just gets overwhelming on the ears. 

 

And a little IAR is nice to break up some of the ferrous stuff.

[Bretski]

21 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Your Deus in Gold Field with the HF coils running 31 kHz or higher should have no problem hitting shallow .1 gram gold nuggets/pickers if your dirt is not too mineralized where you are prospecting.  Checking the mineralization bar in the horseshoe graph profile should tell you. On the surface you may get a numerical ID of 98 or 99 with the horseshoe graph showing non ferrous on small gold. Depending on mineralization you may get no numerical target ID and bouncing ferrous/non ferrous response from the horseshoe graph on .1 gram gold nuggets or pickers at 2 to 3 " depth. Deeper than that you may get nothing on such small gold. The default Gold Field program is a really good place to start with a few adjustments. You will need to do a pumping ground balance for sure, use an iron amplitude reject setting of 0 to 2, reactivity 2 or 2.5, audio response 2 or 3, threshold around 5 and sensitivity around 90 depending on ground noise. You can also try the XY graphic profile also if you are in an area with larger gold. The WS4 back phones are pretty useless for gold prospecting for tiny gold especially in the wind. If you don't have the WS5s, you might want to get the audio adapter for the WS4 and plug in some good quality over the ear headphones so you can hear any really faint small gold targets.

I think there was recently a Deus Youtube video on Western USA gold prospecting with the Deus by a member of this forum.

Awesome information, very comprehensive. Thank you!

[Bretski]

15 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

To clarify, Jeff is talking about the profile setting that selects the screen with the horseshoe graph vs. the X-Y screen.  The mineralization bar graph runs vertically up the right side of that screen on the opposite side of the horseshoe graphic.  You need to be either swinging or pumping the coil (coil motion) to get a valid mineralization level reading.  Any peak readings 3/4 to full scale are considered severe mineralization.  Mineralization level on Deus is somewhat independent of the ground phase/ground balance numbers (i.e., you can have high mineralization without having higher than nominal ground phase numbers, in fact in heavily mineralized ground you may see a lot of variation in three ground phase number over a wide range above and below the nominal number).

Also be careful about running gold field Iron Audio Reject in heavily mineralized ground too high as it will react to the ferrous ground content and associated non-ferrous target down averaging and chop practically all target signal audio.  Use of none to low IAR settings as Jeff suggested is best.

Geez, you guys are amazing. I am definitely underutilizing my Deus. I am grateful for this information and this forum as I can work with the information and always get back with questions if needed. 

My thanks to you

Brett

[Bretski]

14 hours ago, Contraption said:

Here is a good video on tuning the Gold Field program. Note the DPR 600 uses the same program as found on the Deus and ORX.

 

 

Awesome! Thank you!

[Bretski]

10 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Gary is not a gold nugget prospector and he is not using a Deus in this video. The Depar/ORX is similar but it does not have exactly the same display or features in its Gold programs.

Abenson from this forum very recently made a nice introductory Youtube video using a Deus with the 9" HF coil in typical Rocky Mountain dirt. Here it is......

 

OMG.....you are all so amazing and helpful. Sincerely, I can't thank you enough. If any of you are ever in the Okanagan feel free to send me a note, perhaps we can get some detecting or panning time in.

 

Regards

 

Brett

[Jeff McClendon]

14 hours ago, Contraption said:

Depar is the same as the Gold FIeld program. That's where it came from. I like Gary's video. Best one I have seen. Very good for someone who is learning the program. If you have a beef with Gary please don't take it out on me. I got enough of my own pain and misery. 

 

I'm one of the few people I know who even use the Gold Field program. Most people got the All-metal phobia. It's super deep and other programs can't touch it, but it does hit on deep iron. Listen for the Zip Zip. 

 

If I'm in a city park I cross check deep targets with another program. If I can't hear it I don't dig unless it's a really hot area. I learned it by taking an hour each time out. That's about all I can handle in trashy area, just gets overwhelming on the ears. 

 

And a little IAR is nice to break up some of the ferrous stuff.

We have had this discussion before on this forum.

There have been very few Deus Gold Field program specific gold prospecting setup tutorial videos. The video you linked can be innocently misleading to brand new Deus Gold Field users.

I could be wrong, but I think the Deus Gold Field program predates the DPR 600 which had 4 variations of an all metal mode similar to the original Deus Version 3 Gold Field program which was developed for the Deus in 2012/2013.

Gary did very well in this video. I have absolutely no problem with him and love all of his videos. I just stated a fact which he himself has repeated several times in his videos. He is not a gold prospector.

Ground balancing the Deus in Gold Field and ground balancing the ORX/DPR 600 in their gold modes is not the same process.

Gary's use of the reactivity settings on the DPR 600 do not numerically line up with the reactivity settings on the Deus since the Deus, as you know has one decimal setting 2.5, which happens to be a great starting place for general prospecting in moderate mineralization.

The display on the DPR 600, ORX and the Deus are definitely not the same which can be confusing. 

As Gary, Chase, Abenson and I have said already, using more than minimal or no Iron Amplitude Rejection is the best course to take in mineralized to highly mineralized ground on smaller gold targets. Most small gold responses will rapidly mimic iron range responses with depth in mineralized ground using the Deus/ORX so too much IAR will breakup or silence small gold responses. The only time I use more than a setting of 1 or maybe 2 is when the gold prospecting area I'm hunting is littered with man-made iron relics of all sizes. That is a frustrating situation for sure where dig it all becomes impossible.

So, I was just pointing out to anyone who wants to use the DPR 600 video for Deus Gold Field training, that the setup process and the actual Gold programs are not exactly the same.

Like you, I know a lot of Deus users and none of them know how to use the Gold Field program. I have close to a thousand hours of gold prospecting with the Deus and ORX using the Gold programs. They are fairly similar, but I ultimately chose the Deus since I prefer its more refined Gold Field VCO audio over the more brash audio on the ORX even though I really like the display features on the ORX.

 

[Jeff McClendon]

51 minutes ago, Bretski said:

OMG.....you are all so amazing and helpful. Sincerely, I can't thank you enough. If any of you are ever in the Okanagan feel free to send me a note, perhaps we can get some detecting or panning time in.

Thanks Brett.

I have relatives in Northern Montana near the Alberta border and more relatives near Edmonton. We have done a little panning in Southern Alberta. Once this pandemic is over and the border is open I may take you up on your offer.

Jeff

[Contraption]

I'm certainly not here to get in an argument. I got this info and video info from the Andy Sabisch book "THE XP DEUS HANDBOOK".

"Mastering the Gold Field Program...How to Set it up in the field

Reading about something is one thing but getting to see how something is done often clarifies what might have been totally frustrating. Gary Blackwell put together a first-rate video on the Depar DPR-600 which is a detector built specifically for gold prospecting on the Deus chassis. The program it uses is the same as the Gold Field program found on the Deus..." 

I put this info out to help the original poster. It helped me and I want to share it.