Day 2 Nugget Hunting Nevada Nokta Makro Legend Finds A Nugget

[abenson]

This is Day 2 of my trip to Nevada with Steve and Steve. On day 2 after having some gold in the poke we decided to pull out the VLF's for a while in the trash to see what we could find. The Legend was running version 1.06 which I later found out had issues and noticed the machine was running kind of funky at times. But still managed to pull a small nugget with it. Wasn't long before I went back to the GPX 6000. Love that machine, never thought I would own one but now that I've used one I think I'm going to have to get it.

 

[phrunt]

Thanks for the video, it's nice to see what people experience in different areas and countries.

I'm surprised that first nugget you showed with the GPX was a nugget, I was watching thinking he's about to show a pellet find, it was in the easy to scrape surface stuff that I reject virtually every time here knowing it will 99.5% chance be a shotgun pellet or some small junk target.  I used to recover all that surface stuff but gave up long ago after advice from a JW and my own experience of it just never being a nugget.  You just never find gold in that surface material here, it's always down in a harder packed gravelly ground, it's so lucky you aren't in a heavy shotgun pellet area or you'd miss so much gold with it being like that as you just can't recover every surface target like that or you'd be wasting all your time recovering many hundreds of pellets a day.  The only time I get excited is once all that loose soil is gone and I get down a bit into the harder ground under it and start to see gravel coming up.

I wonder what would make gold be so close to the surface like that? You seemed to find a lot of really surface type nuggets.  Something to do with mining in the area and them losing it or is it just the natural way it settles in the dryer desert type areas?

Was the Legend using any discrimination, it seems to have choppy blanking signals?

You could possibly be the first person in the world to find a gold nugget with the Legend, certainly the first person I've seen or heard of finding any gold with one.  Congratulations.

I would love to be set loose in that area you're hunting, quite a descent amount of shallow gold, mostly good sizes you're finding too, I'd have a ball there ?

You did really well for a couple of days on the nuggets tally.  What a good little trip you had with the Steve's.

Sorry to hear your truck failed you Steve number 2, it's always super frustrating when things take away gold hunting time.

[abenson]

Simon

I was also surprised that first nugget was gold. I only dug it because it was one of the only signals I got on the hillside. In Arizona where I usually go, there have actually been quite a few nuggets found in the surface stuff. We call it desert pavement. Areas of broken up rocks and quartz right on the surface. If you find one nugget in a patch of that you will typically rake off all the rocks and find more nuggets just laying on top of the dirt. Most of them small. The gold monster and Equinox do really well on those areas. My friend Jeff down there will sit on one of those patches for hours and almost always finds a nugget or 2.

Like I said the Legend was kind of funky. One minute it would be all choppy with signals blanking out and the next time you turned it on it was fine. I really think it was version 1.06 that screwed it up. But I was running with digits 1 and 2 notched out which is supposed to be the ground values. Yea probably be my first and last nugget with the Legend as I have no intention on buying one at this point. Too much like the Equinox and I'm perfectly happy with the Equinox.

Honestly I think I was just lucky that weekend. I went with an open mind and and attitude of I was just going to have fun and enjoy both Steve and Steve's company. No pressure to find anything. the fact that Steve loaned me his 6000 was the ticket to most of the success. Had it not been for that I would have probably come home with 1 or 2 nuggets.

[jasong]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

I wonder what would make gold be so close to the surface like that? You seemed to find a lot of really surface type nuggets.  Something to do with mining in the area and them losing it or is it just the natural way it settles in the dryer desert type areas?

Soil deflation mostly. Happens in places with a lot of wind, the lighter soils blow away over time while the heavier bits remain.

Some places wind can be so bad and constant that it will blow the gold around too, and in these case you end up finding nuggets in the grass roots where isolated clumps have grown, right at surface because roots are the only things that hold tight and don't move in that kind of wind. 

[strick]

Nice video I really enjoyed it. Must take up a fair bit of time to make them... Glad you got to try out the 6000 it really is a nice machine....Very generous of Steve to give it up ...and for his generosity he was awarded the big nugget of the trip..I'm wondering how deep his nugget was and did he think the 6000 would have heard it? since he was using the big gun for that one..

strick 

[Dutchman4]

What Jason describes is common in some of our desert gold fields that have relatively flat and rocky areas with strong winds.  It is one of the placer types and is called an "Eolian Placer".

[abenson]

1 hour ago, strick said:

Nice video I really enjoyed it. Must take up a fair bit of time to make them... Glad you got to try out the 6000 it really is a nice machine....Very generous of Steve to give it up ...and for his generosity he was awarded the big nugget of the trip..I'm wondering how deep his nugget was and did he think the 6000 would have heard it? since he was using the big gun for that one..

strick 

Thanks Strick. Yea it does take away from detecting time. But it's nice to be able to take others along on the trip and be able to go back and watch later.

Not sure on the depth on that big nugget. Hopefully Steve will chime in on that one.

[Condor]

I was back out there in the same spot last week.  There are several spots with really bad ground noise, the 6k was moaning and groaning through them especially an old push down to red clay.  I fired up the dinosaur 7000 with 15x10 Xcoil  and ran it in Difficult to see if I could scare up something beyond detection depth of the 6k.  Going through the red clay I got a pretty good target signal.  I wasn't convinced it wasn't just hot ground as I dug up wet red clay.  Down about 8 inches the target popped out of the ground.   In retrospect I wish I had checked it with the 6k,  but I was almost sure I was chasing hot ground.  I'm pretty sure we all had detected that push the week before since it was about 20ft from where we parked.   

The 7k running in Difficult quieted the ground considerably and proved it can hold its own, if it wasn't so darn heavy.   I'm spoiled by the 6k weight and maneuverability. 

[Lanny]

Always fun to watch someone getting some gold!

Thanks for the video, and all the best,

Lanny