Simon Scores A Deep Colour

[phrunt]

While not quite as exciting as Reg and James and their colours I did manage to pop a few up myself yesterday.

JW and I went back to the same place I found my KFC nuggets the other day, I once again stayed right at the entrance due to my broken foot, I really can't walk very far before the pain is too much and I need to save some life in my foot for the days hunting, If I walked too far I'd have nothing left in me for swinging the detector.  JW fortunately has healed up quickly from his leg muscle injury and was able to walk off into the distance, he ended up going a fair way away to an area I've not been to since I was using my GPX 4500.  He did well too, ended up with 8 nuggets.

Seeing I was going over ground we mostly went over the previous days I didn't have much hope for myself, but I wasn't going to let that get in my way.  I was more determined than ever to at least find one nugget we missed.  It's a very small area where I was hanging around, I first found gold in this exact spot with my GPX 4500 a few years ago, I found a 1.2 gram nugget down by the creek, and a couple of little ones near it, I then asked JW to go over it with his GPZ and stock coil and clean up anything my 4500 missed and I vaguely remember him finding another 6 or so tiny little nuggets I'd missed.

It really is a small area, there is a dirt road and about 10 to 15 meters (30 to 50 feet) wide on one side of the road is where the gold has been found, it goes for a stretch of about 50 meters I would guess (165 feet) along the side of a bit of a drop off into a creek.  It's on a downward slope and drops into a little gully and down the bottom of this is where I previously found the 1.2 gram nugget.  This is the area I confined myself to that we both confined ourselves to a couple of days ago.   Over the other side of the road is another area with quite long grass and deeper ground.  I had an explore over there on the road side for a few hours and found nothing but junk.

The other day I stayed up near the top of this area where I found 6 nuggets including my KFC pieces 🙂  This time my focus was more down towards the bottom, JW had a bit of a shot down there the other day but I didn't make it down there as we keep our distance apart to stop the detectors messing with each other, both the GPZ 7000 and GPX 6000 JW is using work remarkably well next to each other though.

He was going to use his GPZ this time as it's just better for in the long grass, the shaft on the 6000 twists, the coil ears don't appear strong enough for pushing the detector through long grass so he's a bit worried about breaking them doing what we do with the GPZ.   We use our detectors as a way to push down and flatten the grass, and with the GPX this isn't really possible so you have to do it by foot stomping and then detect over it which takes more time.  His little flap cover on the back of the detector is always hanging open too, that thing just never holds shut, might have to tape it down or something.   The GPZ is much more robust and you just bulldoze the grass down.  Anyway, he just ended up using the GPX again as it was ready when I arrived at his house, it was a bit of a last minute idea to go on our gold hunt yesterday.

This is the long grass I'm talking about, the 8" is a breeze in this stuff, it just squishes it down and the nice tough GPZ shaft has no problems doing it, being dry the grass is quite firm too, not nice soft green grass.   JW doesn't have this little 8" coil though so he'd be using a 15" Concentric coil which wouldn't be quite as good in the long grass although he'd still be able to bulldoze it over with the stronger shaft, I've used the 12" Concentric fine doing that, but still not as easy as the 8".

The little dig hole to the bottom left was just a pellet in this photo.

My first nugget of the day was right down the bottom where the road drops down into the gully, right near where I found the 1.2 gram piece a few years ago with the 4500 and where JW had checked with his GPZ and stock coil at the time cleaning up the bits I'd missed. 

Down by the water in the shade of the willows the grass stays green, unusual for in this area as its so arid and brown.  Sorry about the spit on the scoop, I had to clean the gold to see it was even gold 🙂

It was quite deep down, its hard to tell in the photos but you can sort of see the soil pile in this one above.  The 8" is like a laser, you can dig pick width holes to get your target out as it's so small and accurate.

And the nugget, I thought it was going to be heavier than it was, it was my biggest of the day.

I was happy now, I thought at that point it was extremely unlikely I'd find another one, we'd just done this ground too much for there to be any more nuggets we'd missed.

JW rang me from his location way out of my walking range to check up how I was doing, at this point he'd found 3 nuggets and I'd just found this one, I guess he was about a kilometer away along the dirt road at the time.

A little further along down the bottom I had another target, weird, perhaps a pellet that was rejected or something so I dug it up.

A little ball 🙂

Although a lot smaller it weighs more than the bigger flat one.

And it wasn't 10 minutes and I'd found a 3rd, all in a similar area down near the bottom of this little dip in the road.

This one was probably hidden due to the long grass, because I was able to squish the grass down so easily I was able to get close to the ground.  In fact it's probably similar for all of them, with the clumps of grass the GPZ just has more push strength to crush it down to get closer to the soil.

A little KFC mini drumstick 🙂

There isn't much meat on the KFC mini drum.

I gave up in this area now, I've absolutely slammed it and so has JW, I was honestly surprised to get anything.

I went over the other side of the road in the small area between the road and the fence, it was just full of trash, although I did find a silver ear ring, probably from a hiker.  The really bad bit about detecting along this road was hikers, they kept walking past me, I felt like a monkey at a zoo with them all stopping to watch me and talking to me with the same standard lines, "have you found anything" or "are you looking for gold".   This place is normally pretty empty, you're lucky to see one other person in a day, this day I am sure there was 20 or 30 hikers go past! so weird!   JW encountered them way further along where he was too.  He probably wasn't right at the road though so wouldn't have had it as bad as I did.

The ear ring I found, I also found a wedding ring from a mouse.  Poor little guy probably got a big lecture from Mrs Mouse for losing his wedding ring.

and my junk, I zoomed in so you can get a real good look at it! I was rejecting surface pellets, if it moves on the first scrape or two it stays there, these are the ones I had to dig, using the same dig and recovery process of a nugget, very time consuming.  I don't understand how the pellets get down deep into the ground, maybe they've been there a long time, some get down in cracks in the bedrock and everything and really get you excited.  A majority of this junk came from the opposite side of the road to the gold along where the fence is.  JW has found gold on that side in the past, I wasn't able to find any there this time.

I had a fun day, even though I confined myself to such a small area I was happy to get some gold.   I'll post a photo of JW's nuggets weight when he sends one though to me.

And for those wondering, yes we got KFC on the way home 🙂

[phrunt]

This demonstrates the area I was hunting.  You'll see just how small it is.  The stars are the nuggets approximate locations.  I also marked on the spot where I found the 1.2 gram nugget with the GPX 4500 a couple of years ago.

I've blurred the photo to hide the secret spot 😛

If there is one thing having a broken foot has taught me it's how to detect an area slowly and thoroughly, something JW has been unable to teach me no matter how hard he tried.

[Norvic]

Love it a some NZ color, crikey you`ve got a FNQer saying color now, we`re being infiltrated by those south of the border sayings now...............

[Valens Legacy]

Very nice hunting and your skills are getting better I believe.

I wish you better luck on your next outing.

[Joe L]

Wow nice Simon, congrats

[MSC]

Wow, a lot of shotgun pellets, I have hit a lot but not that many in one detector session. Nice little gold, hope to get out and get some of my own soon. Thanks for posting. 

[phrunt]

1 minute ago, MSC said:

Wow, a lot of shotgun pellets, I have hit a lot but not that many in one detector session. Nice little gold, hope to get out and get some of my own soon. Thanks for posting. 

These are just the pellets that had me fooled that I dug up out of the ground, I rejected probably 50 to 100 more that were near the surface by scraping the top layers off the soil, if the target moves I walk away.  I will miss the occasional tiny piece of gold doing this but if I were to recover every pellet my gold tally would drop significantly as I'd be wasting so much time recovering surface pellets.  My rule is if it's in the looser top soil with no gravels showing it's very unlikely to be gold, it's when I start to see gravel in my dig the heart rate speeds up 🙂

[phrunt]

Here was JW's nuggets from our mission with his GPX 6000.

We didn't test his smallest nuggets on my GPZ this time as he detected a fair distance from me, I've good confidence in the sensitivity of my 8" coil to do a pretty good job on the small stuff though so I'd not be at all surprised if it was competitive on his smallest nugget.

With any luck we might be going back this weekend to give it another go.

[Jim_Alaska]

I don't know what kind of shotgun shells are available where you are. But many years ago, here in the US, lead shotgun pellets were banned and we had to only use steel pellets. Then of course, you could no longer buy new shells with lead pellets. This was all done to to protect wildfowl from ingesting them and die of lead poisoning.

[phrunt]

4 hours ago, Jim_Alaska said:

I don't know what kind of shotgun shells are available where you are. But many years ago, here in the US, lead shotgun pellets were banned and we had to only use steel pellets. Then of course, you could no longer buy new shells with lead pellets. This was all done to to protect wildfowl from ingesting them and die of lead poisoning.

Thanks, out of interest I looked up the rules here and the ban of lead has only just happened here 😞

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The planned phase-out of lead shot for waterfowl hunting is now complete. 

Since 2004, most hunters who use 10 or 12 gauge shotguns have been required to use non-toxic shot when hunting waterfowl within 200 metres of water.

2021 saw a complete ban on the use of lead shot for all but 410 gauge, 

This ban will be strictly enforced on public, private, DOC and Fish & Game land for and all hunters other than those using 410 gauge. You must use non-toxic shot, nothing else. 

The 410 exemption has been given because these shotguns are sometimes used by beginner hunters, and non-toxic shot loads are not currently available for them.

The phase-out of lead shot follows research that shows that waterfowl get poisoned when they pick up fired lead shot and eat it as a grit substitute to help them digest their food. New Zealand research showed the problem was the same here as in overseas countries.

Non-toxic shot does not contain lead and the most commonly available type uses steel pellets. Steel shot is already widely used in New Zealand.