Deus 2 Nugget Shooting

[Condor]

I did a little nugget hunting in a California Gold Country hydraulic pit using the D2 with the latest update .7 and the 9" coil.  As most nugget hunters know, hydraulic pits are a bugger to hunt, square nails and ferrous trash enough to drive you insane.  I found a decent little spot of packed soil on top of the old cobbles.  Probably a sluice cleanout spot or maybe the old timers were shoveling out a sluice raceway.  Still littered with pieces of wire from steel cables and miscellaneous ferrous trash, but workable.

The D2 update added a notch feature to the Goldfield and Relic programs.  That feature allows you to notch out the ground which vastly improved the coil bump sensitivity.  I notched 00 to 10 which also took out a majority of hotrocks.  The hotrocks played havoc with my GPX6000, so I opted to stay with the D2.  The smallest of nuggets I found had a TID in the high 20's, the bigger ones 30 to 40 range.  22 bullets TID in 50s.  I had occasion to test swing over someone else's .26 oz nugget found that same day.  That TID came in the US nickel range, mid 60's.  I would have liked a 2nd notch to handle another type of hotrock that had a TID of 79.  Well beyond gold nugget range yet still registering non-ferrous.  Not sure what they were, but they were numerous and added a distracting high tone.  

I have used the NOX 800 with the Coiltek 5x9 coil for similar kind of nugget hunting.  I think the NOX would still have an edge in these conditions, but I was impressed with how well behaved the D2 was with the new update.   I recovered nuggets so small they will not register on my cheapo scale.   If Deus builds their elliptical coil for the D2, it will be a very competitive VLF nugget detector.  Even though I have the NOX, I prefer the D2 maybe because its new to me and has a lot of features I can fiddle with.  

Photos to follow.

 

[Condor]

[beatup]

good on you Steve , some good detecting for those sub gram pieces. Eric said you guys were up in the high country out of the heat .

[Condor]

  Downright chilly in the mornings, but those pits heat up quick if there's no cloud cover.  The guy I was with dug over 100 nails but was rewarded for his effort with a sweet 1/4 oz nugget.  

[abenson]

Nice report Steve. Good to hear the D2 has gotten better with the latest update.

[Gerry in Idaho]

Hey Steve,  Glad to see you also out there giving the Deus-II some love.  I was out West this weekend with one of my Field Staff and he too was running his D2.  Found plenty of tiny nonferrous targets and one nice specimen about 1/2 oz.  I think he said it read in the 40's.

Yes, we too are really wanting to get the ellip coil as we know what ellips can do for a detector.

Thanks for sharing your story and golden pics.

[Condor]

Hey Gerry,

I forgot to mention that I did a quick experiment with the hotrocks.  These rocks range in size from a basketball to a baseball.  After I notched them out, I put the .8 gram nugget right on top of one of the medium sized rocks.  Deus 2 hit the nugget no problem.  Regrettably, it could not do the same on the smaller nuggets, but the D2 can give you options.