Keeping It Real!

[phrunt]

JW and I went for a bit of a gold hunt a couple of days ago, he managed to do well considering the area we were in and found three pieces, two of which were decent size.  JW used the 15" Concentric coil on the GPZ as he was hoping for some deeper gold in the deeper ground.  I was in the mood for exploring around and having some good ground coverage so I used the 12" Spiral coil rather than my usual smaller coils also on my GPZ, although this area is quite suitable for larger coils with minimal obstacles to cause problems.

Here is JW's gold for the day.

0.70 of a gram.

I didn't do near as good but in fact we were both pretty surprised to get anything where we were so we can't complain and at least it means there is gold there to be found, although a lot of it probably disguised as pellets 🙂

I think my focus was too much on smaller targets as I spent a lot of time digging and recovering pellets.  The 12" spiral gives the typical good double blip on small shallow targets so surface pellets are easy to ignore but if they live past a scrape or two I tend to recover them just in case but the 12" can give a double blip on quite deep little pellets.  I think in this case I probably should have ignored the double blips entirely and aimed for the deeper targets and not wasted so much time on the pellets 🙂

And this was ignoring the surface first scrape or two pellets so really, I ignored 3 times as many pellets as I recovered, at least.

My only nugget of the day, better than a skunk!

It was down a few inches.

It sure wasted a lot of my time that was probably better spent looking for bigger deeper stuff, but then I may have had a skunk as the one piece of gold I did get could have easily been dismissed for a pellet.  That's the advantage to less sensitive detectors and coils I guess, they fly blind over a bulk of the pellets, but often miss the smaller gold too.  JW being smarter seemed to deal with the pellets a lot better than I did, he didn't get too many at all, and got more gold so his method clearly worked better.  If anyone has suggestions for dealing with spots like this loaded with pellets that potentially have gold that would be helpful, probably a less sensitive coil would be a good start I guess.

On the plus side, I'm helping clean the lead out of the environment.

[UtahRich]

Those dark gray pellets look like a bad plate of mushy peas . . . . and a LOT of work. Congrats on the gold you did find. 

 

Rich

[Valens Legacy]

From reading a lot of your past posts on the gold there, I believe that you actually had a good day.

I would have been worn out digging all the shot and probably have given up before finding the gold.

Glad to see you back out there and finding the good stuff.

Good luck on your next hunt.

[davsgold]

determination, that's for sure, anyhow good that your both back out getting some gold

cheers dave

 

[phrunt]

13 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

From reading a lot of your past posts on the gold there, I believe that you actually had a good day.

Yup, any gold is good gold, it's not something you'd take up around here expecting to have a windfall 🙂  Finding any gold for me makes it a good day🙂 The positive side at least if I ever encounter good ground I've had a lot of practice finding and recovering targets, not near as much as JW though, he always impresses me with his results, all you hear in the background is constant digging, he doesn't mess around.

The funny thing is you're right, the nugget I did find was right at the end of the day, we arrived early and it wasn't long before dark I finally found that nugget, I wasn't going to give up until I found one and he was back at the car waiting for me and I was still going on the hunt at dusk, in fact I was lazier with my digging earlier in the day than later as I was very determined not to be skunked!

Winter is coming to an end so skiing dies down and looking for gold picks up, looking forward to finding some more nuggets.

[strick]

Simon I know the feeling...I got a friend (old timer) that out hunts me every time..just got back from a trip...if I get 6 pieces he gets 16 and all bigger...plus he don’t like it when I say grams so I got to figure How much a penny weighs now... 🙂

strick 

[Gerry in Idaho]

Simon,  When getting that many targets in the area, you/I and everyone else knows there's still more gold to be had.  Yes a less sensitive coil will help but realize gold of the same size will be missed.  I suggest listening for the single tone weaker signals, which usually means deeper on the GPZ-7000, but not always. 

Yes I tend to adjust my detecting style for certain areas and prefer playing the odds and % mathematics to help in my recovery success.  Pellets near the surface give the double tone (which you mentioned) so I pass on those and leave them for Simon.  Softer single tone signals is my focus for those such sites.

Thanks for sharing m friend.

[GB_Amateur]

19 hours ago, phrunt said:

JW being smarter seemed to deal with the pellets a lot better than I did, he didn't get too many at all, and got more gold so his method clearly worked better.

But you said he was using a different coil.  Could that have contributed?

Thanks for the pics and report.  Keep us entertanied these coming seasons; we're shifting the other direction (as I'm sure you are aware), and some of us don't ski. 😞

[phrunt]

25 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

But you said he was using a different coil.  Could that have contributed?

Thanks for the pics and report.  Keep us entertanied these coming seasons; we're shifting the other direction (as I'm sure you are aware), and some of us don't ski. 😞

Maybe not, the 15" Concentric is very similar in small gold sensitivity to the 12" spiral from what I've seen.  The little receive windings in the concentric makes them very sensitive for the size of the coil.  It's quite possible he had a bit more depth than me though.

I'd say he's just had a lot more experience and is better at the decision to recover or not, I'm still recovering basically everything except the stuff that moves on the first scrape with my pick.  JW was a bit surprised to see my pellet collection 🙂

The concentric coils don't give the double blip as much as the spirals do being the DOD style coil so in a way I had more information from the detector.  I didn't help me though 🙂

We both run the same settings, High yield/Normal/ gain of 20.  I do run with my smoothing on low where as he has it disabled.

I'm sure if we swapped detectors the results would have been the same.  You can't beat experience.

We are likely going somewhere for another try on Friday so I'll see how I go then.  I might go back to the 15" CC on mine too, we were joking that coils been glued onto his detector since getting it, so much so the coil bolts have likely seized 🙂 I tend to swap coils around a lot which maybe detrimental as coils behave differently so I never really get used to using just one coil.

I'm looking forward to spring and some gold hunting, hopefully I'll have some decent finds to report rather than a single tiny nugget and a bunch of pellets.  This post was more about finding out how people would deal with such a situation than showing my marvelous gold find. 😄

 

 

[oneguy]

pesky little bastard pellets...OUCH!   Tuff sleddin....