How Long Did It Take To Find Your First Nugget?

[Gerry in Idaho]

Started detecting in the early 70's and was very skilled at old Coins, CW Artifacts, and even found a handful of gold rings .  Early 90's (20 yrs after I started detecting for Coin/Relics/Jewelry), I purchased my 1st gold detector (GM-VSAT) and went at least 6 trips to Eastern Oregon trying to find gold.  Ended the year with ZERO.

Next year I upgraded the detector to GM-III and went to the exact same areas I previously hunted with the VSat.  Why?  My buddies were finding nuggets with theirs at those same locations.  At the end of the year, I have ZERO nuggets.

3rd year of owning a gold detector with ZERO gold nuggets to show for my efforts, I've pretty much written them off and decided to stick with Coin/Relic/Beach detectors.  The better half of me (my wife) advised me to attend a class on how to use a gold detector.  Say what darling?  I've over 20 yrs experience and dug so many coins/relics/rings, even been to England with Jimmy Sierra and killed it on Romans.  Why do I need a class?  Yes I was a hard-head.

That May of about 1994 I paid $100 and attended a half day speaking session at Rye Patch, NV and listened to a gent by the name of Gordan Sahara talk to us about "using gold detectors to find gold".  He never did any hands on training with any of us, just stood up and talked and went over the motions with his own VLF detector.

I took the guy and his wife out to dinner in Winnemucca that night and listened to him some more.  He informed me, I was using my 20+ yrs of success/experience of hunting Coins/Relics/Rings the wrong way and I needed to toss all of that knowledge and thinking out the door.  Long story short, I was listening for the wrong things and did not have the right coil control or mindset.

How much did I learn from that 1/2 day group session at the burn barrel of Rye Patch?  I went home with new hope and fresh mindset and new desires.  A couple weeks later, Memorial Weekend I went to Sumpter, OR to the same exact location and dug 13 nuggets in 11 hours.  Been hooked ever since.

Moral of the story.  Get off your hi horse of what you think you know and listen to the folks that are regularly doing it with Success.  Watch them, listen to them, study them and hopefully they invite you along some time.  Or you can waste so many tanks of gas, flat tires and weekends digging trash.

My 20+ yrs of Success...chasing different targets in different conditions and being damn good at it, was my own demise.  Along with my upbringing of...I was a young stud Marine USMC back then and so I was taught to have confident in myself and capabilities.

You know how the joke goes. - A young bull standing the top of the hill with an older wise bull and they looking down the meadow below at all the cows.  The young bull says to the older bull, "hey, lets run down there and have our way with one of those cows".  The old bull stretches, sighs and then says to the young bull.  "No son, lets leisurely walk down to those cows and have our way... with them all"

For gold nugget hunters new to the game, my best advice is find that special person who knows the ropes and continually has success.  Become acquainted with that person, buy them breakfast or dinner or etc and get to know them.  Maybe, just maybe they might take you under their wing.  Be sure to bring them something to the table as many of them are tired of being taken advantage of their knowledge.

Good Luck

Thanks Mike for posting and hope to see you this summer.  Tell Sally I said hello and I'll still impressed to death with that nugget she found at Rye Patch with her GPZ-7000 while we were giving the class.

 

 

 

 

[oldmancoyote1]

Seven years.  I got a bit frustrated and paid Ray Mills considerable cash for help.  After an introduction session that Fall, he took my buddy and me to a better place that Spring.  Over the next few days I found 63  mostly sub-gram "nuggets".  My buddy the @@@,  fount 79.

[Norvic]

5 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

You know how the joke goes.

Yeah gotta agree, but you dont know this until your an old bull and that`s no bull.... 😉 How many cows?????

[TE Gold]

Think it took me a good 5 or 6 trips  and it was .85 of grammar.

Then another 3 or 4 trips before I got another one,  got a 6 grammar and 3 sub grammars. I was working an old good rush area in the NT, and was getting real frustrated with boot tacks and bullets, but now I look for un worked ground. There is plenty of ground that has gold on it, that is not viable for the big companies.

Hooked ever since. Rarely have a trip without at least 1 nugget these days.

 

[kingswood]

took me 6 months of detecting once a weekend before I finally scored a small 0.2g!

My problem for the first 6 months was that I was using a PI mine detector with silent threshold....literally only dug loud signals. Finally scored a bit the first time out with the 2300....sucked and licked that bit about 40 times while staring at it to make sure it was actually gold 🙂

Looking back, I think I walked over gold with the mine detector......I just didnt know at the time that I should have investigated the small squeaks and farts....

[Bishop]

i think it was 1995. i bought a Tesoro Diablo II Gold Demon from Arizona Al who had a little shop in Glendale.
as i only had a car, i only got out when a friend of mine with a truck could get out.
i think it was about 8 to 10 trips within about a years time i found a 1.5 gram nugget shaped like a small pinto bean.
i was out in that area this morning and thought i would give it a look. i have hit this spot a lot with lots of different machines.
and was not expecting to find anything. all these years and i have been walking past this .56. it was 8 feet away from the first one
i ever found on the opposite side of the wash. it was under 5 inches of old dry washer tailings.

 

[MSC]

Had a Whites DFX for two years and found nothing, purchased a 5000 and first day out found a gram nugget, a few days later found a 11 gram nugget. I got gold fever really bad after that trip, still have that disease to this day. 

[Desert Dawg]

It took me about a yr and a change of machines to get my first gold, I was using a mxt pro, and missing a lot of gold since it was very small where I was hunting, was shown a GB2 in action by George D.  and over same ground it was getting small grain size nuggets right and left, then I bought my GB2 and first trip out to Yuba River, I got two little pickers (left side of pic), been finding gold ever since. First trip back to Rye Patch and I found 7 nuggets shown over the dime.

[Denny]

Took me 11 years hunting a small grassy resting spot from the 1870’s to find my first and only gold nugget 5.1 gram with the Deus2 at 6-7 inches deep. The closest mines are in  Coarsegold California. 
 

[mn90403]

It took me a year after I bought my 5000 to find my first, flat little nugget at the Dale.  It was a sub grammer in lots of dry wash piles found with the 17" Commander coil.  I had been on numerous Arizona trips on my own and I think at that point I was actually avoiding people because I didn't think they would tell me where the gold was anyway.

My find was on an outing with another group who were much more helpful.  The buddy system does work but be careful if you get too good because some buddies will think you have taken advantage of them and then you've lost a friend which is more valuable than the few gold pieces you find.