How Long Did It Take To Find Your First Nugget?

[blackjack]

Garrett ground hog for me as well, I found quite a few hot rocks before I found my first lead bullet. I was convinced by the sound I was digging a nugget, it was pretty disappointing to dig lead, I had to find two more before I found gold. Honest answer is at least 100hrs over a two year period, 23 grams. 

[Nedkelly]

About 1 hour on an old puddler, 5 gram solid bit with a minelab eureka duel ace back in the early nineties. That piece got me hooked for life. Looked huge at the time doesn't look so big now. 

[IDMineralSurveys]

I bought my GB2 from Gerry mid-April 2017. Spent a year in historic good gold area finding tacks, bullets, the tiniest of lead pellets. Early April 2018 saw me back up too soon - snow still between 4 to 8 feet deep in the mountains, so was  forced to hit the only sunny ridge I could access - my first was 218 grains and I was hooked!

[phrunt]

I was having some success with sluicing and little success with my Gold Bug Pro, I was very new to all this stuff and had no idea what I was doing, after a couple of months of no success with my Bug JW who was a member of this forum came to visit me sluicing on a river near his house while he was going detecting in the area.  I wasn't all that inspired by detecting as I couldn't find gold doing it yet I could take my sluice and find gold every time.

He decided he'd help me out and we went to a local public fossicking area to have a go with detectors, prior to this I decided I'd upgrade my GBP to a GM1000 which gave me a big sensitivity boost.   JW gave me plenty of advice on the day and showed me what I should be doing and success, 6 nuggets in one day and not only bigger easier ones, the one to the right of a bottle in my usual tiny spec 🙂 I've never looked back since and have found gold regularly since and with improvements in my detecting fleet I've gone from gold rarely to gold virtually every time I go out.

My first nugget

The days finds for me on my first nugget day, all from a heavily flogged public fossicking creek, bizarre, we've never been able to repeat that days success in the same creek.

Having a friend like JW that knows what they're doing and very experienced in the area and helps you out is invaluable.  Without him I imagine I'd have given up.  Very generous thing for someone to do, and still to this day we go detecting together and he helps me out often.

[Aureous]

I started detecting in 1981 and only used low-end TR machines on the beach, which was very financially rewarding. But when a school friend showed me the gold his family got in WA (it was kilos), I went gold crazy lol. My Family moved to a near-gold location and I bought an older version Garrett which was (unknowing to me), totally impractical for Goldfield use. After some advice from a detector shop, I got the Garrett modified and after a quick trip to Tibooburra, I was finally on the board! Only .2gm and several more afterwards. Only 2 years after starting detecting I was regularly finding gold. By 1986 I had over 5,000 pieces to my name. So, I suppose after actually obtaining a useful gold-finding detector, it was only 3 months from go to whoa.....    If only I realized just how much gold I was walking over.....if only I knew then what I know now  

[snakejim]

Maybe a couple of hours before I found my first nugget in a dry washers tailings pile. A Garret Deep seeker worked. 1985

[Jim McCulloch]

After reading all of (what little) had been published at the time (1983), and spending several hours practicing in my backyard with my Garrett Groundhog A2B, my first piece of (really choice) high-grade ore came off a tailings pile in Dayton Nevada after 20 minutes detecting.  Totally ruined my life...

[GaryC/Oregon Coast]

It took me two years, mostly because I was in the WRONG club (not helpful people).  Once I found a dedicated bunch of people in the RIGHT club who had detectable claims to hit, then it only took six months of limited hunting time.  Still have stretches of skunks!!!  GaryC/Oregon Coast

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jasong]

35-40 detecting days, sun up to sun down, every day. I drove to AZ determined to find a nugget, and not leave until I did. It got to the point where I'd wake up and walk around like a zombie swinging a detector mindlessly all day and just forcing myself through the motions, unwilling to give up and go home though.

Couldn't find anyone to help out, spent a lot of that time in areas with no detectable gold as a result. Learned a lot though in all the failures. 

 

[Ken Walls]

Found Gold first time out with my detector. But I was allowed on a great claim where they were into a old river channel.