Garrett Axiom Rye Patch Rain And Nuggets

[Calmark]

I just spent a short while at the famous Nevada Rye Patch over Monday evening and into Tuesday afternoon.  The desert this year is extra beautiful and green in the summer with all of the past recent wet weather.  I hoped to stay dry doing some detecting and perhaps find some Nevada gold.  Well, I at least completed one goal, but failed on the other.  

I had to wait out a rainstorm for about an hour after a late day arrival.  I grabbed my ML GPX 6000 with Goldhawk 10x5 coil and gave the area a test.  There were still some puddles on the ground and the top several inches of ground were soppy wet.  The 6k is a bit noisy, even with the 10x5 coil, and the saturated ground added to the noise.  As it would soon be dark, I decided to pack up the 6000 and use the Garret Axiom with 11x7 mono coil the next day, as I've been able to get it to run more quietly in some tough areas due to the added controls and lower sensitivity levels it offers.

The next morning was overcast, but the puddles were mostly gone.  After a bit of fiddling to lower audio on the Axiom to 4 threshold, 2 sensitivity and volume 14 while using my ML Koss 1/4in headphones, I was off detecting.  Since Rye Patch has been very heavily detected over the decades, my experience has been there aren't too many signals to expect, so I was happy to get my first within 5-10 minutes.  I got a faint, but repeatable signal near a sagebrush bush, even with a low sensitivity setting of 2.  I figured it would be a shard of bullet or sliver of iron can, but nope, it was a caliche-encrusted, very coarse nugget down about 3 inches!  What a way to start the day with a success.  I figured I'd cover that area even more slowly and after finding 2 tiny slivers of iron, about 30 minutes later I got an extremely faint signal.  A few scrapes and it was in the pile and turned out to be an very tiny nugget!  This one was about sesame seed size and also very coarse.  The Axiom with its extreme stability and almost no falsing with the audio/sensitivity lowered, still hit that tiny target, very impressive!

I renewed my efforts the next 4-5 hours, since it was a race against time. The clouds darkened quickly and it began to look like rain coming yet again with huge dark patches of clouds building nearby.  I did dig some other small trash signals and a couple of recent bullets, but no more gold.  As the first rain of the early afternoon started to soak me, the thunderstorm hit HARD and I decided it was time to head out.  I'm glad I did because the main road in/out had some flash flooding and unfortunately is going to have considerable water damage for a while in spots.  People with 2wd vehicles might have trouble passing in the near future.  

I was glad to finally score some Rye Patch gold after being skunked there in the past.  I can now check off finding Nevada nuggets from my list.  Low and slow, as others often state, was key, as was making my Axiom as quiet and stable as possible to discern solid signals from saturated ground noises.  Also, determination was key.  I told myself before the day's hunt, if signals are there to be dug, then there can still be gold, and sure enough there was.  

 

[mn90403]

Thanks for the good report.

Any gold from there is good right now.  

[Steve Herschbach]

Just a reminder - if you get into real bad salt ground go to Salt Mode. It will lose the smallest nuggets, but allow more sensitivity and possibly get better depth on larger nuggets by eliminating the salt signal. Buried test nuggets really help in situations like this.

Great report Mark, and congrats on finally getting that Rye Patch gold!

[Calmark]

49 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Just a reminder - if you get real bad salt ground go to Salt Mode. It will lose the smallest nuggets, but allow more sensitivity and possibly get better depth on larger nuggets by eliminating the salt signal. Buried test nuggets really help in situations like this. Great report Mark, and congrats on finally getting that Rye Patch gold!

The second nugget I found weighed .10grams, but has some caliche/mud atatched to it still.  It was very very faint in "fine" timing and sensitivity 2.  I tested the signal while still in the ground changing settings.  At sensitivity 3, the target was much clearer and definite.  I did switch to "salt" setting and did not get a response at sensitivity 2 or 3.  After the testing, I set the Axiom to a sensitivity of 3 for most of the rest of the day.  I did use sens. 4 briefly, but preferred the quieter 3 setting.

I believe the ability to manually select different modes or timings on the Axiom are what set it apart from more automatic units like the ML 6k.  Got salt?  Switch to salt mode without need to swapping to a different DD coil.  Too many tiny shards of iron from cans or wires wasting time?  Switch to normal timing to knock out the tiny targets.  And even low sensitivity settings find the gold, and quite tiny and coarse too.  I have more sub .1gr nuggets with the Axiom so far than I ever got with the GPX 5000 and even my SDC!

[Valens Legacy]

Great report and glad that you were able to walk away with some gold.

Good luck on your next outing.

[dirtman]

Sounds like you've "taken to" the Axiom well 👍

I'm a Lurker trying to learn as much as possible about this USA entry to Electronic Prospecting.

My main concern yet is to start seeing nuggets being detected at depths, like 6 to 18 inches 😎🤠🎯

Good Luck an Happy Huntn !

[LuckyLundy]

Mark,

WTG!  Crazy wet weather for Northern Nevada.  It should be drying out here real soon, but that includes Summer temperatures 🥵

Rick

[beatup]

good on you

 

[Steve Herschbach]

4 hours ago, dirtman said:

My main concern yet is to start seeing nuggets being detected at depths, like 6 to 18 inches

I’ve seen a bunch of them over 6” but that’s takes actually having the detector and digging the holes. 

For 18” to happen it would have to be a Real Nugget though, and those are very few and far between these days, with any model of detector. I’ve dug some deep ones with Axiom but so far they were not gold. My deepest gold nugget with Axiom so far was around 12” more or less.

I don’t get into depth quotes much, never have, because frankly when nugget hunting I don’t care. I just dig big holes fast, and only pay attention when the pile of dirt goes beep. I’m not going to scrape down an inch at a time trying to see how deep stuff is. So most of my depth stuff is pretty fuzzy, as in “wow, that was pretty deep.” Truth is out of the tens of thousands of nuggets I’ve dug (not exaggerating) the vast bulk were less than a foot. The bread and butter smaller nuggets don’t get found to great depths.

[Desert Dawg]

We were camped out on the South end Jim Williams memorial site same time as you were there, mon-thur, I was giving a couple greenhorns lessons on vlfs but they were falsing in the saturated ground excessively, was a bad time for that with the saturated ground, my gpx6000 ran quiet in same soils, with the exceed 12x7. My internal speaker went south out there just after the minelab fix, it still works with the bluetooth headphones or earbuds. Annoying for sure. That storm tue afternoon was a humdinger, it had the ravines around us roaring for a few hrs. No gold for us. But a great time out camping and cooking.