The Goose Egg Revisited!

[BMc]

Hey Mitchell (mn90403), since the anniversary of your finding the "Goose Egg" is coming up, (Thanksgiving Day), I hoped you wouldn't mind if I "bumped" the photo to show the good folks and anyone who might have missed it the first time around, what you were alluding to :

"My 5000 and the 18" NF was a lot of fun to run.  I almost got in the pounder club with a deep Arizona nugget."

Amazing find indeed!

[Gerry in Idaho]

On 11/19/2023 at 9:57 PM, BMc said:

Hey Mitchell (mn90403), since the anniversary of your finding the "Goose Egg" is coming up, (Thanksgiving Day), I hoped you wouldn't mind if I "bumped" the photo to show the good folks and anyone who might have missed it the first time around, what you were alluding to :

"My 5000 and the 18" NF was a lot of fun to run.  I almost got in the pounder club with a deep Arizona nugget."

Amazing find indeed!

Thanks for sharing as I don't recall seeing this. Would love reading an update to its whereabouts and if it changed your life or at least style of detecting. 

[beatup]

well done ,super looking find

[mn90403]

While I'm home 'alone' for a few weeks it is time to do some chores and organize things.  One of the organization tasks has been to get my devices and portable drives out and consolidate pictures and videos.

This video was made about an hour after I found the nugget from above.  I think my original posting location was on Chris Gholson's forum and Bill Southern's Nugget Shooter forum.  Both are down now.

I'll show a few photos of the location.  After I found the Specimen I came up with an estimate of the amount of gold in it by finding a similar size piece of quartz.  That led me to believe that there was 6-7 ounces of gold in it.  I was off by a lot on the total weight estimate but a few days later I floated the rock and came up with the 8 ozt number I use today.

This is the first time for posting this group of pictures.  

This is the wash I found it in about an hour after I started searching on Thanksgiving morning, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't have my camera with me when I started the hole.  I had to walk back to my Trooper that I owned at the time and drive it closer to get the 3030 for pinpointing.  I had slept in it the night before where I hunted. 

There were other big cobbles in the hole as I was digging.  After the nugget was out then I began the gradual 'reveal' of what it looked like.  Excuse the redundancy but here are the pictures I took at the time.

 

The gradual reveal in the field still makes me vividly remember the early morning light.

And finally, I did make a video with my Sony Mavika of the area.  It won't let me upload an MPG, so I'll have to go to YouTube and make a link, I guess.

Here is the link:

Goose Egg Nugget

 

 

 

 

[BMc]

Great find and excellent pics! This particular specimen find resulted in my being motivated to detect further out into the washes as opposed to just along the side walls and benches.

Thanks for posting again with additional photos!

 

[mn90403]

You are welcome.  I've never posted the video.

The 'funny thing' about this location is that it was about a mile from where all of the early Franconia meteorite hunters once camped.  They just went in the other direction toward the mapped out strewn field.  It is also not far from the National Trails Highway that is still dirt.  It was later rerouted through Oatman but at one point is was near this area.

It was also not too far from where Bob Dansing (Montana) talks about finding his first nuggets which he said was close to the freeway (I40).

Its a big area and I've hunted it many times before and after but didn't find any other nuggets.  I've got lots of meteorites but on the North side of the tracks.

[BMc]

I have seen the National Trails Highway on the map of that area, and heard the stories of Montana Bob's, (and another nugget shooter's), gold finds fairly close to the highway. I didn't see your original post until a few years later but with the assistance of an anonymous informant I became oriented to the area and the exact spot (so I was told) I bought a 19" NF Evo specifically for the occasion and didn't find anything but like you said, it's a big area. Lots of washes and tributaries that get churned up during the monsoons. I can't wait to get back at it this fall!

[mn90403]

You might have been talking to Slim.  He went out there with me one time.

The areas I hunted would just be lightly affected by even the monsoons.  There just isn't that much rainwater.  The nugget I found was buried deep enough to be there hundreds of years if not thousands.  A stream or water source probably washed over that nugget for a long time.  

Not pictured on the nugget is the flat side which it is sitting on in the pictures.  It has gold showing too but it is smooth.  It is my opinion that the nugget side showing up in the pictures was actually wedged in other cobbles down and over the years it was smoothed by other rocks and sand washing over it.  If the specimen had been tumbling in its journey to the location that I found it then more of the gold would have been smoothed and knocked off.  Some of that happened.  I was told about gold sources from the big and smaller mountains to the south.

If you go down closer to the tracks, mud moves there.

If you head down Franconia Road there are a couple of clubs.  Lake Havasu Gold Seekers and Gold Searchers of Southern Nevada have claims where big nuggets have been found.  I did find a couple of pieces of gold on the Havasu claims when I first got my 7000.

[okara gold]

Great looking specimen! The majority of my digs in a wash usually turned out being a big piece of iron. Good thing you stuck it out digging a deep hole.