Over The Hill. My First Experience Hunting Nuggets In Nevada With Gerry's Detectors' Team.

[Nikko]

Nevada Gold - In the jar, in the books!

I was fortunate to join @Gerry in Idaho and field staff for a training weekend in northern Nevada.  I picked up a detector from him last year and think he assumed I wasn't too serious about going.  But I had never metal detected outside of California prior to this.  Nevada is on a large bucket list of mine.  His reputation speaks for itself, so nothing I say hasn't already been said by the thousands of happy customers he's served, but I'll still say it.  I highly recommend his course as well as his detector business.

Pic & Video

Below is a photo of my monster haul 😆 off some highly worked over ground.  Yes, I am aware I did fairly well for that area, and not all of these pieces came easy.  I am also not at all shy about boasting about recovering tiny gold others missed. 

Also linked is the first half of the video following my adventure.  It's not your typical gold prospecting video format.  I like it, you might not.  One person in the video comments hates it.  Can't please everybody 🙄.

Next up, and some regrets

The second half of the video will be coming (hopefully) May 2025.  It's unfortunate I didn't have time to meet with everyone out there one on one, do more filming of those who wanted to talk about their prospecting experience, as well as share their experiences on the trip.

However, I did almost everything I could to stay as out of the way as possible.  There really weren't many opportunities to get time with individuals and I didn't want to be a distraction, so I went off on my own and took it all in.  It was go go go for three days straight.

Staying out of the way

It's second nature for me to step in and try to help, but that wasn't the place or time for me to do so.  Saturday, after finding my first gold Thursday and Friday evening, and after our sit-down class day Friday, I felt like I could cross Nevada off my list and relax a bit.  So while the field staff grouped up with the newer nugget hunters to listen to targets and learn about pinpointing, recovery, etc, I talked with @Lunk and he agreed to my offer to mark some targets with survey flags for others to train their ears on as many targets as possible.  I eventually found a little patch, dug some gold, and let Gerry and crew round up the class to come listen to what ended up being more gold (and iron) in the ground.

What's next

Now it's time for me to take a few weeks off from prospecting to catch up on things around the house before Gerry, @Steve Herschbach, and I hit the California motherlode for the 2nd annual Garrett Gold Challenge!  If you enjoyed the first half of the video, I'd love your support by subscribing, liking, commenting, etc. and you can be notified when the rest of the video is released along with the Garrett footage that will be in a separate series.

Equipment, conclusion

I had as much fun making/editing the video as detecting.  Gerry, you may have a future in Hollywood. 😉

The Garrett Axiom + 11" Mono and Minelab Equinox 900 + 6" DD revealed how well they pair together on that ground.  The Gold Bug II struck first gold upon my arrival on Thursday night.  The Axiom pinged the rest while I used the Nox to sanity check and recover some of those targets.

The ground was quite pleasant to work.  The gopher/squirrel holes and wet pockets had me chasing a few false signals, but other than that, it was fairly easy to discriminate iron with the Axiom's audio signatures alone.

In the video there is a piece of iron I dug after stating it sounded really good.  Upon reviewing footage a few times, I caught the subtle difference.  Flat iron tone.  That wobbler of a signal would have been dug either way -- it was far too close to the sound of gold to walk past.  But, I may start reviewing footage of me swinging over targets because my ears tend to detune after a long day or few long days.

 

 

[Wild Bill]

39 minutes ago, Nikko said:

Nevada Gold - In the jar, in the books!

I was fortunate to join @Gerry in Idaho and field staff for a training weekend in northern Nevada.  I picked up a detector from him last year and think he assumed I wasn't too serious about going.  But I had never metal detected outside of California prior to this.  Nevada is on a large bucket list of mine.  His reputation speaks for itself, so nothing I say hasn't already been said by the thousands of happy customers he's served, but I'll still say it.  I highly recommend his course as well as his detector business.

Pic & Video

Below is a photo of my monster haul 😆 off some highly worked over ground.  Yes, I am aware I did fairly well for that area, and not all of these pieces came easy.  I am also not at all shy about boasting about recovering tiny gold others missed. 

Also linked is the first half of the video following my adventure.  It's not your typical gold prospecting video format.  I like it, you might not.  One person in the video comments hates it.  Can't please everybody 🙄.

Next up, and some regrets

The second half of the video will be coming (hopefully) May 2025.  It's unfortunate I didn't have time to meet with everyone out there one on one, do more filming of those who wanted to talk about their prospecting experience, as well as share their experiences on the trip.

However, I did almost everything I could to stay as out of the way as possible.  There really weren't many opportunities to get time with individuals and I didn't want to be a distraction, so I went off on my own and took it all in.  It was go go go for three days straight.

Staying out of the way

It's second nature for me to step in and try to help, but that wasn't the place or time for me to do so.  Saturday, after finding my first gold Thursday and Friday evening, and after our sit-down class day Friday, I felt like I could cross Nevada off my list and relax a bit.  So while the field staff grouped up with the newer nugget hunters to listen to targets and learn about pinpointing, recovery, etc, I talked with @Lunk and he agreed to my offer to mark some targets with survey flags for others to train their ears on as many targets as possible.  I eventually found a little patch, dug some gold, and let Gerry and crew round up the class to come listen to what ended up being more gold (and iron) in the ground.

What's next

Now it's time for me to take a few weeks off from prospecting to catch up on things around the house before Gerry, @Steve Herschbach, and I hit the California motherlode for the 2nd annual Garrett Gold Challenge!  If you enjoyed the first half of the video, I'd love your support by subscribing, liking, commenting, etc. and you can be notified when the rest of the video is released along with the Garrett footage that will be in a separate series.

Equipment, conclusion

I had as much fun making/editing the video as detecting.  Gerry, you may have a future in Hollywood. 😉

The Garrett Axiom + 11" Mono and Minelab Equinox 900 + 6" DD revealed how well they pair together on that ground.  The Gold Bug II struck first gold upon my arrival on Thursday night.  The Axiom pinged the rest while I used the Nox to sanity check and recover some of those targets.

The ground was quite pleasant to work.  The gopher/squirrel holes and wet pockets had me chasing a few false signals, but other than that, it was fairly easy to discriminate iron with the Axiom's audio signatures alone.

In the video there is a piece of iron I dug after stating it sounded really good.  Upon reviewing footage a few times, I caught the subtle difference.  Flat iron tone.  That wobbler of a signal would have been dug either way -- it was far too close to the sound of gold to walk past.  But, I may start reviewing footage of me swinging over targets because my ears tend to detune after a long day or few long days.

 

 

Nikko, nice video.  Now you know where the Patch is.  My wife today showed me some nice nuggets just found at Rye Patch posted on facebook.  So maybe it was you guys!  I’ve never met Garry but his reputation is stellar in knowledge, experience and especially instruction.  It’s great that he does this for his customers and with many it’s the in person kind of monkey see monkey do experience that works best and can bypass trial and error that can take so much time.  If I recall, Rye Patch is in Triassic Shale of the Star Peak formation.  The gold appears to have eroded from those many small quartz veins.  It’s not just wind erosion.  There are violent flash floods over thousands of years, perhaps millions of years that created these placers.  This shale is also called “mudstone” as it decomposes into a muddy mess that is entertaining when four wheeling.  I haven’t been to the patch in years even though it’s not that far from where I live.  I’ve been distracted with a big group of lode claims that has great potential but unfortunately is now within a land withdrawal.  Keep up the good work!  

[Lunk]

Nikko, nice write up and video about your experience at Gerry's detector training class and detecting at Rye Patch. Even though you were an experienced and successful gold nugget detectorist already, I'm glad you were able to take away a thing or two from the combined knowledge of Gerry and his staff. Gongrats again on your Nevada gold finds, and continued success to you in the goldfields..

[Nikko]

1 hour ago, Wild Bill said:

Nikko, nice video.  Now you know where the Patch is.  My wife today showed me some nice nuggets just found at Rye Patch posted on facebook.  So maybe it was you guys!  I’ve never met Garry but his reputation is stellar in knowledge, experience and especially instruction.  It’s great that he does this for his customers and with many it’s the in person kind of monkey see monkey do experience that works best and can bypass trial and error that can take so much time.  If I recall, Rye Patch is in Triassic Shale of the Star Peak formation.  The gold appears to have eroded from those many small quartz veins.  It’s not just wind erosion.  There are violent flash floods over thousands of years, perhaps millions of years that created these placers.  This shale is also called “mudstone” as it decomposes into a muddy mess that is entertaining when four wheeling.  I haven’t been to the patch in years even though it’s not that far from where I live.  I’ve been distracted with a big group of lode claims that has great potential but unfortunately is now within a land withdrawal.  Keep up the good work!  

You are correct, and several of those pieces I could pass off as found in a California motherlode river.  I was just explaining the way the gold rises to the top in those regions.  I appreciate the clarification / feedback.

 

What I found most interesting is the vast amount of quartz, and the extreme rarity of quartz gold specimens.  I still can't wrap my head around it because that gold clearly shed from the quartz and some of those pieces are plenty big enough to have detectable gold.  New territory for me....there's always another puzzle piece missing.

[Nikko]

13 minutes ago, Lunk said:

Nikko, nice write up and video about your experience at Gerry's detector training class and detecting at Rye Patch. Even though you were an experienced and successful gold nugget detectorist already, I'm glad you were able to take away a thing or two from the combined knowledge of Gerry and his staff. Gongrats again on your Nevada gold finds, and continued success to you in the goldfields..

Thanks man.  I'm bummed we didn't get a full day to hammer one of those washes together with the rest of the staff.  I'm sure the score would have leaned against me heavily in no time.  And NOT because Eli runs a 6 😉 😂.

 

After I left, I kept wondering with the crust removed off your piece, how the weigh in would have changed 😮.  Either way, that was really fun.  Gerry came by that wash to say bye and grabbed the detector with the camera on it as I chased and picked that last piece.  Camera was still filming when you called out saying you got one too.  Not sure yet how much it picked up on film, but it's enough to prove the story!

 

Hope that wasn't the last time we detect together.  I have a feeling it won't be. 🤙

[Wild Bill]

It’s interesting that the quartz veins have never amounted to anything like lode mining that I know of.  There’s also an old channel crossing the area.  I don’t know how old but it produces well worn gold typical of a river placer.  While other gold can be course and even crystalline.  I mentioned the channel gold to a geologist friend who knows the area pretty well and enjoys detecting himself when times permit.  He knows about it so chances are others who frequent there and are members here also are familiar.  Many years ago when the town of Fallon to the south had a prospecting and detector store, a young boy maybe fifteen bought a detector there.  His family went camping at the reservoir and they knew of the gold history.  Beginners luck I guess but he found a four ounce nugget.  I didn’t see it but was told about it by someone who did.  It’s great that it’s still producing gold.  The Star Peak shale extends north of the Rye Patch deposits and is patchy in several counties.  Such as the Mill City area and the tungsten mines.  Big gold has been found in that area with nearly identical conditions.  It might pay off to explore the other areas of Star Peak Triassic shale.  Best of luck to all and please continue to share your finds.  

[flakmagnet]

Nikko, you shoot very nice videos and you make it look easy and natural - but anyone who has taken the time to make their own video knows shooting and editing them is a lot of work.

Thank you. Well done. 

[WesD]

1 hour ago, Nikko said:

What I found most interesting is the vast amount of quartz, and the extreme rarity of quartz gold specimens.  I still can't wrap my head around it because that gold clearly shed from the quartz and some of those pieces are plenty big enough to have detectable gold.  New territory for me....there's always another puzzle piece missing.

The gold there doesnt seem to be associated with the quartz. Most pieces, though they are usually well placered, are actually individual gold crystals,  formed free of quartz probably in small hydrothermal fissures.

[Nikko]

26 minutes ago, WesD said:

The gold there doesnt seem to be associated with the quartz. Most pieces, though they are usually well placered, are actually individual gold crystals,  formed free of quartz probably in small hydrothermal fissures.

Good info, thanks.  A few pieces show signs of alluvial wear of crystalized gold.  The big one has a nice herringbone and is pale green.  A few others, buttery gold.  One, after I remove the Caliche was RED!  Not California nugget with red spots.  But red rose gold.  Absolutely beautiful diversity.  I appreciate you and your knowledge sharing.  You're the best kind of people 👌.