Bedrock and Gold: The mysteries . . .

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Do you love to chase the gold? Please join me--lots of gold hunting tips, stories of finds (successful and not), and prospecting poetry.

Nugget in the bedrock tip:

I had a visit with a mining buddy this past weekend, and he told me of an epic battle to get a nugget out of the bedrock, and of what he learned from the experience. I thought some of you might like to learn from his mistake.

While out detecting one day, he came across a large sheet of bare bedrock. The bedrock was exposed because the area had been blasted off with a water cannon (a monitor), by the old-timers! It was not fractured bedrock, in fact it was totally smooth.

He was not optimistic at all of the prospects of a nugget. But, for some reason (we've all been there) he decided to swing his detector over that bedrock. After a long time, just as he was about to give up on his crazy hunch, he got a signal, right out of that smooth bedrock.

There was no crevice, no sign of a crevice, nada! So, he had to go all the way back to camp to get a small sledge and a chisel. The signal in the rock intrigued him, but he still wasn't overly optimistic. For those of you that have chased signals in a similar situation, sometimes there's a patch of hot mineralization in the bedrock that sounds off, but this spot, according to him, was sharp and clear right in the middle of the signal, not just a general increase of the threshold like you get when you pass over a hot spot in the bedrock.

Anyway, he made it back to the spot and started to chisel his way into the bedrock. If any of you have tried this, it's an awful job, and you usually wind up with cut knuckles--at the least! Regardless, he kept fighting his way down, busting out chunks of bedrock. He kept checking the hole, and the signal remained very strong.

This only puzzled him all the more as he could clearly see that it was solid bedrock with no sign of any crevice. He finally quit at the end of the day, at a depth of about a foot, but still, nothing in the hole.

An experienced nugget shooting friend dropped by the next morning to see him, and asked him how the hunt was going. My buddy related his tale of the mysterious hole in the bedrock, and told the friend to go over and check it out, and see if he could solve the riddle.

Later in the day, the other nugget hunter returned. In his hand was a fine, fat, sassy nugget. It weighed in at about an ounce and a quarter! After my friend returned his eyeballs to their sockets and zapped his heart to start it again, he asked where the nugget had come from.

Imagine his surprise when he heard it came from the mystery hole!! He asked how deep the other guy had gone into the bedrock to get it. "Well, no deeper" was his reply.

So, here's the rest of the story as to what happened. When the successful nugget hunter got to the bedrock, he scanned the surface got the same strong signal as my buddy. He widened out the hole and scanned again. Still a solid tone. He widened the hole some more so he could get his coil in, and here's the key and the lesson in this story, he got a strong signal off the side of the hole, about six inches down, but set back another inch into the side of the bedrock!!

My unlucky friend, the true discoverer of the gorgeous nugget's resting place had gone deep past the signal while digging his hole!!

Now, of course, a good pinpointer would easily solve this problem. The problem was, my buddy didn't have one, so why would he widen the hole, right? Well, the other guy was the one with more experience, and that's why he did. It was a lot more work, but what a payoff!

So, my buddy's butt is still black and blue from where he kicked himself for the next week or so for having lost such an incredible prize.

Some nugget hunting lessons are harder than others to learn. . . .

All the best,

Lanny


P.S. When in gold country--check the bedrock, regardless of whether it looks likely or not! Mother Nature likes to play games sometimes.

 

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Terry Soloman

Gold Member
May 28, 2010
19,422
30,105
White Plains, New York
🥇 Banner finds
1
🏆 Honorable Mentions:
1
Detector(s) used
Nokta Makro Legend// Pulsedive// Minelab GPZ 7000// Vanquish 540// Minelab Pro Find 35// Dune Kraken Sandscoop// Grave Digger Tools Tombstone shovel & Sidekick digger// Bunk's Hermit Pick
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Another great post! :occasion14:

Thanks for dropping in Terry. This season I really focused hard on the one-two detector punch system. I'd work a patch of bedrock systematically with my VLF of choice for the day, then I'd follow up with the pulse machine afterward. I was shocked at what I was able to recover by using both detectors vs. using one only technology.

Another reason why I always start with the VLF first is because of its light-weight ease of use. So, if I'm hitting a new piece of bedrock, for one thing, the VLF lets me know where any concentrations of gold are so I can check those areas later very slowly and carefully with the pulse machine. For another thing, I can scan many directions across areas of interest without wasting my muscle reserve I need later for the pulse machine when I'm putting in those long summer days.

On a different note, when I switch to the pulse machine, virtually all of the annoying hotrocks the VLF whined and howled about are no longer a factor, so when I'm slowly scanning and rechecking, there are very few if any distracting sounds and this allows me to focus intently on any slight breaks in the threshold. In fact, my son really came alive with this technique this summer through using the pulse machine, and he found a whack of nice nuggets by listening intently for the tiniest breaks in the threshold, then he consistently followed up by removing surface material, then checking the break again to see if it was any louder before leaving the possible target sound.

The other person that was with us at the time failed to follow the same technique and instructions, and he walked right over the nuggets! He confessed later that he'd heard the tiny breaks in the threshold, but thought they were only unrelated disturbances. And, I can't fault him at all, as when I was starting out as a green rookie (which is what he is as a beginning nugget shooter) I made the same mistakes. In fact, I'm still haunted by some of those whispers I didn't investigate when I was on prime nugget producing bedrock. So, I can cut him mountains of slack as his own distress at knowing he walked over some nice nuggets is punishment enough, and it's been my punishment in the past numerous times.

In my son's case, he was cut from different cloth, dramatically different from me in fact, and he succeeded all because he was told to investigate every whisper, so he simply did it each and every time, and that was his payoff. Both rookies received the same nugget shooting lessons but with very different outcomes.

These reflections call to mind a time when I was in Arizona nugget shooting with Doc from Nevada. He put me in a prime spot where the dry-washers had gone crazy, and it was a spot he hadn't worked yet, but he'd found good gold in the immediate area. He told me exactly what to do (as the desert was a new environment for me) and exactly where to slow down to search carefully, but after a while detecting with no results, I decided another spot across the gulch looked far better, so off I went. Well, Doc hollered for me to come back not long after that, as he had walked over the same dry-wash piles I had, and I looked down on his palm to see a very sassy, chunky, gorgeous desert nugget indeed. Well, I was one sad hombre indeed, yet I had only myself to blame, but it taught me the life lesson of nugget shooting that when someone puts you in a prime spot, and when that person is a bonafide gold hunter, and when they tell you it's a good spot, you'd better slow down and thoroughly investigate every spot they recommend with determined intensity. So, I can never point a finger at a trainee that fails to take suggestions knowing how rough and boneheaded my past as a learner has been.

All the best,

Lanny
 

Terry Soloman

Gold Member
May 28, 2010
19,422
30,105
White Plains, New York
🥇 Banner finds
1
🏆 Honorable Mentions:
1
Detector(s) used
Nokta Makro Legend// Pulsedive// Minelab GPZ 7000// Vanquish 540// Minelab Pro Find 35// Dune Kraken Sandscoop// Grave Digger Tools Tombstone shovel & Sidekick digger// Bunk's Hermit Pick
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Can I get an AMEN! :hello2:
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Hello fellow gold seekers,

Here's something that happened to me just last weekend, a thing that generated a bit of a mystery for me.

I was detecting some open bedrock, finding quite a few small nuggets (nothing over a gram and a half) and generally having a good time. It was shaping up to be a good nugget hunting day.

As a side note, it started to rain, and the VLF I was using is only waterproof from the coil right up to the box (which isn't waterproof), so I reached in my detector bag and pulled out a zip-lock bag and stuck it over the control unit to protect the electronics from the rain. The advantage of the plastic was that I could still see the display to keep me in the game. My detecting day was saved.

I got back in the game and kept hitting small nuggets. Moreover, the deepest I had to dig into the bedrock to rescue a nugget was only about four inches.

Well, the topography changed to steeper, and as I started working my way upslope in the bedrock, I hit a strong repeatable signal. Next, I used my small pick to gently scrape off some surface material, scanned again, heard the same strong signal, used my magnetic wand to check for steel or iron, then checked the bedrock again, and the signal was still there.

Getting serious, I used the tip of the pick and carefully did some more scraping and uncovered the margins of what was clearly a small crevice in the bedrock. I gently drug the pick tip into the material in the crevice, and finding that the material wasn't cemented or tightly compacted, I probed the tip down into the crevice until it bottomed out. Then, I carefully pulled the point of the pick toward my boot, dragging a small pile of material back toward me.

I scanned the crevice and the solid signal was gone!

What had happened? I checked the small pile I'd pulled from the crevice, but I only got soft sounds while scanning it, and only weak signals were coming from the crevice as well. Where had that strong signal gone?

I bent down to look at the crevice, and I clearly saw pieces of gold!!

So, I took out my crevice clearing tablespoon and cleaned every bit of material from that bedrock crack, plus I collected the little pile of dirt I'd pulled out earlier. I put all of the dirt in my green gold pan and headed for a pocket of water in the bedrock to pan it out.

It didn't take long to concentrate the material, and the gold sure made a pretty sight in the crease of the pan. (I've got a picture of it that I'll attach when I post my pictures sometime later.)

I was shocked by the gold that was hiding in that crevice, not by the quantity of gold, but shocked by how the signal from the gold had changed so drastically from a crisp, clear signal to that of only scattered, faint responses. Nevertheless, the lesson I learned is that sometimes when gold is in a crevice where nature has conveniently stacked the pieces one on top of the other, the detector must see it as a larger piece? That is the only way I can figure it. The stacked pieces must have produced the initial strong signal, but when I disturbed and spread them out with the tip of the pick, the detector was left with the job of trying to find the little pieces that only gave off weak signals.

If I hadn't seen the gold in the crevice, I might have even walked away thinking the sudden change from loud to soft was caused by a hot rock close to the surface with little hot rocks from the same family running the same scam. Or something else perhaps, but I probably wouldn't have credited the drastic change to gold.

Just goes to show there's still more to learn.

All the best,

Lanny
 

Tree!

Jr. Member
Jan 16, 2013
84
50
Inland Empire, CA
Detector(s) used
Minelab SD2200D
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
IMG_0269.JPG

Just because. Some of last winters detected gold. Heading out to kick off this season next week!
 

meMiner

Bronze Member
Jul 22, 2014
1,047
1,176
Port Perry, Ontario
Detector(s) used
Minelab 800,
Fisher CZ21, F75SE, Gold Bug 2.9 & Minelab GPX 5000
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Great story Lanny! I am glad you tried panning with such success.

It does remind me of some frustrating detecting - - Ah, the vanishing target. I don't think there is one good answer.

I can tell you a few of my theories/experiences. A boot tack that jumped onto my pick magnet without me noticing. The target stuck with mud/clay to one of my tools or even my finger. One of those brass "snaps" from jeans that was originally/probably lying flat (good signal) and dropped deeper into the crack and maybe now sits sideways. A really small piece of foil that changed its shape from my efforts. More often, I was careless moving the dirt and dropped the target between the hole and where the dirt was stacked. For some reason, this happens to me with 22-short brass casings all too often and I chase them around the outside of my hole. Also, a small piece of thin wire.

I have detected small gold that was accumulated on bedrock that was really shallow, but for me, it was never a repeatable signal - more of a "maybe" in one direction of the swing or a "crackle" along a crack. What happens mostly on my GP pro, is I hit one of the dials when putting it down and the main culprit is that I zeroed out the sensitivity. ie. next time I check the hole, the target might still be there, but the detector has been adjusted so it does not respond. Or the PI detector was in "tracking" (vs "fixed") and I dropped something detectable onto the top of the coil that it then balanced out.
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Just because. Some of last winters detected gold. Heading out to kick off this season next week!

Say, thanks for posting pictures of your sassy gold nuggets! Some nice character there.

All the best, and thanks again,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Great story Lanny! I am glad you tried panning with such success.

It does remind me of some frustrating detecting - - Ah, the vanishing target. I don't think there is one good answer.

I can tell you a few of my theories/experiences. A boot tack that jumped onto my pick magnet without me noticing. The target stuck with mud/clay to one of my tools or even my finger. One of those brass "snaps" from jeans that was originally/probably lying flat (good signal) and dropped deeper into the crack and maybe now sits sideways. A really small piece of foil that changed its shape from my efforts. More often, I was careless moving the dirt and dropped the target between the hole and where the dirt was stacked. For some reason, this happens to me with 22-short brass casings all too often and I chase them around the outside of my hole. Also, a small piece of thin wire.

I have detected small gold that was accumulated on bedrock that was really shallow, but for me, it was never a repeatable signal - more of a "maybe" in one direction of the swing or a "crackle" along a crack. What happens mostly on my GP pro, is I hit one of the dials when putting it down and the main culprit is that I zeroed out the sensitivity. ie. next time I check the hole, the target might still be there, but the detector has been adjusted so it does not respond. Or the PI detector was in "tracking" (vs "fixed") and I dropped something detectable onto the top of the coil that it then balanced out.

Thanks for taking the time to do your write-up! I appreciate the tips and observations. There's always more to learn . . . So, thanks for giving away some of your hard-earned knowledge.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Speed-detecting? (This post has nothing to do with being on drugs while detecting!)

On the weekend I was detecting some humpy bedrock. It was a bad weather day, so I was waterproofed from head to toe (comfortable full rain suit, rubber boots, gloves that would keep my hands warm even when wet, etc.).

The mountain on my left rose vertically, the pines clinging to their rocky toe holds, the mountains on my right took a gentler rise, and the ones in front pretty much took the same topographical approach in reaching their summits as the ones on my right did. Low clouds scudded around and through the opposing canyons and gulches, and gooey clay sucked at my boots as I made my way to the spot chosen for the day's nugget shooting.

Constant light rain pattered on the hood of my rain suit, and all of that rain made me a bit nervous about whether I'd rain-proofed my detector enough for however long I'd be able to detect. Because the forecast had called for downright unfriendly detecting weather, I'd packed some new zipper type plastic freezer bags, ones that have the one side nice and clear (no printing or logo). I'd found through trial and error that by carefully making a partial split up the one side of the bag, I'd been able to snugly slide the plastic zipper bag down over the coil connection and the headphone jack. As for my headphones, they were tight and dry under my rain hood, so I postulated that my setup would probably work to deter electronic mischief, as electricity and water have an ugly relationship when it comes to getting along. Moreover, when the two get riled up, they'd rather fry circuits and components than find a way to coexist. So, I'd done what I could to limit or prohibit any sparky interactions.

Before I get too far along in my tale, I should also mention that my detector of the day was my little Gold Bug Pro, which comes from the factory waterproofed from the coil up to the control box where the coil cable connects, but no farther. So, I had to weatherproof the electronic box itself with it's connection ports and dials, but I also had to be careful with the headphones if I took them off, so as not to let water go seeping into the speakers. With the snug fit of the zipper bag, the jack for the headphones was tight and dry as was the coil connection port.

To elaborate on my Macgiver'd rain cover, the zipper bag was new (old, dirty or scuffed up ones make it very hard to see the display [I know this as that's what I was forced to use the last time out in rainy conditions because it was all I had available; it had been sitting in the bottom of my detector bag for quite a while.], so I made a mental note to keep some new ones stored in a thick stocking in my detector bag. [Tight, shorter stockings make a great storage container that doesn't rattle around or bang against sensitive items, as any contact with any other object is automatically cushioned. I've stored AAA and AA batteries in them before, but never 9-volt batteries as inadvertent contact of those 9-volt connectors with the metal casings of other batteries can generate enough heat to melt things if not start a fire! Small screwdrivers, pliers or other easy-to-lose items can be stored in them as well with the added benefit of knowing that the things you're searching for are compactly in a stocking, not scattered who-knows-where in your detector bag. Just be sure that the stockings are the thick stretchy type so they'll hang on to things well and act as a cushion against everything else in the bag while they're at it.]) (Wow! The previous information sure was quite the long parenthetical comment! [I'll have to be careful that doesn't happen too often in my writings.])

As usual, I'm wandering off topic again, so back to my story . . .

When I arrived at the spot I'd selected, I did a quick check of everything to make sure it was all operating properly. I ground-balanced, checked the display through the water-spattered zipper bag, then ran the detector as low as I could over the bedrock. On the second sweep, I got a signal.

As I'm constantly hitting little bits of track and blade, I scrubbed the newly found target zone with the super-magnet wand I always carry when nugget hunting. Next, I scanned the bedrock again. The signal was still there, so I scraped off the thin layer of covering clay and scanned again. In case there was any ferrous material at the new level, I scrubbed with the magnetic wand again. Once more I checked for the signal and was rewarded with a soft sound. I took my small pick and worked my way into a tiny crack, and out popped the signal in some clay loaded with small stream-worn stones. I threw the blob in a plastic gold pan. I do this when I'm hurried by weather (approaching rain or current rain) as it saves a lot of time, especially when I don't know how long I'll be able to detect in degrading weather. Double checking, I scanned the pan and the signal was in it. I swept the spot to be sure it was quiet, which it was, and then walked a few more steps to where another soft sound stopped me.

Doing the same aforementioned techniques of elimination, I threw the captured target's surrounding material into the pan. Not long after, when I'd thrown a couple more targets into the pan, I took a short walk to some standing water where I mixed up the pan's contents extremely well, because of the clay content, and then I panned everything down to the super-heavies. Shifting them back in the pan, I uncovered four small pieces, all sub-gram, with the biggest being close to half a gram. If I hadn't used the pan to collect targets, it would have taken me a lot longer, working with such sticky material, to isolate those targets from their clingy matrix, thus burning up time I didn't have. (Perhaps I now see how speed-dating works in a similar fashion, and maybe it gets rid of clingy people in the same manner?)

I kept speed-detecing that patch of bedrock until it got dark, and I had a nice catch of nuggets, sub-gram to multi-gram (biggest being almost five grams), in my little nugget bottle by the time I pulled my freight and headed back to my 4X4. Moreover, I'd kept all of the vulnerable electronics happy and dry on a rainy day which, interestingly enough, generated a solid whack of sassy nuggets to boot.

I'll get around to some of the other nuggets I found that soggy day when I get a chance.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Terry Soloman

Gold Member
May 28, 2010
19,422
30,105
White Plains, New York
🥇 Banner finds
1
🏆 Honorable Mentions:
1
Detector(s) used
Nokta Makro Legend// Pulsedive// Minelab GPZ 7000// Vanquish 540// Minelab Pro Find 35// Dune Kraken Sandscoop// Grave Digger Tools Tombstone shovel & Sidekick digger// Bunk's Hermit Pick
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
I'm a little clingy. :laughing7:
 

bcfromfl

Full Member
Feb 18, 2016
249
303
Youngstown, FL
Detector(s) used
GPX 4500,
Fisher Gold Bug Pro,
Gold Hog stream sluice
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Thanks for the great story, Lanny! What a giant playground you have up there, with lots of fun discoveries waiting for you each trip!
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Thanks for the great story, Lanny! What a giant playground you have up there, with lots of fun discoveries waiting for you each trip!

Thanks for dropping in to say so Bruce; I really appreciate it.

As for the playground, it is indeed huge, but that can be an advantage and a disadvantage. I find that it's usually much easier to find out where the gold is if I follow in the footsteps of the Old-timers. Those old boys really knew what they were doing as many of the best of them relied on gold hunting or mining techniques passed down from generations before to them, and then they simply modified them to fit the new conditions in North America or Australia, or wherever they immigrated to.

So, in defence of following in the footsteps of the Old-Timers, one of the biggest fallacies that I hear repeated over and over is that those Old-timers got it all, or if the Chinese worked an area that "The Chinese truly got it all". Absolute nonsense! It pays to follow the Old-timers. Moreover, what I will say is that any gold seeker has a much better chance of finding the gold if they'll look where those old boys of the gold rushes struck it rich. Of course a person can go look for gold on their own in some place where conditions are right but gold was never found, but any amateur or aspiring semi-pro gold hunter will be far better served when they're starting out or honing their skills to stick to where gold has already been found. Plus, a little research will tell anyone what size the gold was in any given area, and that goes a long way toward determining the chances of being able to find it with a detector.

I've found nuggets: in or near old throw-out piles, by old sluice runs, around abandoned excavations where placer mining was done with big equipment, on bare bedrock that was hand-mined in the 1800's, along stream beds and behind and under boulders in rivers that were worked very hard by the Old-timers, up on high benches that were hand-mined, in tailing piles, near old buildings, stuck to sticky clay along streams at low water, lying on bedrock as sun-bakers, on steep slopes where huge sluice runs were washed over the bank, jammed in bedrock cracks after high water runoff in streams that are still said to be "worked out", in old hydraulic pits, around the posts and pillars or on the floors of old placer tunnels, in lenses hidden under layers of clay in "worked out" placer pits, on roads leading from placer excavations, in old Chinese workings down in the bedrock, in cracks in bedrock where I had to clear standing rock piles or winch boulders off, etc. , etc.

There's still lots of gold to be found as long as any gold seeker understands that it takes a lot of patience, perseverance, research, determination, the right equipment, proper training, repeated trial and error, and practice, practice, practice to make it happen.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Well said Lanny. In fact, it's pouring down rain here and you just made me wanna grab my rain gear, pick, shovel and pan and hit that ol mine of mine.:icon_thumright:

Good luck! I hope you find some nice gold.

All the best,

Lanny
 

seascene

Jr. Member
Feb 14, 2015
87
84
Sailboat coastal British Columbia
Detector(s) used
Presently Anfibio Muliti. Sold my MXT sport, TDI pro and Macro Gold Racer Just got April 2023 Deus 2 and Cscope 4 Pi (England made)
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Greetings to everyone from the rain coast of Vancouver Island. Finally back and anchored again in Comox Harbour BC but hanging out at my lady's Port Alberni farm for the winter months. I have no gold to display. The creeks running into north BC coast are uncountable and equally, nearly inaccessible with jungle like growth right to the ocean. These creeks flood with the tide. Panning them means hacking beyond the tide flood through the worst old growth forest fall down and salal entanglements imaginable. I tried a few times at the creeks that seemed reasonable ... no results. However, I am told that the old guys, long gone were known to have survived in comfort as they would know it (whiskey and roll your owns) and they did it with gold. I have not given up. However, there are 5 centuries of European ship wrecks here as well as trade with indigenous coastal tribes for sea otter pelts and currency was doubloons. I will be metal detecting this wild area next season more for relics than gold. This area is so very rich in marine history. I happened upon a "lost in time" whaling site decaying, grown over and surely deserving a real look with a detector (on the sched for next year). The blood letting there must have been "biblical". Inspired to write this poem.

Blubber Bay

Tilted, fallen
Left choked amid sunken, reeking muck
Tilted, these rotted dock pilings
Blackened, bleached
Tilted by salt mists; fierce winter rot...
Decayed, cruel sweat and memories they last
Ships, sailors, dockmen; rattling machinery ashore
Helpless to harsh tools; the fear soaked axe
Slashed, forest timbers thereabouts on the ground
Faded grey witness at tall horizons laid down
Iron bound in chain manacles and spikes
Heard this din oft by a whaler’s tavern nearby
A century since; silence now perfectly served
Windows withered, twisted marrow-less their frames
Walls buckled, skeletal floor
Blubber bay’s past tides, memory of sun
When wavelet waters, winnowed prisms run
Left now to memory amid graceless heaped dust
An iron anchor, rust blistered, headstone of such
As graveyard notice at the tavern’s brittle door
Yet wisps linger still, drifting within
At memories when ale tankards praised the din
Witness echoes, mournings, desperate last hopes
For a shipless bell’s note amid steam whistle stokes
And mariners’ scoured tables quiet, unmoved
Dip your hat by the bay; the pilon’s remains
And past to whalers’ charred chimneys thereabouts lain
They bleed rust, into remnant trammel steel lanes
As rememberance of wheeled trolleys back then
Leaking burden; the virgin ocean’s bloody day
Gripped, barred forever to its all yesterdays
And so the notice arrived, delivered
It’s post overdue, for a blood red sun, utterly to hide
Blubber Bay’s last century’s final black tide.

007.JPG
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Greetings to everyone from the rain coast of Vancouver Island. Finally back and anchored again in Comox Harbour BC but hanging out at my lady's Port Alberni farm for the winter months. I have no gold to display. The creeks running into north BC coast are uncountable and equally, nearly inaccessible with jungle like growth right to the ocean. These creeks flood with the tide. Panning them means hacking beyond the tide flood through the worst old growth forest fall down and salal entanglements imaginable. I tried a few times at the creeks that seemed reasonable ... no results. However, I am told that the old guys, long gone were known to have survived in comfort as they would know it (whiskey and roll your owns) and they did it with gold. I have not given up. However, there are 5 centuries of European ship wrecks here as well as trade with indigenous coastal tribes for sea otter pelts and currency was doubloons. I will be metal detecting this wild area next season more for relics than gold. This area is so very rich in marine history. I happened upon a "lost in time" whaling site decaying, grown over and surely deserving a real look with a detector (on the sched for next year). The blood letting there must have been "biblical". Inspired to write this poem.

Blubber Bay

Tilted, fallen
Left choked amid sunken, reeking muck
Tilted, these rotted dock pilings
Blackened, bleached
Tilted by salt mists; fierce winter rot...
Decayed, cruel sweat and memories they last
Ships, sailors, dockmen; rattling machinery ashore
Helpless to harsh tools; the fear soaked axe
Slashed, forest timbers thereabouts on the ground
Faded grey witness at tall horizons laid down
Iron bound in chain manacles and spikes
Heard this din oft by a whaler’s tavern nearby
A century since; silence now perfectly served
Windows withered, twisted marrow-less their frames
Walls buckled, skeletal floor
Blubber bay’s past tides, memory of sun
When wavelet waters, winnowed prisms run
Left now to memory amid graceless heaped dust
An iron anchor, rust blistered, headstone of such
As graveyard notice at the tavern’s brittle door
Yet wisps linger still, drifting within
At memories when ale tankards praised the din
Witness echoes, mournings, desperate last hopes
For a shipless bell’s note amid steam whistle stokes
And mariners’ scoured tables quiet, unmoved
Dip your hat by the bay; the pilon’s remains
And past to whalers’ charred chimneys thereabouts lain
They bleed rust, into remnant trammel steel lanes
As rememberance of wheeled trolleys back then
Leaking burden; the virgin ocean’s bloody day
Gripped, barred forever to its all yesterdays
And so the notice arrived, delivered
It’s post overdue, for a blood red sun, utterly to hide
Blubber Bay’s last century’s final black tide.

QUOTE]

Now, that's real poetry! Nicely done. Lots of great images generated in your words.

Hope you get lucky and find some of that stuff the old-timers were getting. I'm amazed at where they went to get the gold, and I'm amazed at the knowledge they had to find it in the middle of nowhere.

All the best, and thanks for your post,

Lanny
 

OP
OP
Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,350
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Hello to all you fellow gold chasers!

As the weather is still quite nice, I had the chance to go chase some gold again yesterday.

I got some really nice gold, multiple finds, that tallied up to a nice amount.

I've paid for that little Gold Bug Pro many times over now, and I've only had it for a little over two years. Considering how short our detecting season can be, that's quite remarkable; moreover, I intend on that nice machine paying for itself many more times too.

I love how light it is, how hard it hits on gold when it gets close to the gold, how it ID's with a number that pins and holds steady, and how I can crank up the sensitivity after the first finds in a patch to sort out the background chatter to find even more on the second pass.

All the best, and I'll get the pictures and stories out sometime this winter,

Lanny
 

63bkpkr

Silver Member
Aug 9, 2007
4,069
4,618
Southern California
Detector(s) used
XLT, GMT, 6000D Coinmaster
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Greetings Lanny,
How wonderful to see your post as it means You and Your Thread are alive and well and U are still finding that lovely yellow metal.
Thank you for the update and the post as you do so much to keep the 'fever' alive in those of us who can not get out to hunt just yet.
Continued Success to ya.....................63bkpkr
 

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