I should stick to coin shooting

[jagchaser]

Just spent 6 days out in AZ. San Domingo wash area and the rich hill area. Found lots of lead, wire, rivets, and lots of boot nails, some at very impressive depths. Stopped at Loy's in Stanton and bought a smaller 8" commander mono to get around in those rocks, and bought a 1/2 gram nugget to test my machine. Nothing but excersize and 2500 miles on the pickup.

 

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[Terry Soloman]

Welcome to nuggetshooting.

 

[G-bone]

Ah but the memories!!

Never give up.
I'm going to give it another try here soon myself.

 

[Diggin-N-Dumps]

Sounds like a cool experiance! Ive spents hundreds of dollars driving to the coast and staying a couple nights to find a ring... Maybe. Still worth it thou.

 

[jagchaser]

Sounds like a cool experiance! Ive spents hundreds of dollars driving to the coast and staying a couple nights to find a ring... Maybe. Still worth it thou.

Im thinking I would rather try finding rings than hunt nuggets again. At least people are still losing rings. All the old timers I talked to out there said they bought houses on the nuggets they found years ago, but wouldn't even know where to look anymore.

 

[CA Gold Hunter]

Just gotta keep at it, I haven't found a nugget yet but I haven't gotten a chance to get out much with a newborn and a 2 year old. The few times I've gone out though others in my group have found gold. Last time I went to rye patch one guy ended up with 11 nuggets, I got skunked and another guy got 1 really nice one. They are out there still. A 5 lb one was just found here in butte county a couple years ago.

 

[clv]

I understand that a nickle will ring like a 1/4 oz nugget to test you machine with. Take a set of cutters and cut into 1/4's (don't tell the Gov that I did that) for an even smaller nugget test.

 

[beekbuster]

the pro's make it seem so easy, finding over a half ounce in their parking spot. but it gives me confidence. if someone else can do it, i can too. and yes a 4 yr old and 8 month old makes it hard to get out. luckily im only 15 to 25 minutes from the hunting grounds. if im spending money to go to the coast, im coming back with limits of fish, thats just me

 

[Hoser John]

NO form of detecting is as dangerous, time intensive, costly and frustrating than nugget shooting. Way too many folks just run out, throw a pile a cash at it and expect instant success. It take much time,effort and determination AND a righteous detector to find any. I know of 1 man in particular who has been at it over 20 years and hasn't broke a ounce yet. Learn coin/relic/beaches and such FIRST as preparation. Then hit the history books, library,local historical society and old farts like me who have been around awhile. Local yokel small non profit clubs are fulla cool retired folks out gold grubbing all the time-John

 

[GreyGhost]

Nuggetshooting is the toughest kind of metal detecting there is. It's one part geology, one part research and one part mastering your detector. When all those things come together and you're actually swinging your coil over GOOD ground with gold still in it, you might get lucky.
It sounds like you were doing everything right if you were digging some deep targets. A lot of new guys get burned out after a few hours digging, pinpointing and recovering shallow surface "screamer" targets and they don't have any energy left at the end of the day to slow down and try to locate those deep gold whispers. Depending on the location ofcourse, almost all the good I've found has been quiet, deep, mellow targets.
If you've got that mastered then you might have just been on poor ground. Those big club claims have been really pounded over the years.
Without a local guiding you it can be very, very difficult prospecting new ground far from home with limited time. Traveling to somewhere like Alaska or Australia is a dream of mine but it's also a HUGE gamble of time and money, with no promise of a reward. Which is why a lot of us who are lucky enough to live in the west do so well just mastering the goldfields that are in our backyards.
But then again nothing ventured, nothing gained...

 

[IMPDLN]

Nugget hunting certainly ain't easy. If it was everybody would be doing it. It takes lots of persistence, patience and time with your machine in a gold area to find gold metal detecting. Sometimes in some areas thinking outside the box equals success. You went to some really hammered ground at those locations which adds to the difficulty. I've been very successful over the years, and have yet to find a nugget at the LSD area. Although I can't say I have spent that much time out there myself.

A couple questions for you: Did you get any training with your GPX? It can be difficult to master that unit with so many options. Did you happen to hook up with a local to hunt with? Sometimes hunting with a person that has had success can shorten the learning curve.

The best advice I can offer for somebody coming to Az. for a short duration to detect gold, especially on club claims, would be to forget hitting the obvious spots and think about trying the not so obvious possibly over looked areas on a claim.

The gold is still out there, however the easy obvious spots on the claims have been hit many times before. You obviously found boot tacks and such so you are on the right track, but it takes a lot of time and dug trash to succeed at metal detecting gold. Dennis

 

[meMiner]

It is a thrill to me when I find a gold nugget. A ring is nice, but a nugget has a special place in my memory. If I wanted pure weight in gold, I would agree that detecting the sand at swim beaches is way more productive than nugget shooting.

 

[jagchaser]

Nugget hunting certainly ain't easy. If it was everybody would be doing it. It takes lots of persistence, patience and time with your machine in a gold area to find gold metal detecting. Sometimes in some areas thinking outside the box equals success. You went to some really hammered ground at those locations which adds to the difficulty. I've been very successful over the years, and have yet to find a nugget at the LSD area. Although I can't say I have spent that much time out there myself.

A couple questions for you: Did you get any training with your GPX? It can be difficult to master that unit with so many options. Did you happen to hook up with a local to hunt with? Sometimes hunting with a person that has had success can shorten the learning curve.

The best advice I can offer for somebody coming to Az. for a short duration to detect gold, especially on club claims, would be to forget hitting the obvious spots and think about trying the not so obvious possibly over looked areas on a claim.

The gold is still out there, however the easy obvious spots on the claims have been hit many times before. You obviously found boot tacks and such so you are on the right track, but it takes a lot of time and dug trash to succeed at metal detecting gold. Dennis

I did not get any training with my gpx. I did try to get ahold of a couple different guys to spend a day guided, but the timing didn't work out. I admit Im not used to using it in such hot ground. I use it here in Nebraska to detect deep targets, flag them, then come back and discriminate with my 3030, on coins and relics at old homesites. I bought a 1/2 gram nugget just so I could practice with it in those hot rocks, and I was able to locate it everywhere I tried down to about 4-5" in Fine gold. At home I can find gold targets that small much deeper. In AZ I was digging SMALL targets down to a ft, some lead shards as small as .015 gram. Im sure that I do not have my machine mastered, but I feel comfortable I did not miss any nuggets larger than 1/10th gram. I didn't dig any screamers at all, digging relics with it has showed me what those are!

I knew that those areas had been pounded hard, but its almost impossible to know where to go before you go your first time. I did make a morning trip out to some unclaimed blm dry wash country west of the vulture mine. Not near as much activity out there, but still no luck. Most of my time spent on GPAA and Weaver claims I spent getting into the roughest areas I could, and under as many cactus and bushes as possible. Im only 38 so I figured climbing up the roughest parts of Weavers Forget me not claim might put me under a rock nobody had checked yet. It wore me out, but didn't do much good. I did find a piece of exposed quartz that i got a soft mellow tone inside it. I spent 45 minutes trying to bust it off with my pick, but just broke my super magnet. If I go back Im bringing a chisel and sledge.

The only good thing I saw was that I still found a ton of tiny trash, weavers had less, LSD had more. If there was none then it would have been clearly hunted out. Oh and I did find a 1886 era levi strauss rivet with some brown duck material still in it! Once I got home and sorted my trash I figure out what that was, it kind of statisfied the relic hunter in me!

 

[IMPDLN]

Sounds like you are doing things right, just a couple tough areas. Three forums you should join for AZ. are nuggetshooter, nuggethunter, and arizonaoutback. Mostly local Az. prospectors on them and maybe next time you can hook up with somebody to get you into a good area. It sounds to me like the biggest issue going against you is time. It's hard to go into unfamiliar territory with limited time and successfully locate gold nuggets. I know what that's like from my few excursions out of state. Those forums do informal outings that all are invited to and planning your trip around one of those forum outing times could certainly help you get out with some real experienced locals. Good luck to you. Dennis

 

[Lanny in AB]

You've been given some great advice by some fine people that really know what they're talking about.

Nugget hunting is not easy, it does require a ton of patience, it requires learning your machine extremely well, it requires understanding very well how to set your machine up in the right mode for the mineralization you are trying to deal with, as well as the size of the gold you're looking for, the depth you'll be looking for it at, etc. Take that manual to bed and read sections of it over and over again every night. (I'm not sure how extreme the mineralization is in Nebraska, but I have hunted some of the Arizona places you speak of, and if you're not running your machine in the right mode for your specific soil types and sizes of gold, you'll miss gold.

It's good you found the targets you did; they help with the training more than you probably realize. I dug about two full ice cream buckets of small trash before I hit my first nugget. You'll find stories of tactics, techniques, ways to identify signals, etc. on my main thread linked at the bottom of this post. Read through a few and you can learn from others to shorten your learning curve.

Finding nuggets is fun: I love it when I hear that soft sound of gold on smaller or deeper gold, and nothing beats the scream of a meaty chunk of gold nearer the surface!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Tony_agr]

would you revisit areas that you've checked before?

 

[jagchaser]

would you revisit areas that you've checked before?

If I found that I had been doing something wrong then I suppose I would. Those won't be the next places I go for sure.

 

[Zip Zip]

Nugget hunting certainly ain't easy. If it was everybody would be doing it. It takes lots of persistence, patience and time with your machine in a gold area to find gold metal detecting. Sometimes in some areas thinking outside the box equals success. You went to some really hammered ground at those locations which adds to the difficulty. I've been very successful over the years, and have yet to find a nugget at the LSD area. Although I can't say I have spent that much time out there myself.

A couple questions for you: Did you get any training with your GPX? It can be difficult to master that unit with so many options. Did you happen to hook up with a local to hunt with? Sometimes hunting with a person that has had success can shorten the learning curve.

The best advice I can offer for somebody coming to Az. for a short duration to detect gold, especially on club claims, would be to forget hitting the obvious spots and think about trying the not so obvious possibly over looked areas on a claim.

The gold is still out there, however the easy obvious spots on the claims have been hit many times before. You obviously found boot tacks and such so you are on the right track, but it takes a lot of time and dug trash to succeed at metal detecting gold. Dennis

"Boot Tacks" sometimes, the tacks with larger than normal heads, are "Upholstery Tacks" that attach the bellows to an Old Drywasher. Good time to scan that area

 

[GreyGhost]

A big mistake a lot of new guys make is going too fast. You need to crawl through those gold fields. Maybe you tried covering too much ground. Sometimes when I'm with a friend he'll have run all over the place, up and down and around a gulch and in the same amount of time I'll have covered only a 100x100 foot area. He'll be empty handed and I'll have a few nuggets.
The gold is obviously there from all the old workings. You don't need to do a lot of prospecting. Go slow and don't listen for "wee woo!" metal targets under your coil. Listen for waivers and chatter in your threshold. That's the difference between the 10% of nuggetshooters who are finding 90% of the gold every year. Most of the big, shallow nuggets were already scooped up by the first detectorists back in the seventies. Now it's about going in and listening for those faint, repeatable "gold whispers" that everyone has missed. It takes time and a lot of hard work but there's still gold out there to be found. A lot of it that I've been finding is the very small and deep or pourous "specimen" nuggets that VLFs and even GPXs have a hard time with but the ZVT technology in the GPZ just seems to love.

 

[pyledriver]

I just got back from 5 days in central Az. I found one nugget and a few bits of trash. It was the most grueling 5 days of pure fun I've had in many years! I'll be going back, and to a new area or two. Gold or no, the experience was priceless.