Gold briefly hit $1000 for the first time in history today. (current gold price) Selling cause a brief dip below that mark but I’d fully expect it to vault permanently over $1000 per troy oz within a few days. If you look at the one year trend (one year trend), it shows this will be the case. It will be a long time before we see gold below $1000 per Toz.

Now, even though when you account for inflation $1000 doesn’t quite match the mark of the price gold in 1980, it’s still a big landmark, if only in peoples minds. The price of gold made Drudge Report’s top headline today. In case you didn’t know it, that’s big business! It alerts the unaware to the situation at hand. It moves the news world, spawns more articles regarding not only the price of gold but side issues like environmental impact of gold mining as well as the expansion of mining claims closing in on the outskirts of cities. A recent article in the Los Angeles Times covered just that issue (see here). It talks about Riverside, San Bernardino, Phoenix, Mesa and Las Vegas directly. Prepare for impact.

This wave of news will cause more awareness and thus more opposition and More Mining Claims. Research is of extreme importance to the modern nugget hunter. As gold rises, more and more people will seek gold nuggets. Idiots who don’t know where to or not to drive, landing on cantankerous claim owners spots, feeling they have the right, claiming your spot, over claiming your spot and possible gun pulling. Maybe not at $1000 per oz just yet but it’s not going to stop here. I’m not trying to be a defeatist or negative, just bearing in mind some of the possible realities. We all want to stay safe. The desert is dangerous enough without adding the idiot bent on gold factor. As Jim P. has said, gold fever can be a blessing or a curse. For me and perhaps you it’s a blessing. For others…. We’ll see.

Some really positive factors come out of all this as well. For those who have a lot of gold or are set with claims and good at finding it, have all the equipment, etc. this can only mean better profits from the hobby. A small gold nugget pays for my gas tank a lot faster these days than it did when gold was at $300 a troy ounce, even with the rising price of fuel and crude oil. Best strategy is to keep at it, keep researching, keep finding gold and move forward with a new game plan or new rules in mind. I hope we can all continue to enjoy ourselves. Be careful out there and good luck figuring out the best times to hold or sell.

Now, how many explanation points will I require when it hits $3000?

Efficient use of time is one of the most important factors in succesful nugget hunting. Whatever location you hunt in, there is a certain ratio of trash targets to gold targets. In most cases, there is far more trash than gold. Let’s say that you find a spot where there are 100 trash targets to every gold target. In this case, you must dig 100 targets on average for every gold nugget you find. If you don’t know how to quickly separate and recover metal from dirt, you will either have a very long road to the gold or you may never get any gold. It depends on if you give up or if you have a partner who is a quickdraw at digging targets.

Anyhow, it’s best to know how to quickly locate, separate and recover any given target, otherwise you are losing gold taking a long time to find it.

The first phase is, you hear a target as you pass the coil over it. At this point, you need to determine where the center point of your dig should be. In order to do this accurately, you need to understand how the coil you are using works.

Mono coils are most sensitive in the very center. A conical pattern of sensitivity forms from the outside of the coil and it decreses in a cone, deeper and deeper, to the center of the coil until it runs out. Pinpointing with a Mono can be done on the side of the coil with the most sensitive areas being the 2 o’clock and 10 o’clock positions.

Unlike mono’s, dd coils pattern of sensitivity shoots straight down from the edges equally and the most sensitive part is straight down the center from top to bottom, bisecting the coil. This is why the pinpointing is done on the heal (edge of the coil facing you while in search mode) and toe (edge of the coil facing outward while in search mode).

Using a mono coil, I hear a target. I back off and approach the area of ground the target is in and find where I get the loudest signal response at the 10 or 2 o’clock position on the edge of the coil, approaching from at least two directions to pinpoint it. After narrowing it down, I then attempt to pinpoint with the coil on edge at 10 or 2 o’clock and if I hear a signal, then I have my accurate center point.

Using a DD coil, I hear a target. I back off and approach the area of ground the target is in with the toe of the coil. As soon as I hear a signal, I back off and try to find where the signal is loudest and that should be the center of my dig. Sometimes, it’s helpful to approach the signal from a couple of directions, just to be sure. After narrowing it down, I then attempt to pinpoint with the coil on edge, using the toe or heal, and if I hear a signal, then I have my accurate center point.

It’s important to dig dead center because if you don’t, you risk leaving a shallow target on the edge of a hole. I’ve seen many detectorists dig deep to bedrock for a target that was 2 inches deep on the side of their hole. I’ve made this same mistake before, especially with a big coil and until you learn to prevent it, it’s a big waste of time.

Anyhow, now that we have our center point, we can make a dig hole. I estimate the depth of the target based on signal strength and from that, I either scrape a little bit off or just start digging. I dig and periodically check the hole for a signal. Normally, if you are getting deeper, the signal will get stronger. If you dig quite a bit and your signal never gets stronger, you may want to re-check to make sure you are not just digging ground noise. It doesn’t make sense to dig really deep if your signal is not improving because that would also be a waste of time. Basically, I dig and check until I either get the signal out of the hole or reach bedrock.

If I dig the metal out of the hole, I immediately try to pinpoint the location in my tail pile with the sensitive edge of my coil. If I can’t find it, I work with the bottom of the coil and remove dirt with my boot until I can find it with my pinpoint edge. Once I find it with the pinpoint edge, I pull out my scoop and grab some dirt and run it over my coil. I use my right hand to do this as I have no ring on that hand. I continue to grab scoopfuls until I hear the target in the scoop. Once in the scoop, I just simply empty some of the material in the scoop into my left hand and run the scoop back over the coil. If the signal is still present in the scoop, I dump the extra material from my left hand so I can empty some more from the scoop, again into the left hand. If the signal disappears from the scoop, I dump all material from the scoop and put what’s in my left hand into the scoop and voila, the target is in the scoop with a minimal amount of material. I just separate it with my fingers and there it is, hopefully a gold nugget.

If I reach bedrock and the target is still in the bottom of the hole, I pinpoint the target on bedrock with the sensitive part of the coil edge. Once I’ve located the point, I then remove material from the bedrock either into my left hand or into the scoop and check as before.

Simple stuff. I’ll try and get some pictures of the process up at some point soon. Good luck!

The winter nugget hunting season has finally arrived in Arizona. While I’m sure that many people have been pushing back into the more remote locations of the desert for several weeks now, it’s finally cooled off enough that the remote nugget hunting areas are no longer off limits. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to break the 5000 ft. barrier for nuggets and so, at least in the past, it’s felt like cabin fever during the summer. Either that or heat stroke in the Little San Domingo at 9 in the morning.

Anyhow, this past Sunday, we got a chance to get back to one of our remote nugget patches for the first time in several months. We found that the area had been hit moderately by the monsoon rains and so Rod and Laszlo with their GP Extremes, Scott with his GS5 and I with my SD2100 hit the deck, excited to score some nuggets. We got there early and temps remained moderate all day long. After checking a few areas with my Coiltek 14″ mono, I decided to switch gears and changed over to my trusty Minelab 8″ mono, thinking that I would be able to get into some smaller areas. Hunting below an area where nuggets had been found previously, I was able to score a nice little .1 gram nugget. Moving up, I cleared a small area of detritus and heard a nominal ground signal which I passed over and then moved on.

A little while later, Rod came by with his GP and 14″ mono and in the same spot heard a clear signal. I was there so I helped him dig as it was under som low lying brush. Sure enough, he scored a nice 1.1 grammer, adding to the 1.2 gram nugget he had found earlier in an adjacent wash. Neither Scott nor Laszo scored that day but we all had a good time. We even discovered some additional clues that merit further investigation on the next trip. Luckily, the weather is such that we have months of great detecting ahead of us.

Or is that Nugent hunting and Cat Scratch Fever?? Sometimes I’m not sure which. I get a lot of people coming to the site when they type in “Ted Nugget Hunting”. Sometimes they are looking for my nugget hunting blog but very often, they are looking for Ted Nugent, hunter, guitar player, motor city madman and activist. Well, they got a few things right. I’m a hunter and yes, a guitar player. Hey, when I was a kid, I even got Ted’s autograph.

Hey Ted, let’s trade hunts. I’ll take you Ted nugget hunting and you take me Ted nugent hunting. Whad’ya say pal?