Well, I just got back from a great Sunday hunt with my partners Rod and Laszlo. This is a fairly steady ritual for us, the Sunday hunt. I liken it (speaking for myself) to going to church each Sunday.

Which is why I said no when my 2nd job asked me to attend a meeting this morning. Hope that one doesn’t come to bite me in the booty!

Speaking of booty…

We checked out a new area this morning for just a couple of hours.
Laszlo found a small copper nug. I found two small copper nugs and “The Bully”. And Rod found nothing (In this location) but he did come up with the name for “The Bully”.

After failing to locate our intended quarry, i.e. gold nuggets, we moved on to an area we had spied on the way in. After an hour or so of hunting, Rod was able to score two really nice gold nuggets while Laszlo and I were treated with a serving a humble pie and a big phat skunk! So, coolio…

A new patch, perhaps.

I’ll let you decide which one is “The Bully”

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We be quite pleased with the booty!

Which reminds me! I made the cover of GoldSlut Magazine this week!

GoldSlut Magazine < Check out the 1st Edition with Grubstake and Shep!

Check out this week's centerfold! Click Here!>!>!>!>>>

I can’t wait to get out next week!

Well, I finally got a chance to get out for an early morning hunt this week. Lately, between heavy work loads and broken ribs, I haven’t really had the chance.

Well, it was just wonderful to finally take advantage of a cool morning. I tried a couple of spots that I know of, both fairly close to one another.

The first spot is a super hot son of a buck. It’s just absolutely loaded with black sand and heavies and my first attempt to work this trash filled wash was very difficult, having chosen the Coiltek 14″ mono. This is one of those places where the it’s not impossible but difficult to run a big mono in both channels. Since it’s fairly shallow and holds a lot of trash, I figured I’d clean as much as I could the easy way so this time I started out with the smooth running stock Minelab 11″ DD. I love this coil because it’s not only quiet but it’s sensitive as well. I’ve found nuggets so small they wouldn’t weigh on the scale and that’s WITHOUT mods of any kind. It ran like a champ and I was able to clear a number of trash targets out of the wash. I’m convinced there is gold there but I just haven’t confirmed it yet and after an hour and a half, I was ready to move on.

The 2nd location is a nice inside bench where I had found a nugget previously. Even though it’s close the ground is not hot at all and can be easily handled by a mono coil. I decided to stick with the DD though and see how many targets I could get. The first time I came across this bench I skimmed it to see how trashy it was. There were a lot of really loud targets and I chose to dig 3 of them and one was a nice little .5 gram nugget with my 14″ mono. I returned a couple of more times and hunted the wash and the bench some, recovering a lot of trash. This time I stuck with the bench exclusively and did a grid which I went over twice. Once in search mode with both channels active and once in channel 2 only. I recovered several bullets as well as quite a few iron pieces before it was time to go. I’m really surprised it didn’t give up another gold nugget.

Perhaps I’ll pick one up there next time when I do a final clean up with my Minelab 8″ mono and scour the deeper upper bench with the 14″.

All in all it was a great hunt. Even though I didn’t score any gold I’ll be back there again. The area will inevitably give up more gold.

Rod and I got out to check out a potential placer gold area on Sunday. An early start got us a head start on the heat of the day and we were able to spend several hours exploring before the heat of the day overtook us completely. We found a couple of nice bedrock washes in our intended area and went to work with our Minelabs.

The first wash had a real interesting look to it and having observed it from above, we knew that it split in two directions. I thought the left hand side looked best for gold nuggets but as fate would have it, it was pretty well choked with brush and although we could have navagated further, a swarm of bees halted us. We decided to check out the right trib and played leap frog to cover the bedrock. After digging a couple of trash targets, I got a really loud trash signal in a good spot. Even though it sounded trashy it looked like the best spot to dig for a nug that I had seen so far in this drainage. Sure enough, I popped a 4.7 gram copper nugget encased in host stone. No more nuggets came further upstream but by the end of the day I was able to grab a total of six copper nuggets.

Although we did not find any gold nuggets on this day, it was a good find all the same. Copper is an excellent indicator for gold and I always get excited when I see either copper mineralization or start finding copper nuggets. I know we will find gold either in this location or one nearby.

As always, we like to name the washes where we make finds and since copper is green and Rod and I both like Heavy Metal (both kinds, music and elemental), we dubbed it The Lost Green Manalishi wash.

Pictured below are the six nuggets totalling about 8 and a half grams.

I got out early in the a.m. with Rod yesterday on a hunt in the Little San Domingo placer. Figuring it was going to get hot quick, we were gearing up well before the sun rose in an area where Rod had found an 18.5 grammer previously. By the time we were ready, it was starting to get light and we found a small drainage that looked really good for nuggets with lots of exposed bedrock.

Well, right off the bat the threshold on my detector started to pulse and sure enough, it was indicating a low battery. Darn! I could have swore I had at least half a day left on that battery and I knew I had not brought another. Since I run a Coiltek 12 volt regulator on my SD2100 I searched Rod’s truck for an extra 12v but to no avail.

Here is Rod detecting on my trip back to the trucks…

Locating a small target on bedrock….

Coming up with no battery, I decided to to some vac packing. Luckily, we had planned to do this anyhow or I would have been totally out of commission. I went to a couple of likely spots and broke some bedrock and sucked up the virgin material.

The bedrock in the LSD is a really strange, pinkish basaltic flow that is unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. It tends to be rotten and easy to break up and expose virgin material deep within. Like a lot of desert gold, it tends to be dispersed in pockets and so can be sort of hard to find, even though it’s basically everywhere.

Getting back to the trucks to process my first bucket of material, I decided to set up my Goldbuddy mini highbanker. I like bringing the Goldbuddy into the desert because it can run on a minimal amount of water and is a very relaxing way to process material. Well, I got the machine set up only to find I had forgot my power leads and was unable to hook the unit up to my battery. I just sort of shook my head at this point and did the only thing I could do which was to start panning. Honestly, I was probably able to process my two buckets of material faster this way. I think the sluice works best when you have a whole lot of material to work. With two buckets, the cleanup would take all the advantage out of using it.

I followed Rod to explore a different drainage which turned out to amount to nothing as far as detectable ground and I started to feel really nauseous and had to sit down for a bit. It never quite left me and so we decided to pack it up and get out as it was starting to get pretty hot anyhow. I thought I’d drank too much coffee for an empty stomach but in the end, I had a little case of the flu. Mild but I’m glad we got out when we did. You can’t afford to take chances with your health out in the desert.

In the end, this is what I came up with for the two 1/3 buckets….

Looking forward to next weeks hunt.