Rod, Laszlo, Scott and I recently visited an area on two consecutive weekends. It was a spot that we researched and thought might have some good potential to recover gold nuggets with our detectors. One both weekends, I was able to recover a single gold nugget. The first weekend I consider nugget hunting and the 2nd weekend I consider nugget shooting. Why?

The first weekend was our first trip to the area and even though we researched it for claims and potential, we were not certain that our target area would have nugget gold. We were nugget hunting. It’s another word for prospecting. A gold nugget was found and we were able to put a new x on the map. A coveted new spot to recover gold nuggets, a confirmed placer area.

The second weekend we were certain that gold was present. We were nugget shooting. Visiting a known area, a nugget patch, in hopes of recovering additional nuggets. At first glance it may just seem like semantics or splitting hairs over terminology but actually it’s two different activities that require different techniques in order to succeed.

In nugget hunting I use several different techniques that are designed to maximize success. For one thing, I stay on the move while I’m nugget hunting. When visiting a new area, it’s likely, unless it’s been visited previously by other detectorists, that there will be a large number of trash targets encountered. Trash targets obviously take time to recover, say between 30 seconds and 15 minutes for a hard target in a wash and perhaps longer in deep benches or on hillsides. In order to make time, I normally break a known rule when nugget hunting. That is, I don’t dig every target. It’s said that if you don’t dig every target, you’ll leave gold behind. This is generally true but in nugget hunting, if you dig every target you may leave gold behind. How is this possible? Well, again, there tends to be a lot of trash in a new area. If I had started at the very foot of the wash and meticulously covered every square inch of the wash and lower benches with my 8″ coil and dug every single target, I would have never found the first nugget. I wouldn’t have even made it to the gold. So, how did I make it to the gold? Here is my technique:

I read the wash and specifically look at the bedrock. In this case, there were no old workings or any previous indication of placering in the past so right there, it’s a gamble. With 3 detectorists in the wash, I place a series of bets. I tune my detector and move away from my partners interference. I look into my catalogue of past experience with finding gold nuggets and quickly move from one cherry spot to another, places where nuggets are likely to drop after a flood. Although I keep my coil to the ground, I generally don’t actively detect areas that seem deep for the detector. If I hit a target, I evaluate it. How cherry is the spot? How deep is the bedrock? How loud and garish is the signal? Once I have this information I also consider the likely hood that my parnters will choose to dig if I decide not to and I place a bet.

Soft signal on exposed bedrock? Dig. Loud garish signal in a deep transition area? Leave it. Loud garish signal on exposed bedrock? Dig. Loud garish signal in a deep area that might be cherry? I might dig it depending on other factors such as old workings or my feeling about the ground and how it reads as a given placer area. That’s it. Keep moving, cherry pick and dig as many targets as fast as possible skimming over deep areas and taking extra care on the bedrock. Using this technique while I am nugget hunting often produces nuggets assuming there are nuggets to be had.

Once I recover gold, the game changes a bit but after the first nugget, I’m still nugget hunting. They say gold is where you find it and for me, that means gold is where I find it. So, the first thing I do is change tactics. I slow down to a crawl and pound the immediate area where the nugget was found. Bedrock washes tend to flow in sections so I make sure and cover the section I’m in and get every square inch with my coil. I check the low benches and sometimes the high ones depending on how they look. I turn over bigger rocks that might be impeding my coil from performing and check under them. Next, I move down or up a section and do the same thing but speed up a bit and dig most targets. The only ones I leave out are very loud targets in deep transition areas but I make sure and cover the bedrock well. Then I move up or down from the original section and repeat. After that, If I don’t recover any more gold, I move on, usually up the wash and assess the bedrock and ground as I go forward. Once I have seen the total lay of the wash and bedrock I move to nugget shooting.

Nuggetshooting is a totally different game than nugget hunting. When I’m nugget shooting, the dig every target or leave behind gold rule applies. Whatever target I find, regardless of how it souds gets dug. It’s gold until I prove otherwise. Of course, I start where gold was found and in the immediate area. If it’s convenient or in this case, the following weekend, I change coils. In the case of the area in question, I prospected with the Minelab 8″ mono. It’s a great bedrock tool and since there was a lot of bedrock and I wasn’t as interested in deep targets, I used it. Returning the following weekend, knowing that additional gold nuggets could likely be found at depth, I switched over to a deeper coil. In this case, the Coiltek 14″ mono which would allow me to hear smaller targets in moderately deep bedrock sections. I suited up and walked immediately to the spot where I found my first nugget and began pounding the section again. I found 3 additional targets and dug them. I based my next action on my knowledge of the creek. I felt the ground above the first nugget was only good for about 100 yards and still not as good as the dropout section below so I moved down and covered every inch of the creek and dug every target. If I heard a loud target in a deep spot, i would just mark it and dig that last before leaving the section. In this way, I was able to recover as many trash targets as possible and I even got another gold nugget for my efforts. During the course of a four hour day, I did my best to clean out 3 sections below and dug many targets towards the foot of the wash. Next time, I’ll use the 14″ mono again but I’ll likely do a coil change before days end and pound again and probably move more rocks, etc. Also, since the most obvious targets have been removed from the area, I’ll SLOW WAY DOWN, detecting the same ground in multiple directions and even remove layers of soil with scrapes of my boot and pick. That’s nuggetshooting.

After I’m satisfied with the wash to a certain degree, I’ll go back into nugget hunting mode but on upper benches and hillsides. My technique will change still on the hills where I’ll be much more likely to adhere to the dig every target rule. If I find gold, I’ll be back in nugget shooting mode and of course I’ll dig every signal, change coils and fan out based on the ground reading. Those are my basic techniques and they tend to bring good results even though at first, I risk missing big nuggets that have settled in unorthodox areas. Of course every situation is different and good decisions often depend on the ability to read the ground.