Weekday Nugget Hunting
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.
Real Nugget Hunters
Ted,
Not only are old drywasher piles good spots, but over here there are many small test digs that left piles that can be raked out in 30 minutes or less. The GB2 of mine just loves those piles. Besides the 38 inch Hermit Pit Joeforthegold made me maks a good walking stick. O’29er the mad digging fool.
Comment by 29 Prospector — November 4, 2006 @ 2:37 am
It’s funny when you wrote that it jarred from my memory a different indicator and that is detector dig holes. HA HA. I’ve dug some really interesting targets out of or right next to dig holes.
Passing a coil over a Bates boot track is another technique. lol.
It’s good to keep an eye out for the more subtle handstacks and drywash workings though. In this particular spot, there were two header piles and one small handstack and that was it. Even though it was a big wash there were no other workings and the ones there were were small. Probably just a good solid test from the 30’s or something.
Comment by ted — November 4, 2006 @ 4:05 am