It's getting nicer by the day across the western goldfields. After a hotter than normal summer throughout the west the nugget pictures are again showing up on the forums. I feel the urge to detect returning with the chilly nights. 36 F. this morning here in the weaver mountains. I headed to the desert down by Wickenburg and met up with Wing nugget (Joe) and we hopped in the RZR and headed out for a morning hunt. It took a while to get the ball rolling but I made a lucky right turn up a tiny piddler gully and dug 2 faint targets which both turned out to be gold. That was it for the day and we bagged it around noon . Despite the very cool morning the low desert was heating up fast. Joe caught on to his new (to him) GP3500 very quickly and got a couple of boot tacks and a BB. I also scored a bullet and a boot tack. Great day in the Az sun with a preview of some great detecting weather coming soon. I see the Ca. and Nv. boys are finding some gold now that cooler weather is upon us. Yahoo! the wicked heat is on its way out for a few months. The pokes will start swelling.---Bob

Way to go on the nice little chunks, Bob! Yup, the winter prospecting season is about to fire up; I'll be swinging the Nevada goldfields with my new NF Advantage 24" EM in just 4 more days - woohoo!

- Lunk -

Lunk. After hitting it hard all through June and July , I finally reached burnout stage about mid August. Many days until just the last few days I just couldn't force myself out into the sweltering heat . I feel the goldfever returning rapidly and another good winter gold poke coming. I blew all of last winters poke on toys and have to build up another one real quick for a security blanket. The incredible 4500 and advantage coils will help a bunch. What a bag of tricks that 4500 has. I'm still learning new ones that don't seem to make sense but they work in the right places. I detected that little gully where I got those two nuggets twice before without a hint of a target. I did one radical tweak and there they were.----Bob

Bob have you tried one of the new 17" Elip NF coils yet, I though my old white one was good, very stable and very quiet when you bump stuff. What's a RZR BTW, is that some sort of UTV?

JP

JP ... Here's a link to the Polaris Ranger RZR.

http://www.polarisindustries.com/en-us/ATV...s/Overview.aspx

Hope that helps. It's my next piece of equipment!

Mike F

JP. The RZR is the ultimate UTV. It's a little short on storage space but you don't need a lot of room for detecting gear. Places that scare me to death on the quads are nothing to the RZR with its low center of gravity and wider stance. The suspension allows you to just fly down desert tracks that would destroy a car at similar speeds. They say it will go 60 MPH , but I found that at 50 with Slime in the tires it developes some shaking . We did a 100 mile trip on it the other day on extremely rough tracks in more comfort than we could do it in a car and probably in 1/3 the time. According to the Polaris website, they have dealers in Australia,----Bob

oops sorry for the double post.

don

Morning Jonathan: Bob took me for a ride in his RZR and I immediately said I had to have one. Managed to locate an '08 Razer in Flagstaff at a reasonable price and bought it on the spot. I totally agree with Bob that these are fun machines and remind me of my old dys of going fast in hot rods...yet as Bob said the Razer will go equally well off road. Until I get the Looney Tuned Dual Exhaust quieted down I'll stick to the dirt roads... as my RZR is niow the very loud exhaust noise would scare the local wildlife to death.

So I will now be putting my '07 Polaris Sportsman 500 HO EFI (with 12 enging hours and only 277 miles on the odometer) up for sale. Someone will be buying a like new ATV for a fair price with out having to pay sales taxes.

Don

So what made you go back to that gully for the third time, Bob? Are you just a glutton for punishment, or did you suspect there was gold that was being "masked" by mineralization? It's always sweet to find gold in a thrashed spot by using different settings; it really builds confidence in the machine's capabilities.

- Lunk -

Montana,

I didn't notice you took sometime off this Summer! Weatherman, just might have some snow for us tomorrow in the high country...it's crazy, one week 100 degrees the next chilly. Keep digging and talk to you soon,

LuckyLundy

Thanks Bob and everyone else for the info. How do you get it from A to B, on a trailer or back of a vehicle? Or is the thing registered so you can ride it on the road? Bob of all people you would know, how do you think it would go up in the Kimberley?

JP

JP. I usually trailer it on a 5'x10' trailer, but it's fully street legal so for runs close to town I drive it down the highway until I can turn off on the dirt. It's great for runs to the store too. It would be great for the Kimberlies in the big dry riverbeds. I don't think you could get it bogged in the sand . It has about 100 miles of range on a tank of fuel. You could take it anywhere in the Nullagine or Marble bar area.----Bob

Lunk. All the piddlers in the surrounding area had a few nuggets. It just seemed that this one should also . It takes me a long time to write an area off as done. One wash I had done probably 20 times with nothing over 1/4 ounce gave me a one ouncer last fall under a pile of boulders 5 years after the first time I had detected it. I will return to yesterdays spot again soon with my tricky new settings. I used them again today in a similar little gully and popped out 2 more.
Lucky . It will be much nicer for a few months. Don't be surprised if we have lots of rain/snow this winter though. El nino may be setting up. ---Bob

Hi Bob,
Nice finds!
With the RZR and your skill with the 4500, it definitely will not be long before you have a bunch of gold in your poke.

Rich

Sigh.... I wish I could say the same....

I remember those days, living in Fountain Hills (just east of Scottsdale) and it being WAY TOO hot to train dogs during the day, having to wait till 10 at night... 104 in the shade all day long, here in BC I'm at the other end of the spectrum.

Sadly while you're dusting them off down there, up here in BC, we're packing them away for the Winter. Check out this picture from a highway camera about 125 miles from me on the road between my home and my claims (the Coquihalla Hwy). Oh well... gives me an excuse to pack up the goodies and get on a Qantas flight.


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It's a VERY "Mad Max" looking little ute eh? Pretty handy looking.

Rich. Those little nuggets are the bread and butter. They pay for expenses until the big ones show up. If it wasn't for them it would get discouraging pretty fast.
Jennifer. Mad Max is exactly what I thought when I first saw one. It should come with aviator goggles and hat. I always felt that the quads are great for getting around the desert but never considered them just fun for riding. With this thing getting there is a blast .----Bob

Jennifer, what's this? Have you gone to the dark side? I tried one of them a few years back on some gold country up in the far north of QLD, found gold with it too. I assume you have this idea of going out in the blizzards and doing a bit of beeping over winter to keep the passion alive. Reminds me of the time I got the passion for fly fishing but lived miles from any decent water to catch a fish in, man did I pull some strange looks from people doing practice casting on football ovals.

BTW you might want to watch the angle of the cable from the 'S" bend into the control box, it looks a bit severe in the pic and could damage the cable or the connector at that point if you bump it.

JP

JP, yea it was a hard choice, bringing a green machine into the home of a 4500, you may recall me stressing about it over on minelabowners.com but alas... I need something to use over the Winter.. not so much for the gold, the ground on my claims will be frozen solid but even for general purpose hunting for it to be waterproof in all our rain is a nice feature..here in BC we have SO much rain that if you don't have a waterproof machine you're down to only 1/4 of the year at most to use it.

By the way... HELLLLA no re the angle on that wire, would I allow my detector to look like that... I stole that shot... my Infinium is still enroute from Steve's office in Alaska and will sure as heck not have that bend in it... also the aftermarket straight shaft is on the way too... that'll be nice.

Jen