Went out today and detected a few washes; figured I am now part of the environmentalist group since I collect most of the shit that everyone else left behind;found a piece of fence about a foot down, a piece of shell 6 inches down.And above all, a shotgun shell about 3 feet above the wash in the wash wall(yeah, i detect all) But you know what? I enjoyed every minute of my 4 hour treck!!

Got a lot of great pictures of the old mill site in the area. I think I am going to start exploring the small washes and gulches and get rid of the washes like Milk Creek, Blind Indian, etc.

Mike

Mike. There is definately gold in both Blind Indian creek and Milk Creek, but they are just too big and trashy to have much of a chance with a detector. There were several commercial operations on Milk Creek and most of the present material in the wash has been processed and used to reclaim and backfill and that makes finding a nugget there almost impossible. There have been some nuggets found on high benches far above the present streambed in the area where ancient stream gravels were left stranded. It is a difficult place to say the least. There are a few spots of exposed bedrock downstream from the Baldwin Place where there might be a slight chance for a nugget or to pan some flakes. ----Bob

Bob, I had two areas picked out that I wanted to explore and detect. I should have gone to the first one on my list, but everyone and their brother was out yesterday. I like solitude when being out and don't want to detect in an area that someone else is working(even though there are no claims in the area). I will go to my first pick on the list this week.

Up by Baldwins, it is just plain beautiful! I'd love to buy the place. I think all it needs is a little bit of wall paper and a good grass mowing

I was playing with the coil selector switch on the gpx4000, and I could swear that even with the DD coil, the machine worked better on mono mode.I also ran it on xtra smooth and that seemed to help smooth out the threshold and noise.

Mike

AZMIKE. Just upstream on Crooks canyon I found a small bench placer that kept me busy for quite a while. It produced quite a few small flat flakey nuggets. Other than that I've never found much in the area. That patch was a nice break from the catclaws, cactus, and intense desert heat in the summer. As you stated , it is beautiful and peaceful there with nice shade trees and scenery. Even on the days I didn't do well, I enjoyed the area. There are lots of hotrocks in that area and sens/smooth was a good choice of timings and running the DD in mono there was probably also a good choice. It sounds like you are getting the 4000 figured out as you are letting the detector tell you what to do.----Bob

Bob, Those hot rocks only bothered me twice; Each time, I put the detector on track, then ground balanced out the hot rocks. After the threshold was smooth, I put the detector back on fixed. I swear it was the weirdest thing to do, but seemed to work!

Mike

Mike . You don't have to switch to tracking to do that . When you are in fixed, pushing the green button puts it into tracking as long as you hold the button down.----Bob