It was Tuesday and so far it had been a miserable start to the working week weather wise. I was checking out some of the recent video uploads on the metal Detecting Facebook group page when I caught a video of a beautiful Gold and Silver pendant pulled up on the previous weekend by one of the local guns. I instantly recognized the location which was a large and very old park with well over a century of history on the outskirts of the central city. It was one I had never hunted before but had always wanted to. Well that was enough motivation for me so I messaged a few of the locals to see who wanted to go and have a swing on the weekend and soon had a small group of keen participants who had no doubt seen the same video.
There were several things I knew for sure about this spot from what I had heard around the traps and what I had read while doing research. One was it was very old and had a rich history of events being held within its grounds. Secondly, a lot of amazing stuff had been found here including sovereign spills, a gold/quartz specimen and beautiful old Jewelry pieces. I had also heard it was junky, full of canslaw and bits of metal rubbish. I also knew it has been hammered hard by all sorts of machines over the years, and finally, and probably most importantly, it was still producing great finds on a regular basis.
With this in mind I was optimistic but had no Ideas about how the hunt would go but considering the recent find I had seen on the video I was excited and keen to finally give the “Hunted Out Park” a go.. With Saturday upon us the weather was not playing its part and it was windy and wet. The forecast was for it to clear overnight so fingers crossed we would get a better day on Sunday. Sunday I awoke early to grey sky’s but it was not raining so it was on and I was busting to get out after a long week behind the desk. The equinox was all charged up and ready for action. I messaged the team and arranged the meet up time.
We had 4 in the group that day 2 swinging the Equinox, 1 an E-Trac and one with the 705. Still wiping the morning sleep out of our eyes, we started off in our own directions, each with our own idea of the best place to start. There were 2 of us who were virgins to this area including myself and the others had hunted the area previously.
I fired up the Equinox and went through the routine.. Noise Cancel…Ground Balance.. Check its in my preferred hunting mode “PARK 1”… Yup all good.. I cranked up the sensitivity and managed to max it out without any EMI.. Perfect.. Now my style, for the most part, is pretty much random. I don’t tend to grid often I just go with my hunches and where I think there may have been a lot of foot traffic or people accumulating and hopefully losing stuff.. My choice of place to start was along the bank beside the stream. I could picture people sitting there over the years having a picnic and losing coins as they pulled a handkerchief from their pocket to wipe the dripping peach juice from their chin or something to that effect.
First signal of the day and up popped a modern $2 coin.. Not quite what I was hoping for but a find nonetheless. I wandered down 15 or 20m or so without so much as a blip on the Equinox.. OK perhaps this place has been well hunted as they say.. Decided to try plan B which was to move over closer to the trees.. It wasn’t long before I got the now very familiar tone and ID of what I was hoping was a 50% silver threepence. The Equinox seems to pick out the small New Zealand silvers in Park 1 very nicely where other machines have missed them. The numbers usually jump between 16 and 17 with a nice sweet tone behind it. With the plug out and a few flicks of the Lesche digger, sure enough a nice little 1946 New Zealand Threepence peeked out and saw the light for the first time in decades.. Nice.. I love my silvers as anyone who knows me will tell you.. A great score and a promising start. Several more minutes of swinging produced nothing more than a few bits of canslaw and random rubbish until I caught a number I don’t see often.. There was a reasonably steady tone with a target ID of 15 with the occasional flick up to 16. I approached the target from a few different angles and got the same steady number. One thing for sure if you get a steady repeatable tone you gotta have a look.
As I dropped to my knee I was thinking to myself ..”maybe a small silver” or perhaps a modern coin of some sort? I wasn’t really sure as the number wasn’t something I could call off the bat. I cut and flipped over the plug and proceeded to break up the ground beneath. I scooped out a couple of small handfuls of soil onto my plug cloth and proceeded to probe around with my pinpointer. The ground in this part of the park was more of a clay based soil with lots of small gravel pieces. With the large amount of rain we had received in the previous few weeks the soil was quite moist. The pinpointer sang out indicating the target was still in the hole so I proceeded to pull out more of the damp ground. After another small scoop of earth I plunged the pinpointer again into the hole and it fell silent. The mystery target was out but upon scanning the earth on the plug cloth I could not yet identify the target. With my pinpointer I trawled through the moist dirt now scattered across the cloth. Intermittently it would let off a few beeps but I was confused as I could not see a recognizable target anywhere. All I could see were many small muddy stones mixed in with the soil. Knowing how sensitive the Equinox is to small targets, I started looking for a small shard of cut coin or other minute piece of metal which I knew the Equinox was capable of finding, but to no avail. Still the pinpointer was sounding out but all I could see were small stones. I started separating the soil with the tip of the pinpointer until finally I had it narrowed down to a just a couple of muddy stones sitting in the wet dirt. I held the pinpointer against one of the stones and sure enough it gave a loud response. I pinched the muddy small stone out of the dirt and gave it a quick rub.
In an instant my mind had already verified what it was that my eyes were now seeing but I was in total disbelief. The quick rub across the stone instantly revealed a glorious rich golden glow that can only be one thing. WTF or words to that effect went through my mind… A total feeling of “surely I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing” clouded my mind.. I was now looking at what I was hoping like hell was a gold nugget!! More of a wipe on my trouser leg revealed even more of that beautiful golden hue but still I couldn’t bring myself to believe I was that lucky..
I called over one of the guys who was hunting with me and with the find clenched in my fist I said “Hold out your hand and tell me if this is what I think it is… I dropped the small but weighty object into his waiting palm.. Almost instantly he confirmed ..”That’s a F**kin gold nugget” he said not quite believing himself that he was saying those words.. “That’s what I think it is but surely it can’t be” I replied, still with a high amount of reservation. For several minutes we stared at the golden orb and debated about how this little gem could have managed to find its way to this city park. By this time it was really starting to sink in that I had indeed actually found myself a gold nugget in one of the most unlikely places. I couldn’t possibly go without recording this moment so I pulled out the phone and proceeded to do a short video on the find.
While by this time I was pretty convinced it was in fact an actual nugget I had unearthed, there was still an amount of disbelief that I could have been so lucky.. How many other people had swung their coil over that spot?? Why did they not pick it up? Was there a piece of trash close by that was masking it causing them to miss it?? The fact is I will never know… What I do know is that I, Steve King, found a 7.05gram gold nugget with my Minelab Equinox in a spot where I was hoping at best I might find a few old silver coins and penny’s. I love my Equinox and it continues to bring those “hunted out” spots back to life.
Steve - Canterbury, New Zealand
