I purchased my first detector, a GP 3500, and started my search for nuggets in February 2008. As a newbie trying to learn the ropes I confined my activities to pounded patches for the first six months. Garnering the occasional dink that others had missed by careful gridding or grooming brush in an area to be detected. To begin with all my finds were under a gram. I remember my first bigger nugget at 1.8 grams, it put me on a natural high. After I gained confidence and had a few nuggets in my poke that were a little larger, I became disenchanted with always hunting pounded ground. I embarked on a research project centered on the gold fields of Northern California, determined to find my own patches and hopefully bigger gold.
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