A few months back, I was flipping through the channels on the television, when up came a guy gold prospecting in what appeared to be Western Australia (it was). Now this is an unusual thing to see on American television, so it caught my attention. That segment of the show was about a new prospector trying to find his first nugget. He had a fairly new Minelab GPX metal detector, so he was well equipped to be finding gold. He was camped out in the bush on some good, gold bearing property, and had found some trash, but he just could not find that first nugget. Finally, an experienced friend came over for a visit to see if he was doing anything wrong. The friend watched as he swung his coil over the ground.
The prospector was rigged up with external speakers, so everyone could hear the sounds of his detector. After a time, I heard a weak but very noticeable target sound, one I would never walk past. The new detectorist just kept on walking as if nothing had happened. I yelled at the TV, “Wait, wait, that was a target!” (my wife thinks I’m crazy when I yell at the television – and I guess maybe she’s right). Luckily the more experienced friend was on hand, and he heard exactly what I heard. After letting the new chum go past the target a step or two, the friend stopped him and pointed out that he’d gone right past a good target. The new guy stepped back a couple paces and went slowly over the ground a second time. The experienced guy pointed out the faint target when he went over it. The target was a little on the weak side, but it was well above the limits of detection, and was by no means an extremely faint target. Once it was pointed out to him, the new prospector heard it easily. Well, he dug the target, and guess what? It was gold – his very first nugget, about 2 grams in size.
I found this 2.1 gram nugget with my GPX 5000 metal detector at a depth of 9 inches – in order to hear deep targets like this, you must listen for those weaker sounds
Now I’ve seen this problem before. Many guys, especially those with experience coin shooting, don’t listen to the faint sounds of their detector. Guys who are coin shooting don’t want to hear faint mineralization or bits of foil and other junk. The coins they want to hear are good-sized and make a strong signal. When they come to try their hand at detecting nuggets, they still hear only the strong signals because many have trained their ears that way. However, in the goldfields, so often the strong signals are near surface junk left behind by the old miners. Many nuggets may weigh one tenth to even one hundredth of the weight of a typical coin and give much fainter signals. Even large nuggets, when buried deeply, will make only faint sounds. Yes, sometimes nuggets will be both large and close to the surface, but these are very much an exception to the rule.
When it comes to detecting gold, you need to train your ears to hear those fainter targets if you want to be successful. Gold often speaks softly, so you need to listen closely. The screaming targets are normally trash. Try taking some small bits of gold or even lead if you’ve got no gold and practice training yourself to hear those fainter sounds by which the gold is calling you. If you only dig the booming target sounds, you may find you are digging nothing but large trash.
Chris Ralph
Comments