Metal Detecting Story
This is a 1 pound nugget found with a Minelab Eureka Gold. It is real, I held it!We sold the detector and the customer came to show us.
The customer loves this machine!!!!!
THE FIRST TIME I USED THE BRAND NEW MINELAB XT18000
When I received my XT18000 (when it first came out), I made plans to take a 3 day trip to an old mining area hat I had hunted
5 times before with other brand detectors , but without success. The ground changes every couple of feet which makes a
manual ground balance machine a real chore to keep in tune. On top of that, there are ironstone rocks to deal with. We packed
our camping gear and headed for the gold fields. This trip we took a different 4 wheel trail up a gully to an old miner's cabin. We
set up our tents next to the cabin and put the rest of the gear inside. We only had a couple of daylight hours left, so we started
to hunt some of the gulches that the old timers used to throw the rocks off to get to the bedrock. We learned that when we found
their camp trash ( such as old tobacco cans, bean cans, etc.), we should hunt it very carefully, as this was usually where they
found nice gold. After a few nails, I got a faint, but sharp signal. I dug down about 3 inches. With my plastic scoop, I gathered
up some soil from the ground, waved it over the Coil (in 60 MHz mode) and got a sharp whistling sound. I poured some of the dirt
out of my hand and there was a nice 3 grain nugget. This was my first piece in an area that I have been to 5 times! I said to Dave
and Errol, that it must have friends nearby, so we proceeded to hunt more carefully and WHUP! A 12 grainer at about 5 inches.
Then five feet more WHUP! A 10 grainer. With it starting to get dark we all went back to camp to eat dinner, and as we sat around
the fire we heard the weather report and "rain by early morning", OH YUCK! Then Dave said, "lets take our lanterns and hunt all
night till it rains". We have done this before with success, especially in summer when it is so hot during the day. At night the
ground is cooler and we seem to get better depth and stay more focused. With our detectors, a lantern and backpacks full of
snacks we hiked back to the patch. We began to hit nugget after nugget. By midnight, we had 12 nuggets in total. We decided
to call it a night and head back to camp. By early morning we woke up to rain, with our tents soaked! It felt like a kids wading
pool! We loaded up all our wet gear and drove into town and checked into a motel. The next day the rain stopped and we
kept thinking of the nugget patch. We just had to go back again. On arriving, we hunted around the patch, but found nothing
except for trash. Inside the producing patch though, we found 12 more pieces in an area of about 20 x 30 feet. In total, the 24
pieces weighed 5 dwt. (1/4 oz) with the pieces ranging from 1 grain to .5 dwt. Dave, Errol and myself are excited about this area
and the Minelab XT18000. With the 3 frequencies we can hunt close together and different grounds. This machine makes it
so easy to hunt, my 9 year old boy can use it. ( This adventure was in 1997 and published in the Minelab brochure.)
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