The Nugget Hunter

By Richard Delahanty
One thing that all phases of our great hobby have in common is the necessity to recover targets as rapidly and efficiently as possible. Speedy recovery translates into more hunting time which means more targets recovered in the amount of time we have at our disposal for any given hunt. Coin shooting in the park, jewelry hunting at the beach, relic hunting at a CW campground in the woods or nugget shooting in the desert each call for somewhat different tools and techniques.
 
Over the years, the four tools in the photo have come to be my indispensable companions on every hunt. I never go anywhere without them. The two that I do the bulk of my digging with are the Mag-hoe and the Treasure Scoop. I use the Mag-hoe to break up the soil and the scoop to pass a scoopful of soil at a time over my search coil until the target is isolated in the scoop. I then pour half of the scoop into my gloved left hand and check to see if the target is in the scoop or not. If it is, I drop the half that is in my hand and half the scoop again and continue halving until I'm down to a tiny amount of dirt in the scoop at which time, hopefully, I can see my target. This only takes a few seconds and is as efficient a recovery method as any I've tried. Any non-metallic container will work for this. Some prospectors use a plastic cup while others I know use a set of three or four plastic trays and divide the dirt up in them.
The paintbrush and screwdriver are used mainly when I'm working bedrock. Almost any bedrock will yield to digging and prying with a screwdriver unless it is solid granite which you seldom have to work as there is no place for a nugget to hide in the solid rock. After breaking up some of the bedrock, you can then use the scoop to pick it up or, if there is very little dirt and rock, use the paintbrush to brush the dirt into the scoop for checking over your coil. In addition to the above mentioned tools, I will occasionally carry a hoe along with me if I think I'll be doing any scraping on the side of a wash or some top soil off a patch in order to get a little more depth for my detector. 
The greatest digging tool ever invented, in my opinion, is the good old Army entrenching tool from WWII (see bottom photo above). I bought two of them last year and have found that there is virtually nothing or nowhere that I can't dig with them. I put a long handle on one of mine and now have a combination pick, hoe and shovel in one handy tool. If you decide to give one a try, be sure to buy one manufactured during the '40's as they are made of good steel and are virtually indestructible. I lent mine to some club members last year and watched in awe as they used it to tear up huge chunks of bedrock with it. When hunting with my SD2200 I always bring the entrenching shovel along because the Minelab has a very wide signal which makes it a little harder to pinpoint with which in turn means moving more dirt. The Army shovel can really move the dirt! 
 
In the quest for saving time, I built the pinpointer probe shown in the photo a couple of weeks ago. It is made with a Zircon 5.5 Video Scanner stud finder which is sold by Eagle Hardware and Home Depot in my area. Have only gotten to use it twice so far, once in a park coin shooting and once nugget shooting in the mountains and both times it did indeed save a lot of digging time. It seems like it will work out pretty well in that respect. I'll be taking it along on all my future hunts and we'll see how it works out. It's a lot of fun to use, especially with the LCD readout on it.
When you are out in the gold fields, you are passing your search coil over, under and around all sorts of obstacles which means that you must be able to adjust the coil angle to conform to those conditions. What I do is keep the mounting bolt for my coil just tight enough to keep the coil from flopping around but loose enough to push it into any position that I need it to be in at the time. A good example would be working in a wash. While working the bottom of the wash, you want your coil in more or less the "standard" position parallel to the ground. When you switch to the sides of the wash, you may have to change the angle of the coil several times to follow the contours of the wall even tilting it back close to parallel with the shaft if there is an overhang. Then, you will want to sweep the lip of the wash and need your coil to lie flat and level with the surface as you hold it straight out from your body. Keep the mounting bolt at just the right tension so the slightest push on the front or back of the coil will enable you to do this with a minimum of effort. 

Here is a brief overview of the target recovery techniques that have worked well for me over the years. If I'm using just my Mag-hoe and scoop, I'll pinpoint the target to the best of my ability then kneel on my left knee while setting my detector on the ground beside me and pushing the coil flat on the ground. Having the coil flat is not strictly necessary but it is a habit that I've grown into and I'm more comfortable with it that way. I break up the earth around the target and then either pick up a scoop of the loose dirt and check it or scrape the loosened dirt out of the hole. Either way works as well. If I scrape it out of the hole I then check with my detector to localize the target in the hole or pile. When the target is out of the hole I have a good idea where on the pile of dirt it is and begin scooping and halving until I've zeroed in on the target. Hopefully, a nice piece of gold will be smiling up at me! If I'm using my entrenching shovel, I'll scrape an inch or two of dirt at a time from over the target and check the hole and pile until the target is on the pile of dirt and then begin the scooping and halving until the target shows up. The only difference between the two is that I'm standing when I use the entrenching tool then kneel down to do the scooping and halving. I'm hopeful that the pinpointer probe will speed up this process.---- RD    nuggeteer@dc.rr.com