VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, [8], 9 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 15:07:45 03/23/02 Sat
Author: Steve Herschbach
Subject: Re: And Just how much gold did I NOT dig?
In reply to: Al-GA 's message, "And Just how much trash did you dig?" on 07:07:56 03/23/02 Sat


Steve's First Nugget Hunt 1973
White's Coinmaster 4/B w/4" Gold Probe
Moore Creek, Alaska

My problem was not finding lots of trash, it was not finding gold!

My first nugget hunt in 1973 taught me one thing about detectors at the time... they were nearly worthless for finding gold. I was panning 1/4 pennyweight nuggets from the little gully pictured, and found I could not get a reading from those nuggets when they were placed directly under the coil. I was getting into dredging at the time, and decided detectors were a waste of time for gold.

I got into business in 1976 selling mining gear and as a White's dealer. But my stock answer for people coming in looking for a gold detector was "Don't waste your money, you'll find more gold with a $5 gold pan". That was good advice at the time.

My bias caused me not to keep up with changes in the technology, however. Reports of a large nugget finds would appear every once in awhile. I chalked them up to "Yeah, sure you can find gold with a detector, if it's big enough"! And the nuggets found were usually pretty big, not something likely to be found in my immediate area.

Finally in the 1980's I was selling Compass detectors, and I hauled a Compass X-80 up to my claims and gave it a try. It had the capability, but I was not lucky enough to find any gold. And it just reinforced my feeling about detectors.

It was not until June 18, 1989 that I decided to give it another try. Here is my log entry for that day:

"Went to Crow Creek and used Compass Gold Scanner Pro. Found my first gold nuggets ever with a metal detector! Two nuggets within 10 feet of each other between Area #1 and Area #2 below old tailing pile at lower end. One nugget at 9 grains and the other at 4 grains, total of 13 grains. Also found two bullets."

I was hooked!!

I planned my first real nugget hunt. The destination was high in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska on some bench deposits above a creek named, appropriately enough, Bonanza Creek. I had been visiting this area for years and had found lots of nuggety gold sniping. It seemed like a perfect spot to try my new detector skills. I used the Compass Gold Scanner Pro and I set my father up with a Fisher Gold Bug. From my notes:

Large Flat Nugget - 4 dwt 2 gr
Pitted Pendant Nugget - 2 dwt 8 gr
Dad's Big Nugget - 1 dwt 5 gr
Sitting Bird Nugget - 16 gr
Chunky Nugget - 16 gr
Long Flat Nugget - 14 gr
plus others total of 11 dwt 6 gr
Grand total 1 oz 4 dwt 12 gr

"Great weather, great gold, GREAT TRIP!"

That 4 dwt nugget was the largest I had ever found up until then. From that point forward I went nugget hunting regularly. I tried new machines as they came out, and kept getting better results as the technology improved, allowing me to go back and rehunt old areas many times. My finds close to home really took off when the Goldmaster II was introduced, as the local creeks had lots of smaller gold on which the Goldmasters excelled. When the Gold Bug 2 came out I had what may have been the first production unit in Alaska, and have favored that detector ever since. And now, instead of trading models regularly, I'm accumulating them to fill every nugget hunting niche possible.

Still, gold dredging produced the bulk of my gold yearly. But I dredged locally, and large nuggets were rare, although I did finally dredge a 1 ounce nugget at Crow Creek in 1998. Then in 2000 a few things happened to make me really get serious about nugget hunting.

First, I finally started getting bored with dredging. I had been doing it so many years it was becoming mechanical. It was mostly an equation. Run the 6" dredge for X hours at X location and get X gold. Dredging was also causing me to stay at the same locations for years at a stretch. I wanted to start moving around more. I was also finding my body was beginning to suffer from the years of coldwater dredging. But the most important thing was those big nuggets. I decided that if I really wanted to see lots more really good-sized nuggets I'd better change my tactics. One 1 ounce nugget in 25 years of dredging meant I was going to die before I found a couple more!

So I consciously set dredging aside and concentrated on metal detecting. I sold my 6" dredge and used the funds to buy an SD2200D. Paired with the Gold Bug 2 I figured I could handle most anything. But most importantly I started working my contacts and looking for access to big gold creeks.

The payoff was immediate. I found more pennyweight range nuggets in 2000 than I ever had in one year and found my largest ever with a detector at just over 8 dwt. Then last summer at Ganes Creek, Alaska I found a slug of 1/4 to 3/4 ounce nuggets and my largest nugget ever, a 4.95 ounce gold and quartz nugget. I was one of the happiest guys on the entire planet when that nugget came out of the ground!

So needless to say my whole winter has been one of absorbing every tidbit of knowledge I can find on nugget hunting, and researching potential locations to hunt. My goal now is to find the largest nugget ever found in Alaska with a metal detector without the help of heavy equipment. In other words, by a regular person with a metal detector, not a commercial miner.

As far as I know a women named Patricia Cochrane set that record with a 31 ounce gold/quartz cobble found in a road shoulder near Livengood, Alaska. So 32 ounce or larger is in my sights. The best part is that even if I never find it, I'm going to have the time of my life searching for it!

Steve Herschbach

Alaska's">http://www.akmining.com/mine/nuggets.htm>Alaska's Largest Gold Nuggets

Steve & Bud Herschbach's Gold From First Big Nugget Hunt 1989


[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-6
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.