Have you ever walked away from a signal?

Gday

Quite a few years ago late in the day when I was stuffed and sweltering in the heat I happened onto a small area of ground noise in an otherwise quiet area, the area covered about 3 square metres and after having a scratch at the surface decided that it was more likely just to be mineralisation, it was on a very plain looking piece of ground and a little further up the gently sloping hill I happened apon another bit of ground noise, not as large as the first, about 1-2 sq mtrs, but noticeably noisier than the surrounding quiet ground.

I have tried to re locate this area many times in the past couple of years but to no avail, I think I have the general area right, but because it was such ordinary looking ground everything looks the same with nothing to positively identify it with.( this was before I had a gps too) relied on the memory LOL.

Anyway for some time now I have held the belief that what I had found was either possibly some deep large nuggets or perhaps even a deep reef, but didnt realise it at the time because of it being the end of the day and being really hot I was not as enthusiastic as I usually would be, and I think I may have been using my first sd2100 at the time and still coming to terms with its operation.

The moral of the story is, as I have said in earlier posts, dont walk away from a signal until you are absolutely sure what it is, otherwise it will haunt you until you go back and check it out, and the one thing worse than not doing it is wanting to but not being able to find the spot again .

So every time I am in the general area I put some of it in to looking for the spot, maybe one day, and even if it turns out to be ground noise and nothing more then at least I will get it out of my head.

cheers

stayyerAU

Gday all,

I was walking back to my car, to have lunch,(with the flys) I had been at it for a few hours and my concentration was starting to go.

Anyhow I was picking my way through the spinifex and stumbled, I didnt trip over it was only enough to put me off course a bit!

I was only about 10 meters from the car, thinking about a fritz and sauce sanga and a crownie that was going to be my lunch.(i get tunnel vision when im hungry) when I got a signal, kinda broad hot rockish, I scuffed the spot with me boot and promptly forgot about it.

I remembered on my next visit and pulled a pretty little 2 grammer shaped like a propeller, really unusual looking a keeper!

Regards to all,

Jim.

G'day - I walk away from hundreds of signals; mainly those that blow the detector front end to tone-switched saturation as they are 99.9999999% guaranteed to be ferrous junk.

As for good targets walked away from, I had to leave one once due to dangerous weather closing in. Was digging it down, and nearly there, getting stronger and sounding good. Never went back as I've no idea where it was. Well, I mean I know the rough area was Funny Corner, but could probably not find it again.

cheers - trashdigger

Hey stayyerAU
You say the one thing wrong would be never knowing... It is worse to come back and find a deep hole at the location....

About two years ago I was in similar circumstances... stinking hot, end of the day, dragging my tongue and my truck in sight with the fridge running and a coldie.... running a 3000 with a mono... heard a sound and immediately dismissed it as ground noise as my mind was fixed on the coldie.

About a month later I was up on the same ridge and decided to have a second look at that noise and you guessed it... a deep hole.... I like to think that someone else found the ground noise and dug it to show that it was just that 'hot rocks'. I have convinced myself thats all it was...

Now I dig everything.

Cheers

Ray

Hello Trashdigger all .I have a little problem with your method,
Ferrous junk it may well be but what does it mask?
I can tell you that shifting or digging and removing junk particularly where
You have got gold near can be very very rewarding.
Also I have watched people quickly lift the coil in the air on detecting a piece of
ferrous, then move on a couple of meters GB and keep going. Miss a lot of ground that way to. Cheers Adrian.

G'day - Fair call - but from my point of view I'd rather avoid digging too much ferrous and become frustrated, and just dig the odd nugget here and there thats is in the clear.

If I dug every target my chiropracter bills would be sky high

cheers - trashdigger

Gday Ray

I hear you mate, what would be worse than finding one deep hole? finding two deep holes LOL, they would hear me swearing in Siberia!

Thats the way it goes I guess, and thats why I always say to people not to walk away until you are sure of what the noise is, because if its ground noise or junk its easy to put that out of your mind once you have fully investigated it, but if you dont it can play on your mind for some time.

cheers

stayyerAU

My worst time for knowing I am walking away from targets is making the decision to go home.
I have walked away from ground noise only to return another day and dig the signal. So far the first choice to leave has been the right one. I don't do this very often but when I have it has been because of my mental discriminator. I cannot emphasize enough that bad choices can be made if you are tired.
Brett.

Years ago I got onto a sure thing and was pulling a couple of ounces a day over a number of days, because there was a fair bit of junk scattered about I had been ignoring this very loud response near a fallen tree, finally I ran out of decent signals with the gold rapidly tapering off so finally decided to DIG that loud junk response, imagine my surprise when the junk target turned into a solid 6 ouncer at 12 inches, thank the Lord I had the place to myself.

JP

Walked away from a faint signal twice, over a 12 month period, it was at the base of a large mulga tree, I tried digging however the roots prevented me getting nearer.
The third time I went back there with my mate we were going to winch the tree out. Fortunately I got him to wave his coil at the base of the tree, the look he gave me was "dig!" From other side of the tree I leaned through a fork in the trunk and happened to look down, there tucked down in the crack was a geo's grab sample wire. Someone had obviously picked it up and dropped it in the trunk to give the likes of me a hard time.
Needless to say we had a laugh and commented this person must have had a sense of humour or was very frustrated.
I got my revenge at a later date by dropping a bullet lead down an ant hole.

Cheers
Peter

I consider prospecting as not only a very enjoyable hobby, but a great way to keep fit.

It breaks my heart to unearth a piece of junk from rock hard ground at 50-60 cm, but then I look skyward to the almighty gold God and say,

"One hole closer to a nice big nugget, and one week added to my life"

Hey NJ
The old bullet down the anthole certainly drives you crazy.Called the missus on the radio to walk 500mtrs to a signal I was sure was the start of a new patch.Virgin dirt not one sign of human intervention.She still kicking my butt.Great gold was found 1 K from tarnagulla in rubbish littered area.Same in havelock mid last season.If rubbish drives you mad its best to do a bit go off for a while then return and so on.Rubbish can and does protect the gold.
Cheers Dig
But not your Sanity

Hey Dig

I had the same at the old slaughter yards there at Tarnagulla..used to be a great area but rubbish drives u mad...

Ray

i have walked away from numerous signals but not now that my mate buck went over my spot and cleared out the wire and found a 10 gram nugget.It pays off to be a bit more patient and thorough.My bad luck but.Not too bad though because we share all our gold and he taught me to take my time and it payed of today.Cheers juppman

There should be something pointed out here I feel.
There is no point in cleaning up all the rubbish in the bush. With a little experience the ground will tell you where perseverance will pay off. Finding a couple of dozen bits of gold will give you an education of how gold runs through the ground. provided you take a long hard look at where you dug the nuggets and ask yourself why they were there? No one will tell you where those bits are but once you have got them then you will get a better understanding of the areas that, going on a rubbish drive may pay off. Just to throw in a curve ball. The old timers parked their camps right on top of the gold bearing ground. Make sure the age of the rubbish is in the same time frame as the diggings. They didn't have motor bikes and washing machines back then nor did they have round nails. Even the broken glass can tell a tale.
There is targets everywhere. We simply have to home in on the right ones.
Brett.

Gday

Digging junk is a necessary evil in the detecting game, learn to live with it or give it away, i have dug some huge holes for flattened beer cans and the like, and started to think that the harder you had to work to retrieve a target the less likely it was to be gold.

Thats the wrong attitude, and they are the kinds of thoughts that will make you walk away from a signal, and perhaps miss out on some nice gold, I have heard many stories of people getting really good signals and being very surprised at scraping up a multi ounce nugget from just under the surface as there initial though was its got to be trash.

There was a well known prospector from Cue that I used to see from time to time, and on meeting him in an area that has produced some good gold, I said to him that the rubbish was given me the s...s!, and he told me that he was detecting through that area once, and up front of him he saw a large rather fresh looking hole and propped on one side of the hole was a coke can, without missing a step he gave the coke can a kick with his boot and waved the coil over the hole, and bang another signal, his first reaction was to think that it was a rubbish hole and it was probably another coke can or something, but being an old hand he had to have a look.

Two minutes later he had a nice specimen nugget, later producing seven ounces of gold, the first person in their disgust at digging a can, walked away following their initial reaction of thinking it was junk, how happy would they have been if they had continued to dig and found the specie, and how pissed are they going to be if they read this story (the area is north of Cue WA) by the way.

You have to fight the urge to walk away and like I have said before keep digging until you are absolutely sure what the signal is, its funny because very often when I get one of those types of signals I react by thinking "more crap" then that story pops in to my head and I think "bugger" I will have to dig it, so far mostly it has been "crap" but one day!.

cheers

stayyerAU

G'day stayyer - so do you dig absolutely every signal you hear?

cheers - trashdigger

...if I could reply trashdigger ..what is worse not knowing what the noise was or returning some time later to find a deep hole and wondering if you have walked away from something. If the noise is repeatable I dig it... otherwise its always going to be on the back of your mind....

Ray

Gday trashdigger

I will investigate any sound that I cant identify, very rarely would I use descrimination as it is not reliable on the gp and gpx machines at this point, and some things are seen more quickly than others, by this I mean most small pieces of tin etc are on or near the surface, so they are easily found.

What I am talking about is signals that are more deeply buried, the ones that even after an initial scrape to the surface are still there, even if they are vague there has to be something there that is causing the shift in the threshold, whether it be ground noise or gold, there is no way you can positively identify the cause unless you dig it to see what it is.

There are many different shapes and sizes to gold nuggets and specimens so there are many and varied signal responses, sometimes you can get a signal that is so perfect that you know its gold even before you put the pick to the ground, sometimes you will get something that your instincts tell you that there is a high probability that its gold but you end up taking off several inches of overburden before you have a positive mellow signal.

There are so many variables, but the point I guess that I am trying to make is that you will definately increase your finds if you slow down and investigate the signals more thoroughly, in rubbishy areas this is even more important because more often than not the rubbish can mask some good gold, and the chances are high that previous detectorists have walked away from it because of the rubbish, if there is still buried rubbish there then its almost certain there is still buried gold there too.

As previously stated the old timers used to camp right on the gold, so if there is a high concentration of rubbish then thats most likely where they were camped, but apart from gold, there are also some valuable relics and coins that can be found there as well so you never know.

I can positively state that I have removed nuggets from well worked patches that had signals that were nothing more than a very gentle waver in the threshold, sounding more like ground noise and so iffy that you had to take quite a few inches of ground off before the signal even turned in to a "maybe" and then after a few more inches you got an " I think" theres something there type signal.

Its very rewarding to pull good gold from a well worked area, its more than luck its because you have developed your skills to the next level, once you achieve this then you will miss very little as you instinctively check anything especially the less obvious sounds.

cheers

stayyerAU

Hi All
Some good points raised here.In an ideal world there would be no rubbish on the surface of buried in the goldfields.Brett has made a good point on the age of suface rubbish,but the opposite is also true.Thoughtless people have dumped modern rubbish on great ground.Its up to the indivual weather they chose to work these areas.No detector can or operator can pick the difference between gold and metal rubbish at depth.Its not greed to explore these target responses its prospecting.As JP and others have pointed out its that decision to explore these signals that makes the difference.Case in point "Golden Stonefish" ,"Secret Hill Nugget"JPs "Cooee Nugget" Decisions where made and in each case they where the correct one.Not everyone wants to explore deep inground target responses.Its a choice

and be a responsible detectorist...if you dig rubbish, don't just bury it or toss it, whack it in your bag and dispose of it properly

Very true Mad
We will lose these goldfields to the powers that be one day.I would love to see convient collection points that the small stuff could be dropped off.It would prove our point that we do care about our goldfields and perhaps delay the vested interests that reek such havok.Case in point Sydenham Hill.Damn Ugly
Cheers Dig