Beach Hunting on the Southern Oregon Coast

[garyw]

I joined this forum several years ago but have not used my machines in a long time. I have 3 machines all whites. a M-6, a MXT 300, and a GM3. I am in gold bearing country and live walking distance from the beach. Oregon beaches are highly mineralized. there are streaks of black sand and can be panned for flour gold. The current moves from north to south on the beach most of the time. We have big breakers with storms in the winter sometimes over 20' during storms. What machine would be best for the beach? the coin machines do not do well with mineralization but I have not used the GM3 enough to adjust it properly yet. Have any of you found small nuggets on a beach or is it mainly a coin or ring search. I think the gold machine may work better on the beach but have not tried it. Any help appreciated. Thanks Gary​

 

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[cudamark]

None of your machines are a good salt water beach machine. If you have very little iron junk on your beaches, a PI machine would be the least expensive to buy. If you want or need discrimination, you're looking at getting a CTX, Excalibur, CZ21, or White's Beach Hunter ID. In the dry sand your existing machines should work ok, but, PI and multifrequency machines work better.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Nobody is working the beaches for nuggets. The nugget producing regions of the hills (the elevation required) is high enough that by the time any naturally occurring gold reaches the ocean, it's just specks and flower.

I don't have advice for you on the 3 machines, as I haven't been a whites user for 15-ish years now. But if cudamark says they are not suited/designed for wet salt beach hunting: His tech advice is usually spot on . For SURE the mxt would be a lousy beach hunter.

As for the black sand: Depends on how black. If you're right near where steep cliffs meet the ocean, then yeah, it might get nasty. If it's grey-ish purple-ish gunpowder black, then only a pulse machine would cut it. But then you'd have no way to knock out nails, bobbypins, etc... Sometimes you can move further away from the cliffs edges or further away from gully-washes , and find zones that allow you to use a standard discriminator. Like Excal, CZ6, CTX, 6000 di pro, or whatever.

 

[garyw]

Nobody is working the beaches for nuggets. The nugget producing regions of the hills (the elevation required) is high enough that by the time any naturally occurring gold reaches the ocean, it's just specks and flower.

I don't have advice for you on the 3 machines, as I haven't been a whites user for 15-ish years now. But if cudamark says they are not suited/designed for wet salt beach hunting: His tech advice is usually spot on . For SURE the mxt would be a lousy beach hunter.

As for the black sand: Depends on how black. If you're right near where steep cliffs meet the ocean, then yeah, it might get nasty. If it's grey-ish purple-ish gunpowder black, then only a pulse machine would cut it. But then you'd have no way to knock out nails, bobbypins, etc... Sometimes you can move further away from the cliffs edges or further away from gully-washes , and find zones that allow you to use a standard discriminator. Like Excal, CZ6, CTX, 6000 di pro, or whatever.

I know I cannot do well with either of the coin machines however I went to a baseball diamond yesterday and found I could almost eliminate the iron with the GM3. I did dig alot of lead bullets and tiny pieces of tin foil. Iknow I was not on wet sand but ground is very sandy under grass. When I hunted with coin machines in Quartzsite Az I also found alot of lead I feel if I can get lead I can find gold. I almost discriminated out all iron. So I will try the GM3. Coast range where most of gold has been found in Southern Oregon is 20 miles to edge of beach so river flooding in winter might wash down nuggets to beach or tree line next to dunes. I can pan some flour in most pans of black sand I have tried when scooping sand into 5 gal bucket and brought home. It would take a lot of buckets to take vacation in Alaska lol.

 

[garyw]

I see you use whites machines. I guess White should just give up and do something else ng because most of the state of Oregon is highly mineralized soil from the town of Sweethome where white has been made for over 50 years to the Pacific ocean and the high deserts of Eastern Oregon. I really did not expect to find nuggets on the beaches but it is a possibility due to the distance from the coast range and raging flooding rivers coming out of coast range. Fortunately I have both within less than 10 miles. Not enough reason to buy another brand.