Gold Nugget - Metal Detecting - Tips

A

americanartifacts33

Full Member
Jul 11, 2013
227
779
St Paul MO
Detector(s) used
Whites Prism IV
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Hi Everyone,
I am a coin shooter and rock hunter from missouri but would like to try my hand at some gold prospecting with a metal detector. Any advice and direction on where some good ground/ public areas and the states therein, where gold nugget prospecting can successfully be done with a metal detector, I would appreciate the the advice and pointers. I am hooked from the YouTube videos and shows, I am just not certain on a good location on where to give it a try. I understand the western states are probably the starting point and i have done some research online but i want to hear from the professionals here :). Thanks guys!
 

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Do you have a gold prospecting metal detector? If yes, you should realize that the real world is a little different from YouTube. You will find a whole lot of trash, especially starting out. If you you're lucky it'll be 50 pieces of trash to 1 gold.
I have a minelab gold Monster 1000, and I highly recommend it. Its as sensitive as a fisher gold bug 2, which both can find very small gold flakes, nuggets and specimens.
Good luck.
 

americanartifacts33 said:
Hi Everyone,
I am a coin shooter and rock hunter from missouri but would like to try my hand at some gold prospecting with a metal detector. Any advice and direction on where some good ground/ public areas and the states therein, where gold nugget prospecting can successfully be done with a metal detector, I would appreciate the the advice and pointers. I am hooked from the YouTube videos and shows, I am just not certain on a good location on where to give it a try. I understand the western states are probably the starting point and i have done some research online but i want to hear from the professionals here :). Thanks guys!
Click to expand...

First, read up on gold nugget machines. The best machine for you to start with is the Minelab Goldmonster 1000. Second, you need to be in a State that has placer gold large enough to find with a metal detector. That means Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Alaska, Vermont - as a rule. Of course, gold is where you find it, and you find it where it has been found before. There is very little "open ground" to prospect. More new claims were filed this year than ever I believe Clay from Mining Claims Maps reported. Nuggetshooting is hard, expensive, all metal, all the time work. Study up!
 

Terry Soloman said:
First, read up on gold nugget machines. The best machine for you to start with is the Minelab Goldmonster 1000. Second, you need to be in a State that has placer gold large enough to find with a metal detector. That means Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Alaska, Vermont - as a rule. Of course, gold is where you find it, and you find it where it has been found before. There is very little "open ground" to prospect. More new claims were filed this year than ever I believe Clay from Mining Claims Maps reported. Nuggetshooting is hard, expensive, all metal, all the time work. Study up!
Click to expand...

Thank you for the information. I was hoping there was some public land/open land to detect in say Arizona.. I am not sure how to go about claiming land, nor where to even start there?... As far as the difficulty, i have no doubt it would be tough, but i like the challenge and I am not one to give in
 

here in arizona, the nuggets are all just laying around
on the ground waiting for someone to come by and pick them up.
seriously, the youtube videos make it look so easy. its not,
its about as easy as finding gold rings, coin hunting there in missouri.it can be done but its not easy.
if you want to do it, join a club. it will put you on better ground than most open ground,
and it might keep you from accidental mineral trespass. claim owners with shotguns are not fun to deal with.
gpaa is like $6 bucks a month or 135 for a year with the claims book, and you kind of need the book for the maps.
im not a member, there are better clubs, less hammered ground. but i know that there have been small nuggets
detected on their claims in the last few years.
there are actually quite a few clubs here in az.
you didn't mention what detector you will be using, if its a coin machine i would not bother.
make sure you have a lot of water like 5 or 10 gallons and your 4x4 is in good shape with a good spare tire.
find out what a cholla cactus looks like and stay away from them.
here are some little ones i have picked up in the last few months.
 

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I second the clubs, 4x4,and chollo cactus. Gpaa has alot of claim in Arizona. They call that cactus "jumping chollo" because it seam to to jump on you and its not like any cactus you may have heard about. Look that up on YouTube. Then there's snakes. My opinion is that you're in their hood, so leave them alone and they'll do the same. Nugget shooting is alot of fun, but real challenging. BTW Gm1000 is about $950 new. A few cheaper options are whites Goldmaster, fisher gold bug 2, Tesoro lobo super trac, Nokta gold racer. Thats all I can think of, I'm sure some other will chime in with any i forgot.
 

Hardest part of nugget shooting is finding places to detect. Mingle with the locals as much as possible and take the advice from above posts and join some clubs for quickest way to gain some ground to hunt and also mingle with the club locals to gain more local knowledge....

PS.... I'm also a BIG fan of the Goldmonster....
 

Last edited:
Thanks all! That's a lot of great information and exactly what i was looking for... The first step will probably be joining a club, getting a gold metal detector, and learning
 

leadnugget said:
here in arizona, the nuggets are all just laying around
on the ground waiting for someone to come by and pick them up.
seriously, the youtube videos make it look so easy. its not,
its about as easy as finding gold rings, coin hunting there in missouri.it can be done but its not easy.
if you want to do it, join a club. it will put you on better ground than most open ground,
and it might keep you from accidental mineral trespass. claim owners with shotguns are not fun to deal with.
gpaa is like $6 bucks a month or 135 for a year with the claims book, and you kind of need the book for the maps.
im not a member, there are better clubs, less hammered ground. but i know that there have been small nuggets
detected on their claims in the last few years.
there are actually quite a few clubs here in az.
you didn't mention what detector you will be using, if its a coin machine i would not bother.
make sure you have a lot of water like 5 or 10 gallons and your 4x4 is in good shape with a good spare tire.
find out what a cholla cactus looks like and stay away from them.
here are some little ones i have picked up in the last few months.
Click to expand...

Ha ha yes i understand, same with arrowheads in MO people think they're just laying everywhere in creeks.. Thank you for the information I am looking forward to learning more and giving it a go! You got some nice gold there i hope to find some as well.. Here are some of the missouri rocks that i have walked 100s of miles for

case1.jpgcase2.jpgcase3.jpg
 

americanartifacts33, I've enjoyed watching "Nugget Shooter Journals" (Bill Southern's YouTube series) and I've learned a lot about how he approaches nugget shooting out there in Arizona. I highly recommend his videos.
Apparently he owns a store out there, and if I were ever to try nugget shooting I would probably go visit him first.
But...I live in New Jersey and have a family, so my dreams of finding nuggets with a detector will have to wait (possibly forever). I've tried a tiny bit with the Equinox 800 down in Virginia and up in New Hampshire, but haven't found any gold. (But the Equinox will find tiny metal, so I think it's the ground I was on. If I got over a 0.1g or larger nugget I'm confident I'd pick it up if it was close enough to the surface.)

I wish you luck, and check out Bill's YouTube channel.

Brian
 

Hey Brian, a couple of questions. Have you gotten the 6 inch coil for your Nox. Bill has, and has done some videos with the Nox getting small gold in Arizona. He lives near Wickenburg, lots of detectable land there.
I dont know if he has a physical store, I think its more of an internet store, but I could be mistaken. If you get the chance, go out to Zona'. I live near by in Socal, and I went out there to Bill's events last fall, and it was great. Unfortunately, because of Covid he's canceled this fall's event but I'm going out there in late Oct./early Nov. anyway.
The 6 inch coil is great, both for gold and regular detecting. You can see small targets between rocks or any other obstructions. Something to consider.
 

cpomike13 said:
Hey Brian, a couple of questions. Have you gotten the 6 inch coil for your Nox. Bill has, and has done some videos with the Nox getting small gold in Arizona. He lives near Wickenburg, lots of detectable land there.
I dont know if he has a physical store, I think its more of an internet store, but I could be mistaken. If you get the chance, go out to Zona'. I live near by in Socal, and I went out there to Bill's events last fall, and it was great. Unfortunately, because of Covid he's canceled this fall's event but I'm going out there in late Oct./early Nov. anyway.
The 6 inch coil is great, both for gold and regular detecting. You can see small targets between rocks or any other obstructions. Something to consider.
Click to expand...

A nice thing to remember about the Nox with the small coil is that you'll hear the gold, and it will show up on the meter very low in the range (1 or 2, a bit higher if they get bigger), and I agree that the small coil gets into tight spots far better than the big coil.

All the best,

Lanny
 

cpomike13 said:
Hey Brian, a couple of questions. Have you gotten the 6 inch coil for your Nox. Bill has, and has done some videos with the Nox getting small gold in Arizona. He lives near Wickenburg, lots of detectable land there.
I dont know if he has a physical store, I think its more of an internet store, but I could be mistaken. If you get the chance, go out to Zona'. I live near by in Socal, and I went out there to Bill's events last fall, and it was great. Unfortunately, because of Covid he's canceled this fall's event but I'm going out there in late Oct./early Nov. anyway.
The 6 inch coil is great, both for gold and regular detecting. You can see small targets between rocks or any other obstructions. Something to consider.
Click to expand...

cpomike13, I do have the 6" coil and that's what I took with me to NH this year and VA last year. I didn't devote a lot of time to searching for gold with the detector on either trip, so I can't really give a fair assessment of its abilities in those areas. I may go to VA in a few weeks with some friends (who use a dredge, which is what I normally do) and I may take the detector and just spend a day searching for nuggets that the old-timers missed.

I just used the 6" today at a local park to try to find some coins amongst all the old nails; I only found one dime, and it was 1965 (missed silver by a year). But it's good at being more precise with target location and ID.

A few weeks ago the 6" was great because I was hunting a farm that I've posted about many times this year, and the 6" let me get in amongst the pumpkin vines in a way the larger coil wouldn't. (There was a 1700's house where the pumpkin patch is, and my best finds were a King George 1st halfpenny [sometime between 1714 and 1727, too worn for a date] and a 1783 KG III halfpenny contemporary counterfeit, i.e made in 1783 illegally here in the US).

If you're interested: http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/638475-farm-keeps-giving-1783-hibernia-maybe.html
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/what/638487-coin-id-copper-size-large-cent-but-not-lc.html
 

brianc053 said:
americanartifacts33, I've enjoyed watching "Nugget Shooter Journals" (Bill Southern's YouTube series) and I've learned a lot about how he approaches nugget shooting out there in Arizona. I highly recommend his videos.
Apparently he owns a store out there, and if I were ever to try nugget shooting I would probably go visit him first.
But...I live in New Jersey and have a family, so my dreams of finding nuggets with a detector will have to wait (possibly forever). I've tried a tiny bit with the Equinox 800 down in Virginia and up in New Hampshire, but haven't found any gold. (But the Equinox will find tiny metal, so I think it's the ground I was on. If I got over a 0.1g or larger nugget I'm confident I'd pick it up if it was close enough to the surface.)

I wish you luck, and check out Bill's YouTube channel.

Brian
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Brian. I will subscribe to his channel now; I ve been on a binge watching gold metal detecting videos.
 

Bill Southern is a well respected Arizona nuggetshooter, and runs a Minelab dealership in Morristown, AZ. Here are some photos from his annual Fall outing a couple of years ago.

 

Bill does an excellent job of describing how to ground balance (properly!) the Goldmonster 1000 and how to set it up to find nuggets.

I've met Bill, and he's a great guy.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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