to dig or not to dig, that is the question

Prospecting Australia

Help Support Prospecting Australia:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Mar 26, 2014
Messages
66
Reaction score
67
hi all, just after some opinions on when to dig and when not too with the atx.I got a signal the other day in the vic goldfields, it was a good signal and when i ran the discrimination over it it grunted, I decided to dig anyway and got down about a foot in very hard ground in very hot weather, the machine still grunted as if it was junk.....my question is ......is it junk, should i keep digging....i thought the descrimination feature was only good for shallow targets,.....is there a possibility that a large nugget would cause the machine to grunt on deep targets, thats my fantasy anyway lol.
 
Id dig it. Iv found nuggets in holes that I reckon someone used disc on and left them there, best was a 1 1/2 ounce bit. Some mineralised ground, especially that with a lot of ironstone or disseminated ironstone in the soil, can trick a machines discrimination. Also seen ironstone species with good gold in them disc too.
 
The atx will not grunt on gold no matter it's size ......... If it's a very large metal object it will grunt . . Could be iron stone in the dirt .
 
Dubbles, man, trust your machine. I too, have an ATX and the grunt is conservative and it has never, never, let me down. It will not give a grunt on decomposed iron, that is iron that is very rusted and crusted. I once got a good signal started to dig and as I got deeper the grunt started. Gave up the dig as it would have been iron......no question. Got to trust the machine. Good luck!
P.S. It will not grunt on Gold, ever.........

Jon, the ATX would react on a specie as gold because it will react to gold......even if the gold is only .3g. How do I know? My first gold at Laanecoorie was a tiny .31g about 12mm down in a scrape heap and barely a whisper of a tone, but it was there and so was the gold.
 
Tassie Daz said:
Dubbles, man, trust your machine. I too, have an ATX and the grunt is conservative and it has never, never, let me down. It will not give a grunt on decomposed iron, that is iron that is very rusted and crusted. I once got a good signal started to dig and as I got deeper the grunt started. Gave up the dig as it would have been iron......no question. Got to trust the machine. Good luck!
P.S. It will not grunt on Gold, ever.........

Jon, the ATX would react on a specie as gold because it will react to gold......even if the gold is only .3g. How do I know? My first gold at Laanecoorie was a tiny .31g about 12mm down in a scrape heap and barely a whisper of a tone, but it was there and so was the gold.

What about a rusty tin full of old timer nuggets? :D
 
Never, Never, Never, Trust a machines iron discrimination, always Dig!

Ever heard of a masons jar, it has a steel / tin lid, it rusts away over time after being buried by a prospector with all his gold nuggets in it.

In America they find them all the time near civil war sites as the union and confederate armies used to pay their scouts / lookouts by burying masons jars full of silver dollar coins.

Someone from Victoria posted a picture of a find in the Golden Triangle of a large Jam tin that had rusted out and it was,
excuse the pun, "Jam Packed" full of gold nuggets. :D

He nearly walked away from it because it was a loud grunting signal. It was the find of a lifetime.

The old timers used to hide their gold from bushrangers and the like.

Dig every target.
 
I'll take this a wee step further. .. piece of iron, next to nugget. Has this ever been tested, the ability to unmask? I doubt it, so I would dig. Not sure the atx had enough runs on the board in the nugget department to trust a grunt. Pulled a cash stash from an old site a few weeks (months? ) back with some paper money. You never know what you might turn up. A signal is a signal, I don't pretend to understand atx discrimination but I'd always be wondering.
 
Tassie Daz said:
Jon, the ATX would react on a specie as gold because it will react to gold......even if the gold is only .3g.
Not trying to argue, just enlighten a bit maybe. Iv detected for years, doesn't make me an expert though just a bit weathered that's all, and owned plenty of VLF's and nearly all the Mlab PI's.
The amount of bits iv seen discriminated was/is an eye opener. Especially the bits associated with highly mineralised host rock, species.
I once detected a spot where I was getting a few species in quartz with the gold associated with heavy concentrations of iron pyrites.
The area had plenty of junk too. I disced heaps to avoid the junk. But one day I saw a specie sunbaking and it disced out. I picked it up and could see a small show of gold though. Off the ground it gave a good signal, in air, but on the ground it disced out. Needless to say I then had to backtrack and dig it all. I got some awesome gold/pyrite species after doing so that I was walking away from previously. I wouldn't do that everywhere as some times you have to make a call to disc as there is just way too much junk to go through it all and its not practical. But no way is there a detector out there that doesn't make wrong calls in heavily mineralised ground.
 
As a general rule, we dig everything when out hunting for gold.

It is always interesting to see what u dig up..:)

Cheers.
Lee.
 
righto, im gunna ig that nugget up next time im over there, had some rain lately so ground is hopefully a lot softer, thanks for your comments everyone
 

Latest posts

Top