I never met Woody but I was sitting in my "library" over the weekend reading a Lost Treasure magazine. Saw an article about "electronic gold detecting" written by who else but Woody! It was a 1982 edition.
In reading the article, it seems that Woody found his first nugget with a borrowed metal detector in 1980. I guess it only took one to get him started.
The two forums that Jim Foley has... the Alaska Gold Forum and The New 49ers Forum have gone down permanently. This was beyond his control. He will be working on setting up new forums.