Steve Herschbach Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 Hi,I have run a little pay-to-mine operation at Moore Creek for four years now. We have old tailing piles that have nuggets in them. Some piles produced quite a few nuggets, and so everyone and their brother has been over them hoping for just one more.For instance, Dean's Hill. Dean found a 6.54 oz nugget a mile below camp on a pile. Rich Lampright found I think about 6 more ounces of smaller specimens on the same pile. Anyway, well over a pound came off this one pile.Now, these piles are small hills. You might be talking 300 feet long by 100 feet wide by 40 feet tall. Big but not something a person can't cover every square inch of. There have been probably 50 people hunt Dean's Hill using everything from the SD2200 on up to the GP3500 and probably a GPX-4000 or two last summer.There are other hills with similar reputations, including Bud's Island right near camp. Over 100 people have hunted it since it is so near camp.So the guys show up this year with the GPX-4500. A determination was made almost immediately that all ground should be treated as virgin again, and sure enough nuggets started coming out of Dean's Hill and Bud's Island and other places that were well and truly "hunted out".It was simply way too many nuggets to chalk up to anything other than the GPX-4500 being able to hear nuggets previous units could not hear at Moore Creek.I attribute this to two things. Previous SD/GP units had a tendency to sound very faintly on hot rocks at Moore Creek. So you got to where you usually ignored those sounds as they were almost always rocks and listened for something just enough different to indicate a real target. It is possible with the GPX to completely and absolutely tune out those faint hot rocks, allowing whisper faint nuggets to be detected. They might not actually be deeper per se, it is just that you could not discern them before. Same difference as far as I'm concerned.Plus, with the Gain and extra timings you can crank the GPX up for some insane performance. Steve F got his biggy by running the GPX up to the point where the ground was super noisy. You'd not normally hunt that way but he was focused on one spot, and it did allow him to get an exceptionally deep target.The bottom line is I am absolutely convinced the GPX is doing stuff that could not be done before. It was too many people getting too many nuggets out of too many hard hit spots to be anything else. There is no doubt in my mind that money spent on a GPX-4500 is money well spent. Remember, though, it can't make the gold. We had a couple GPX users who simply could not seem to get over nuggets.Anyway, hopefully Rob and Glenn and Steve and other Moore Creek visitors will chime in here with some of the settings they were using at Moore Creek to help little old me out. I am headed back up to Moore Creek August 8th to prep ground for next season but plan on firing my new GPX up for the first time finally. I gave away everything I found in June so it would be nice to have at least one nugget to call my own this summer!! Any tips would be most welcome.Steve HerschbachMoore Creek Mining LLC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seeker Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 Boy will I ever be glad to finally get a chance at a piece of gold, I am feeling a lot better these days and can't wait until next month to finally get a chance to do some hunting. Boy was I homesick this spring and I surely missed being part of the set up crew. If all goes well next year that won't happen and I will get a chance to get back into the swing of things. Enuff gold came out of the ground this year to astound anyone who has previously hunted there and I believe it has scarcely been touched.......................................Good Hunting Geo............................................. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Herschbach Posted July 25, 2008 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 Geez, George, I missed you!I can't wait to see you in August. The GPX-4500 is amazing for sure. We can both finally get some time to play. Give me a ring when you get a chance!Steve Herschbach Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Posted July 25, 2008 Report Share Posted July 25, 2008 Steve, you are so right about the depth or at least usable depth difference between the 4500 and anything else out there. I went to Dean's hill last year with the 4000 and the 17" dd wallaby and I found nothing, this year I covered the exact same ground with the 4500 and the new 18.5" goldstalker and I picked up three nice nuggets around the hill in about one hour, they were all faint but definely targets. The same thing happened on too many other spots to be coincidence. The new combo turned what might have been a tough week into another fantastic week at Moore Creek, I have nearly 24 ounces of Moore Creek gold and 24,000 great memories, you guys put on the best gold hunting week in the world, I've already given Rob my verbal for next year. The settings I used were enhance, quiet audio, v,ery slow sweep speed, lots of gain, all I could give it without getting a wobble, and plenty of volume on the speaker, I wanted to hear every faint twerp, plus be heard by big dark visitors. Can't wait till next year, just got in from a new area near Prescott that I investgated today, super trashy but a faint whisper turned out to be a .31 oz slug about a foot deep in a crack. Only one for the day but at least it keeps you going back. See in June Glenn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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