catpig

Just bought an SDC 2300 for my wife. We wanted to upgrade her from the GB2 with something easier to swing than a GPX. I picked it up at the UPS center on my way out of town to the La Paz placers 2 weekends ago. I spent all day Saturday going over a wash with my GPX-5000 with a Joey coil. 8 hours or so of detecting and got nothing. Beautiful day though and I got to wish my Dad a happy 80th birthday (the primary purpose of my trip and more important than gold). Sunday morning I opened up the SDC and popped in 4 batteries. Then I went and detected the same wash I had been over the day before with my GPX. To my pleasant surprise I got 5 little nuggets in 4 hours. Needless to say I'm impressed with the SDC 2300. Then last weekend my wife and I went out and got 6 more nuggets - 5 with the SDC and 1 with the 5000. The 2300 definitely is hot on the small gold and sees gold the 5000 and the BG2 both miss. I just need one for me now... They aren't big - the biggest is a bit over .4 grams, but gold is gold and it made my weekend. Jeff

Nice bird. Nice nugget. I have to note that one of the things about Great Horned Owls is that they eat skunks - they have evolved to where they do not mind the smell (I'm not making this up). So I guess the GHO ate the skunk for you. Now I've just gotta find me one of those owls for this weekend...

Thanks for the replies. I was out in the Dale all day Saturday and spent a bit of time experimenting with a bullet I found. I improved some but it is still difficult to pinpoint accurately. My expectations are maybe too high - I cut my teeth with a GB2 and with that detector it is easy to nail where the target is. Rob, I got my GPX5k from a dealer here in SoCal. The price was right and Santa was in a hurry to buy one. I gotta say if I had it to do over I'd have gotten it from you because I like your package deals (and I'm not just saying that). Wasn't tuned in to what I other ancillary stuff I needed at the time. I'm going to buy an elliptical coil one of these days and I'll be in touch. Probably this coming Christmas. Chris, thanks for the video link. Impressive job on the 'X marks the spot'. One of these days I'll be able to do that. Also one of these days I'm hoping to get up into your neck of the woods and spend a day or 3 poking around. I appreciate the advise, Jeff

Rob and all, I'm a proud new owner of a GPX-5000 (courtesy of Santa) and still something of a newbie. I've got 150 or so hours on the Minelab, plus several hundred hours with our GB2 so I am putting in a bit of time. My question: I still struggle to do reliable and accurate pinpointing with the 11" mono coil. I use the edge, practice with nuggets that are visible, and still haven't gotten to where I can 'know' where the target is once I have freed it from the ground. I did use my DD coil at a site up north with a ton of trash and could pinpoint quite a bit better with the DD. At present we wind up using the GB2 to pinpoint if I happen to be out with someone else, and while this works, it slows things down. Any helpful hints? Second question: I keep thinking I should buy the ML pinpointer. However, I notice that no one I know who is an expert and who I trust (and a few of these experts are on this forum) use a pinpointer. Why is that? I have to think the pros know what they are doing and when none of them have a pinpointer that tells me maybe I shouldn't bother. Comments? Thanks for any and all help, Jeff