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Yep that story reminded me of my deepest dig for a target. It was very close to the spot i found my first 2 little bits of gold with my 20 minutes old XT17000. I had upgraded to a sd2200 and gone back to the spot I found my first gold yrs before, (as you do ) and started working over an area of surfacing running down from a reef to the shallow lead id pinged the 2 little nuggets on.
Anyway I got this broad low growl from the SD and started to remove a bit of soil and ironstone and sure enough the signal got better. After about 12inches I decided to head back to the car for a crowbar as the hole was now 2 ft wide and 14 inches deep & the target was screaming at me. I had the target centred pretty well in the middle of the hole and not wanting to damage what, by this time I thought was a decent nugget I worked around the outer edges of the bottom of the hole. The ground was all hard packed until I got within a couple of inches of the target. It was then that I noticed the ground in the centre was a bit softer & a different colour. My heart sank as I realized i was digging out a 3inch auger hole that someone had put down to test the surfacing and backfilled and tamped a squashed beer can into the bottom. Depth of hole 25inches. bugger