First Outing for 2025 with the GM 1000

[ProspectingPip]

Hello everyone,

So today I managed to get out for the first time in 2025 for a bit if a swing and scratch around this morning in Creswick.

As some of you may know already, I began my detector journey in Oct 2024 with the Gold Monster 1000.
It was a whirlwind of invaluable forum advice and information, copious hours of Youtube "how to's" a lot of research and, a positive mind set.

Unfortunately, after 10 trips my current count is 46 lead shot and 0g of gold. However, whilst this is disappointing, I'm still really enjoying the hunt, and have been growing in confidence after each trip. Sure, the gold may not be there, yet, but, short of someone literally physically pointing and saying "dig here" the time people have taken to help a newbie like myself has not gone unappreciated.

So, thanks to all who have helped me get out there and keep me motivated, informed and in the right mindset. We're all one swing away from shiny yellow stuff!!

May your 2025 be yellah!

Cheers,

Pip.

 

[Hawkear]

Great to hear you follow up report.
Lead shot is an indicator that you are able to hear a target that "couldabeen" gold.
Apart from their widespread scattering, lead shot has a nasty habit, because of their weight, in sinking deep after many years of alternate softening, hardening, cracking of soils in response to rain and other weather events. Drift of overlying soils adding to depth of coverage also adds to that.
Gold performs similarly in sinking through soils and because of eons of time is most often found at the deepest boundary between the soil and harder subsoil or rock horizon below.
Whilst I have found shotgun pellets almost at that deepest horizon, I am not sure if I can recall any shot LOWER than gold in a specific patch with a consistent soil profile. I would be interested in hearing other's thoughts on that and why that could ever be so.
Maybe the gold is sitting just beyond GM detection at a level below that of the shot you are picking up. I would encourage you to persevere in areas that may be even a bit shallower in soil profile to what you have been detecting.
In determining the depth of a soil profile, you just need to observe how deep it is before the soil becomes compacted or indeed rocky. For a GM That should be fairly easy as you do not need to be digging deep holes maybe 6 inches or even less to establish that. The exposed rocky slopes of reefy quartzy hills could also be another area to search with the GM as tiny bits of gold have no deeper place to escape to.
Above all stay away from "deep" ground unless working heaps where you should concentrate of heaps showing bits of rocky material brought up from the very bottoms of holes.
Hope this might be helpful.

 

[Mackka]

A bloke once told me, " ya gotta go where the gold is!" big help then and still applies now.

 

[PeterInSa]

I think in Victoria if you are finding Lead shot thats a good sign that the area has not being thoroughly done over.
It helps also, if you can think outside the square eg roadside/track verges, under logs/rocks, watch out for snakes, in the 1980/90's to present, under low bushes.

A number of times in the past in WA, looking at the country/rocks/trees downhill washouts, I have suggested to my wife that she detects in this area, no she is going to do her own thing and finds a patch, in a god for sake-in area, that other operators like myself have not seen its value.

The other thing is Know your Detector, in my early days detecting I detected with an Adelaide Guy called Goldfinger, I think he could find gold with a burnt stick. we had the same make, model of detector same settings, same area but he would find Gold in Vic and me none. I realised I was walking over gold that I did not hear

I suggest you could be walking over gold as well with the time you have spent in the goldfields. Maybe your Coil swing is to fast, not low enough, detector not optimized for the ground you are detecting on, need more sensitive headphones, Not hearing the slight changes in threshold that could represent a signal.

If you do not already have a test piece I suggest you borrow/buy one. I do not know the GM1000 but think it should pick up a .2gm (.1gm?) on the surface, I would try that with your swing and different settings to hear the signal..

 

[ProspectingPip]

Great to hear you follow up report.
Lead shot is an indicator that you are able to hear a target that "couldabeen" gold.
Apart from their widespread scattering, lead shot has a nasty habit, because of their weight, in sinking deep after many years of alternate softening, hardening, cracking of soils in response to rain and other weather events. Drift of overlying soils adding to depth of coverage also adds to that.
Gold performs similarly in sinking through soils and because of eons of time is most often found at the deepest boundary between the soil and harder subsoil or rock horizon below.
Whilst I have found shotgun pellets almost at that deepest horizon, I am not sure if I can recall any shot LOWER than gold in a specific patch with a consistent soil profile. I would be interested in hearing other's thoughts on that and why that could ever be so.
Maybe the gold is sitting just beyond GM detection at a level below that of the shot you are picking up. I would encourage you to persevere in areas that may be even a bit shallower in soil profile to what you have been detecting.
In determining the depth of a soil profile, you just need to observe how deep it is before the soil becomes compacted or indeed rocky. For a GM That should be fairly easy as you do not need to be digging deep holes maybe 6 inches or even less to establish that. The exposed rocky slopes of reefy quartzy hills could also be another area to search with the GM as tiny bits of gold have no deeper place to escape to.
Above all stay away from "deep" ground unless working heaps where you should concentrate of heaps showing bits of rocky material brought up from the very bottoms of holes.
Hope this might be helpful.

Thanks again for your insight and advice, Hawkear.

During my most recent outing I was detecting the slopes of Humbug Hill - along Lincoln Gully Road. I was picking up lead shot within 20mins, while walking up the slopes. I know people generally don't reveal the location they prospect but, if this helps in other sharing advice their advice then, I think its worth it.

As for the lead shot, it was found close to trees (within 1ft or so) in white looking soil/clay. I think the depth was about 2-3 inches for the leadshot I was finding. There's a few mullock heaps (white, powdery mounds, correct?) as well as some really nice looking material of rough quartz mixed in with various soils - mullock, some yellow clay, etc. From your above comment, Hawkear, that seems like a good place the swing the GM.

I ran the GM on Auto+ but, I had a bit more of a play with the manual sensitivity. With manual 8 in all metal mode actually pretty quiet. Between those two settings, the lead shot targets were a very clear tone, as well a full non-ferrous on the discrimination bar.

I think in Victoria if you are finding Lead shot thats a good sign that the area has not being thoroughly done over.
It helps also, if you can think outside the square eg roadside/track verges, under logs/rocks, watch out for snakes, in the 1980/90's to present, under low bushes.

A number of times in the past in WA, looking at the country/rocks/trees downhill washouts, I have suggested to my wife that she detects in this area, no she is going to do her own thing and finds a patch, in a god for sake-in area, that other operators like myself have not seen its value.

The other thing is Know your Detector, in my early days detecting I detected with an Adelaide Guy called Goldfinger, I think he could find gold with a burnt stick. we had the same make, model of detector same settings, same area but he would find Gold in Vic and me none. I realised I was walking over gold that I did not hear

I suggest you could be walking over gold as well with the time you have spent in the goldfields. Maybe your Coil swing is to fast, not low enough, detector not optimized for the ground you are detecting on, need more sensitive headphones, Not hearing the slight changes in threshold that could represent a signal.

If you do not already have a test piece I suggest you borrow/buy one. I do not know the GM1000 but think it should pick up a .2gm (.1gm?) on the surface, I would try that with your swing and different settings to hear the signal..

Thanks for your response, Peterinsa,

You're probably right. There is every chance I've been walking over gold.
As for the reasons you've suggested, I could be very well swinging too fast. I always try to keep my swings low and slow. So low in fact, that I need to stop bumping the coil, as its sometimes giving me false gold readings on the discrimination bar.

I tend to not use the headphones, as the cord is really inconvenient, and it generally gets tangles up and pulled out of the headphone jack. Additionally, I have enough trouble not tripping over rocks, logs, pits, shafts, etc, that the headphone cord is a trip hazard I can remove. Perhaps the investment of wireless headphones might me on the cards.

I have a bunch of gold I've accumulated over the last 12 months panning, with a couple of tiny specimens I've managed to find in my classifier while panning at Dolly's Creek. Perhaps I do need to source a bigger nugget and take it out to the field, with me.

Cheers,

Pip.

 

[grubstake]

I have a bunch of gold I've accumulated over the last 12 months panning, with a couple of tiny specimens I've managed to find in my classifier while panning at Dolly's Creek. Perhaps I do need to source a bigger nugget and take it out to the field, with me.

Have you tested the GM1000 on those specimens?

 

[Hawkear]

Haven't been to Humbug hill for many years, and from memory it was heavily and deeply sluiced down to bedrock in the old days.
Sluicing was used to remove large amounts of overburden, so when I see a sluiced area, it tells me that there can be deep ground around the sluiced area. The sluiced areas themselves are just often soft whitish clays that are the remnant of the bedrock that has been washed clean of their original gold content.
I have had some limited success in such areas, sometimes around and under the piles of rocks that were removed from the sluices that may have had small nuggets stuck to them, or on nearby mullock heaps but overall, I have not had a lot of success. That could just be my experience, but I tend to avoid them now.
That is not to say there could not be shallow ground opportunities in the vicinity not far away.
Around Creswick much of the gold is derived from old river deposits which formed at higher elevations. We have to think in terms of kilometers of erosion over the eons with gold being continually deposited, eroded, redeposited etc in multiple cycles. Some of the deeper deposits are those that were worked by sluicing or by diggers, but gold can be much more widely scattered even in the shallow soils of modern hilltops and hillsides.
Above all stick to areas where the soil is shallow enough for your detector to be effective.
Regarding getting a test nugget to take out with you, may I suggest you resist that temptation as the thrill of finding your first bit of gold with a detector is one that few of us can forget.
Lead shot is a good replica for the size and sound of a gold nugget you are likely to find these days. You could maybe use a slightly larger bit of lead as say a gram sinker to help you identify what a larger target sounds like at depth.
You are on the right track with your ability to pick up lead shot, you just need to get yourself over a bit of gold the right size, at the right depth and in the right location.