Well firstly - I returned home totally shagged, and was laid out like a lizard by about 8pm last night. My first issue with detecting is that I like to explore a bit much so I spent a lot of the day just wandering around and getting a feel for the place. I put a good 6 hours in swinging though. working over the old alluvial grounds in the bottom of the valleys, and down the sides of ridges from where some really deep shafts were.
I suspect I needed to follow scroungers advice more and just target an area the size of a tennis court, and spend all day working it. I'm lacking the knowledge however to pick the spot to do so. so I just meandered around a lot - taking it slow, but moving around and climbing hills.
Gold tally zip im afraid - I picked up lead shot, old bits of metal, old boot nails, bullets, and a small brass button. some of the targets were 4-6 inches down and SUBTLE. and also in areas where its obvious there were others digging and had not picked up the targets. So i'm growing in confidence that im picking up the right slight tone changes.
Was a cracker day though - really nice forest area, really interesting shafts alone the ridge of one hill. diggings everywhere. Best of all after a hectic week of work I didn't see a soul all day! verrrry peaceful.
I left at 5am and got there just before 7. was 1 degree and had a superb sunrise on the drive up, but warmed up quick enough as the sun came up.
some piccys:
The road into muckleford before the forest turnoff
Top of a ridge by some DEEP shafts and lots of quartz rocks.
Typical worked area
Typical worked area
Oh and I got a Minelab swing harness with the 2300, but simply took off the bungee and prefer to use an old 60's era military harness with the bungee, with lots of ammo pockets. The pockets are what does it. Didn't need an additional backpack to also hump around camera, cellphone, keys, quartz samples that zinged but no obvious external gold, etc. worked a treat.
