White's MXT Scores 2 Pounds of Gold at Ganes Creek!

[steve herschbach]

Hi,

Ganes Creek, Alaska continues to produce some real nice nuggets. Although the total numbers of nuggets have been dropping off some exceptional pieces were found this year. As is usual, you get good finds in the early weeks, that taper rapidly as less experienced hunters replace the more gungho types that pack the first couple weeks.

But one guy who really knows his stuff is my friend Bernie. He has been to Ganes Creek five times now I believe, and is an expert not only in hunting Ganes, but with his detector, the White's MXT. Bernie is busy in the spring and so hunts Ganes in the last weeks each year, and has been responsible many times for the year ending with a bang as he always gets the gold.

Well, he went for two weeks this year. He did not really find lots of nuggets, but he sure did find some big ones! A total of over two Troy pounds of gold!!

Bernie's Two Week Take from Ganes Creek

The largest is the 11.5 oz chunk, but Bernie's favorite is the nice, solid 5.35 ounce nugget. I can see why. It looks even better in person than in the photo.

This is great because in some of the weeks prior to Bernie's arrival not much gold was being found. And of course you get then usual grumbling from people about the gold is all gone, etc. There are too many people going to Ganes that think nugget hunting is some kind of easy deal. It takes lots of work and expertise to successfully hunt gold in tailing piles, and not a little dose of luck also. Bernie is proof the gold is still there to be had, but he is also proof that expertise does count.

Steve Herschbach
Steve's Mining Journal

 

[Rick(ND)]

n/t

 

[Jackpine Savage]

AWESOME !!!

Tell Bernie he is the MAN !! So how do ya tell the bigguns from deep iron ie; whats Bernie's secret?

Tom

 

[steve herschbach]

Hi Tom,

There are VDI tricks you can use with the MXT and gold nuggets. But no matter what you do dig some iron now and then. Just part of the game!

Steve Herschbach

 

[boxtopp]

WTG Bernie,
I would just about stain myself and everybody else, if I found a nugget like that big one. I hope one of these days I will have the opportunity to have a hunt which would produce such nuggets.

 

[Rudy]

n/t

 

[Anonymous]

Surely a DD right?

Thanks for posting,
Paul (Ca)

 

[steve herschbach]

Hi Paul,

Longtime no chat... hope life is treating you well.

All these nuggets were found with the stock coil. Bernie has other coils, and other detectors for that matter, so it is not like the stock coil is all he has to choose from.

Mineralization is fairly low at Ganes Creek, so concentric coils actually get better depth than DD coils. Despite a lot of what I have read on the net, both Bernie and I feel the stock coil does very well for us at least. But as always this may simply be related to the locale and targets involved.

At Ganes you put in huge hours swinging the coil, often in uneven ground. I've tried larger coils, but it does not take much to end up being too much extra weight. My personal favorite at Ganes Creek is my 12" HotShot. But Bernie has one, and he feels it is a bit unstable. The 1400 DD is at the upper end of what I'd want to swing for 14 hours a day, 6 days in a row.

Ganes also has tons of iron trash to deal with, and I have always subscribed to the thought that concentric coils id targets better than DD coils. I really do not know if that is true... I read it somewhere!

Of course the dirty little secret in the detecting world is that coils do vary, sometimes by a considerable amount. I think I have a "good" HotShot, while Bernie's may be "B" grade. And we both seem to have hot 950 coils.

I'll pat myself on the back here for being one of the first guys to really score gold with the MXT. Certainly the first at Ganes Creek. Since then the MXT has become the preferred nugget machine for that location, with hundreds of ounces of gold found. It is a proven gold getter!

Steve Herschbach

 

[Bottleguy]

Way to go Bernie!!! That's AWESOME!!

I'm planning my first trip to Gane's Creek next summer (w/my MXT, of course) and I have a few questions. It seems to me that most of the bigger gold comes out of the previously worked tailing piles.

Steve, you were talking about early season vs. late season. I understand (and I've seen from the pictures on the Gane's website) that they have a Cat to push the tailing piles around with. Do they only push the tailings around once a season (maybe at the beginning), or do they (will they) re-spread them out at various times throughout the hunting season?

Is it better to book early, or later??

I'm a seasoned gold hunter (20 years panning and sluicing in the Mother lode), but I've never MDed for gold, especially the likes of Gane's Creek.

It seems to me that any findings would be reduced towards the end of the year if the same spread-out piles were being hunted week after week...

Thanks,

Rick

 

[steve herschbach]

Hi Rick,

They push more or less daily daily at Ganes Creek with the dozers.

My answer may not be very popular. In my opinion most people who visit Alaska to hunt gold do not know what they are doing. In other words, they do not have any detecting experience, or they think that because they know what they are doing elsewhere they know what they are doing in Alaska.

Generally they are wrong. Hunting tailing piles in Alaska takes a combination of skill, sheer physical endurance, and luck. It does not matter what time of year you book. Bernie is proof of that, as am I. See my story at http://www.whiteselectronics.com/mxtalaskaw.php You see results early in the year because the best hunters tend to book early, that's all. The people that book later tend to be less experienced, and so the gold take drops off.

The gold is there, and most people miss it. They have no real idea of what it takes to find gold in Alaska. And therefore it does not matter what time of year you give it a go. One thing I have learned is people would rather imagine things than really listen to what has worked for the locals.

5% of the people are getting 95% of the gold in Alaska. It might be the same elsewhere... I do not know. The secret here is know your detector, get up early, stay out late, do not pause in between, think outside the box, and have a good dose of luck. Physical endurance is very important.

Previous detecting experience counts a lot! You have mentioned you have little previous experience. I'd therefore hazard a guess, that outside of sheer luck, you'll have a tough time finding gold in Alaska with a metal detector. I'm not trying to bum you out, I'm just stating the facts from what I have seen. Previous detecting experience is a huge factor in predicting the level of success a person may have. See my post at http://bb.bbboy.net/alaskagoldforum-viewthread?forum=2&thread=553 for details.

So my main advice to you is to go looking for jewelry as much as you can before you go to Ganes. Jewelry detecting is great practice for nugget detecting. And if you are not in good shape now try and be before you go.

Steve Herschbach

 

[Bottleguy]

Hi Steve...

Thanks for your insight and sharing your advice and experience. Your article on the White's page was extremely informative and your post on the Alaska Prospecting forum was very helpful. Don't worry about bursting my bubble, you have actually helped me to understand nugget-shooting a lot better, and actually encouraged me to get to know my MXT better before I go!

I've had my MXT about 4 months now. I originally bought it to nugget hunt at some of the places in the Motherlode (Calif.) I used to pan and sluice at (but, alas, I haven't found the time...). By the time I get to Gane's, I'll have over a years worth of experience with it, hopefully with a few trips to the Sierras to nugget hunt under my belt. After four months with the MXT, I feel very confident finding coins, and more so with the jewelry every time I go out. I try to get in an average of about 8 hours a week, and prefer to hunt older vacant lots, abandoned houses, and construction demos versus the local parks.

I especially appreciated the advice you gave on the Prospecting forum, most of which is also applicable to pulling gold out of the Sierras, here in California. As I mentioned, I was a panner. I also used a small 4-foot aluminum sluice during the later years, only to spare my back from the pain of using a pan. I'm in pretty good physical shape for a 45 year-old and can still put in 20 miles in a day, but gold mining did take it's toll and wasted my back. Hence, the metal detector.

Anyway, I totally agree that experience is the key to successful prospecting. It didn't take me long to figure out that you could glean some color from sands and gravels, but here in California, the gold is in the cracks!! I can't even remember how many times I would show up at a creek, next to some greenhorn with a 2-3" dredge sucking up gravels from the middle of the creek channel. He didn't understand that mostly everything running through his dredge had already been through many other miner's dredges, sluices, and rocker boxes at some time or another over the past 150 years! More often than not, I'd run less than a hundredth of the material through my pan than he did during the day, and I'd end up with more than twice the gold he found. The secret is not to rework previously mined material, but to get down into the places all the other miners missed! I'm not saying that I could always out-pan every dredger, many knew what they were doing, but there sure were a lot of folks out there that just couldn't find a thing!

My prospecting tools consisted of a 6-foot long, iron digger-bar and a 5-ton hydraulic bottle jack (gives a whole new meaning to the word "hydraulic mining", huh??). With those two tools alone, I could move boulders the size of a mini-van and split open cracks in exposed bedrock that nobody else could. I always worked on the downstream, inside corner of a bend in the creek, and it usually didn't matter if I was right down on bedrock near the creek, or 30 feet up the side of the hill. If I happened to open up a crack filled with clay, I usually did especially well. That's another example where experience pays off. Most inexperienced dredgers (and panners) hit the clay and figure that's it. "It just balls up and goes right through the dredge", or, "I can't pan it because it's too much work". Well, yeah! But... clay takes hundreds, if not thousands of years to form and guess what's usually underneath it. That's right!! Deposits that nobody else ever touched!!

Anyway, I'm rambling on now. Thanks again for sharing your years of experience and offering good, sound, realistic advice. I have a much clearer picture of what to expect at Gane's next year. Maybe I'll see you there!

Regards,

Rick

(BTW, here's one of my nicer nuggets from Mariposa County in Calif., shown next to a $2 1/2 coin)

 

[steve herschbach]

Hi Rick,

Great, glad to be of help! Sounds like you have the right attitude.

My last trip to Ganes was in 2004, and it was late in the year. In fact, our little group was the last of the season. It was a mix of half locals, and half visitors from down south. The local guys had all been to Ganes before. The visitors were all experienced nugget hunters, but had never hunted Alaskan tailing piles before.

What basically happened is the visitors all got skunked, and the locals all found gold. And out of the group I found the most nuggets, and the largest nugget. The fact is that not only the did the previous experience level count, but specifically experience in hunting tailing piles.

And although hundreds of people had hunted Ganes by that time, I found almost all my nuggets in areas that have never been bulldozed. People now seem convinced the gold is gone in all those square miles of ground, and so everyone follows the dozers around. But were I to go back tomorrow I'd spend most of my time out and about looking for those nuggets that everybody has missed. I guess I'm an eternal optimist, but I just know they are still there!

Here is my basic secret of success. I am one of those people who actually is not going to claim I'm super good with a detector per se. I do not obsess over getting that last inch of detection depth. I have always relied more on what I call "brute force detecting". By this I mean I try to swing the odds my way by covering far more ground then whoever I am hunting with. So if they have a 9.5" coil, I'll have a 12" coil. I'll be swinging a bit faster. I'll try and get up earlier, take less time eating meals, take virtually no breaks, and stay out later. It's kind of like running a marathon, and that is why being in good physical condition does make a difference. I very often am finding more gold than other people because I simply put in more time and cover more ground by a considerable margin. If you do this consistently it runs the odds in your favor sooner or later. It's pretty exhausting work, really, and many people are not physically up to the task in this day and age.

Best of luck to you, Rick!!

Steve Herschbach

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Steve,

Good to hear your forum voice again, Bernie did extremely well at Ganes Creek. He sure earned those nuggets!

Thanks for opening the window for the MXT when you first tried it out there, That opened doors for the MXT and it is a darn good detector too.

If you get the chance, Compare both the 9.5" or 12" Hotshot coil against the 6"X10" DD coil. You should notice the MXT recovery speed will speed up using the DD coil, This will give the MXT an edge in the trashy areas such as the iron trashy areas you mentioned. Once you see the difference, You'll see the advantage the DD coils have over the concentric.

Thanks for your time Steve, We know how busy you are with business and the hobby and we are so blessed you can find the time to share your input with us.

HH, Paul (Ca)

 

[steve herschbach]

Hi Paul,

I've used the 6"x10" DD to good effect in more mineralized areas. The trashy tailing piles I'm talking about, however, have trash that is very widely spaced, and so a fast recovery speed is rarely an issue. I'll sure make the effort to check it out anyway for in-town hunting. I actually do use a DD in town, but it is the little Shooter more often than not. Love that little coil!

Thanks back at you!!

Steve Herschbach

 

[nicrasmit1]

Just want to find out where the bigfoot coil falls in here compared to the stock 950 and the 6x10 dd. I know it depth isn't as good but just curios as to how well it works as far as the id screen and recovery time.

 

[Anonymous]

Ralph,

I've never tried the Bigfoot coil and haven't a clue if it has a fast recovery speed, I do know that many who have the Bigfoot and those that use them really enjoy the extra ground coverage.

If you have one maybe we can compare it with other DD coils if we get the chance to meet in the fall, You're about a 2 hr 15 minute drive from my area and if we meet in Keen that would put us in the middle with about an hour and a few minutes drive apiece.

HH, Paul (Ca)

 

[nicrasmit1]

That would be great. Any help I can get with the MXT would be greatly appreciated as I have only been using the detector for about 3 months now. Which coil would you suggest using in Kern? I currently have the Bigfoot, the 950, the 3x6dd, and the 6x10dd. I really like the MXT though out of the detectors I have this has become my favorite in such a short period of time in all aspects as far as durability and performance.

 

[Anonymous]

Ralph,

The 6X10 DD is all you need for Kern County, Maybe bring the 3X6 DD as a backup if we come across an old site laced with iron.

I have the 3X6 and 6X10" DD coils as well, So i'll be bringing them too.

Kern county has been good to me, Even though it's a long drive from my area I've got five seated from there.

See you in the fall,
Paul