Having been the proud user of Minelab’s Pulse induction series detectors since the ground breaking release of the mighty SD 2000 right through to the GPX 5000 left me with little doubt that the new SDC 2300 would be yet another great detector. At the time I was swinging my trusty GPX 5000 and doing very well, but then the word came out, Minelab had released its new model, the SDC 2300, I instantly went online to the Minelab Website and read up on this new machine. Straight away I thought Pffffff, this thing looks like a toy and its small 8" coil will never suit my style of detecting. How wrong I was. Two years later after hearing of the great successes my mates were having with the SDC 2300 I decided to bite the bullet and grab one, this was two years after the 2300 release. Back to the present, it was decided that myself and my good prospecting partner (Wife) would take off to the Golden Triangle area of Victoria Australia for a weekend at our old trusty Patch. We had been working that patch for over two years, always finding plenty of gold and even covering the costs of every trip there, which is not as easy as it sounds these days. After a great Saturday and Sunday finding many small nuggets up to 1.5 grams, it was late Sunday afternoon and almost time to pack up and head the 600 kilometres home, ready for work on Monday. My wife suggested for some weird reason that we phone our employers and take the Monday off work and stay one more day to detect while we were getting good gold, albeit small gold. It took me less than 2 seconds to agree, and so the phone calls were made and we had another glorious day to prospect. Monday morning came and as usual we were up at dawn eager to detect. I had been for a little scout around the night prior and found some very interesting ground a few hundred metres away from our present patch that looked perfect for the SDC 2300 to hunt on, so we rigged up and it led us both over a few hundred metres of rough scrub to that ground. It was what I call very juicy ground, blood red dirt with small angular quartz and thin bits of jet black indicator ironstone everywhere. We both had a very positive feeling about the spot and so we both commenced to detect. It was less than ten minutes before I got the first small nugget, then another and another, my next target turned out to be a very good high tone signal and I dug out a nice 1.5 gram nugget at 8 inches deep. I like to show my wife any initial nuggets I find so that she can see the composition of them and the dirt that they are found in as she is a relatively "New Chum" to the game, and it also gives her a boost to find some also. Having shown her the 1.5 gram bit I walked back over to where it was found and continued to detect. Only ten feet away from that dig I got a lovely smooth drop tone, the kind of signal that all seasoned prospectors live for. I was in no doubt from the beginning that it was a target and not ground noise as the SDC 2300 would have to have the very best Mineral cancelling ability out of all the ML pulse machines I had used up to date. After digging down through the hot ground to 6 inches I re-checked the hole and sure enough the target was still in there but it was now fully overloading the detector, so I hooked into the hole and took out another 8 or 9 inches of dirt. Yup it was still there so I knelt down and began scooping out the loose dirt at 18 inches when there it was, the glint of gold! To say I was surprised it was gold let alone the depth that it was at was a gross understatement. I quickly yelled out to my wife who was detecting only a hundred paces away, "come over here quick" I yelled. I'd thrown the nugget back in the hole and covered it with a few inches of dirt, "Put your coil down in the hole" I said to her. The look on her face when her 2300 freaked out was amazing, I told her to "rummage in the dirt" and she grabbed the nugget and saw it for the first time, her reaction was sheer magic and one I will never forget.
After cleaning the nugget with a toothbrush, it finally weighed in at an amazing 114.66 grams of lovely solid Golden Triangle gold, my best for the new patch and also my best for Victoria.
There is nothing better than knowing you have found a new patch to return to on your next trip, and I'm sure this patch has much more to reveal to our Mighty SDC 2300s
Thanks Minelab for yet another great gold detector ;) and for keeping the dream alive.....
CrazyPete - VIC, Australia.
