Dave Ringquist’s Nugget Story

A few days before finding this beautiful nugget

Jerry White and   I   were sitting in  the  Base Camp watching the rain and I mean really hard rain!  I told Jerry lets ride out to the claims and mark all the   little  arroyo’s that are running water. Jerry  said  “lets go”.

We hopped into his truck and proceeded on out to the claims and marked every arroyo that was running the plan being to metal detect  these after the storm front moved out.

 Day 1 after the front moved out we searched three arroyo’s with no luck except for 50 cal bullets and shell casings.

 Day 2 after the front moved out we hunted two more arroyo’s again no luck getting any gold just shell casings again and lead bullets. We were doing everything right cause we were finding the lead just hadn’t been over any gold.

 Day 3 was a Sunday and Jerry decided not to go hunt on this day so I went out by my self to hunt the few remaining arroyo’s. About an hour into the hunt I had found nothing but bullets up ahead the arroyo went under a big Palo Verde Tree I decided to check under the big tree I got a faint signal there were lots of limbs in the way so I went back to my vehicle to get some ropes to tie the limbs back.

 After tying the limbs back I started digging about six inches down I found nothing then I put my Minelab  SD-2100 over the hole and received a super strong signal!  I   then continued to dig at about 18 inches I found a heavy black rock and tossed it out then checked the hole again no signal !!! I then retrieved the heavy black rock washed it off with my canteen water  and Wow what a piece of gold !!

I then hunted the area for more signals there were none so I headed back to my vehicle to go back to Base Camp. Just as I was getting to my vehicle Chuck Linda Davis approached asked how I was doing and I showed them the nugget and then headed on back to Base Camp to show my loving wife  her anniversary present (late by a few weeks) but she loved it!!

DAVE RINGQUIST