So, let's start with the basics... Let's get everyone up to speed on various things... I generally ramble, but I will try hard not to. This post is going to deal with getting started in prospecting... We never will have too many people engaged in prospecting activities, and nothing makes me happier than to share this passion with the world.
The reactions I get vary from total shock that people actually spend time looking for gold, to totally impressing people. It is pretty much the final frontier of adventure in the world which we live. Unless you get to go into space, or unless you get to travel to the depths of the oceans, this may very well be the closest you get to true adventure.
All you need to start out is a basic understanding of the tools needed, and where you can and can't look for gold.
First of importance, is the gold pan. I recommend a 14" Keene plastic gravity trap gold pan... It isn't too big and it isn't too small, it is light and easy on the wrists, and easy to learn the motion and movements necessary to wash the gravels in your pan. Panning is the most important part of any mining operation. Even the great big bucket line dredges that roamed Alaska and a few western states in the bygone days, all ended up down to the panning to isolate the last few flakes of gold from the cleanups. I recommend going to http://www.goldprospectors.org/, and click on media, watch shows... There is much great instruction to be found in all the episodes they have up and should give you a good example of how panning works.
After that, you need a shovel, a bucket, and generally a screen is recommended. The smaller you can screen the gravel, the easier it is for the gold to sink and work it's way down to the bottom of your pan or sluice. Big rocks cannot be displaced by fine gold... So fine gravel makes for great gold recovery, but always check your screens just in case! If you are just panning, it is possible to work up to a quarter or half a yard of gravel in say a 12 hour day. Not very fast, but if you are very selective about the quality of the gravel you are panning, it may actually pay nicely. Some people are good enough at locating the gold in a stream that they can actually get a tenth of an ounce per pan!!!
However, a sluice will essentially run as much material as you can dig and screen. All it requires is say half an inch to an inch of drop for every foot of sluice box. It is lined with carpet or miners moss known as Nomad by 3M. On top of that is generally placed expanded metal, and then hungarian style riffles which create eddies as the current of water flows over them, allowing the gold to get caught along with the heavy sands. The light sands flow right out of the end. A sluice can handle many yards of gravel a day, but a two man crew will have their hands full trying to dig and process more than a few yards of gravel in a day. Quality is more important than quantity. You can run dump truck loads of gravel but if there's no gold, the guy who is looking for the best ground will do better with only a pan. I recommend going to http://www.keeneeng.com/ to look at equipment and get an idea as to what's out there.
As you advance through your prospecting, you may find you want to do some suction dredging. I believe my next post for sure will be covering suction dredging. I know this post was, but I felt it important to give you more of a basic background first. Suction dredging is heavily regulated, in some cases it is overly regulated, but that is why it is even more important we abide by the regulations where possible, because they are waiting for us to slip up so they can take one example and hang the whole lot of us as environmental villains. Unfortunately the people who understand it the least, have the most say about things like this.
Suction dredges range from an inch and a half all the way up to perhaps 12" or more... Though anything over 4" cannot be handled by one person, and anything over 6 or 8 is generally a commercial operation.
Then there are highbankers and power sluices. This just pumps water through a sluice box, but it has a hopper so all you do is shovel and it pretty much washes and screens the material by itself, allowing you to run as fast as you can shovel. But they do need permits in most places.
Recirculating equipment that is battery powered and self contained is a great way to avoid the regulations!!! But your productivity will be reduced as your water will need changed off and on.
Most federal lands are open to prospecting and, in the Western states, you can still file mining claims in accordance with the 1872 mining laws. But you also have state laws to go by as well. It is an interesting predicament. The state owns the waterways, but the feds own the land in the case with Forest Service and BLM. You cannot except under VERY rare circumstances perhaps, conduct any operations within national parks, or wildlife refuges, and it is indeed a very big crime if you are trying to mine in these areas without proper paperwork. I am aware they have regulations and guidelines for getting permission, but that doesn't mean they actually grant permission!!!
Private property is fine, as long as you have the land owners permission. Back east, unfortunately you are going to have to generally find private land owners willing to let you prospect, perhaps in exchange for a percentage split of any finds. Be polite, and respect their wishes. The better impression we as prospectors can give, the more likely they will say "Wow, these gold prospectors are great people, they are welcome any time!"
Many people are mistaken and say "gold miners are greedy"... No, that's not true at all. How many people do you know voluntarily spend their lives pushing a number two shovel day in and day out many times not finding but a few colors in their pan. Robert W. Service summed it up quite nicely in "Spell of the Yukon":
There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting;
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
It's luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease;
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.
The full poem can be found at http://www.robertwservice.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=83 and I recommend you read it, it's well worth the time.
All I want, is to find the gold. I don't care how much of it I find, or how much I get. But I want to see lots of it in my pan. It's one thing to have gold, but it is quite another experience to actually find it. I cannot describe the thrill... But it truely will give you a gold fever when you see your first flake in the pan. Your next question... How do I know it's gold? Heh... Yeah, I worried about that too when I started. I went months not knowing what it looked like, and you know why? Because I never found any! When I finally did, oh man, there is NO mistaking it for anything else after that. It is a very rich buttery yellow color in most places... Some places, it can actually be a dull bronze color, but you can tell by how it hangs on the bottom of the pan when you swirl it around if it's gold or not. If you still have doubts, take a color, smash it with a hammer. If it shatters, it's not gold. If it flattens out into a bigger flake, well, you've definitely got something!
Which leads to another question. What areas should I look in? Well, you want to do some research. You want to look for gold where gold has been found in the past. It is a peculiar geology, and not all sources of gold deposits have ever been found. In fact, one of the streams I prospect that has been known for two ounce nuggets, the motherlode source has never been found. No one KNOWS WHERE the gold is originally from. They just know it's there. And a great many geologic events shaped the world over the centuries and milennias. It could be from anywhere, but gold is where you find it. Now, I am not saying there aren't streams that went undiscovered. I myself have found gold in a stream previously certifiably free of gold, and am proud of it. Unfortunately, I discovered also that it is mostly limited to an ancient streambed that crossed the creek. Before I could get to work on it, well, I lost access to that piece of land.
You want to see what general areas had gold production. How much gold was produced. Was it mostly byproduct of hardrock mining? Or was there some placering too? Googling is the easiest way to find research information... If you live in say, Colorado, you can google "Colorado Gold Localities" or "Colorado Gold Placers"... Enough stuff will come up to keep you busy. http://www.49ermike.com/ is a great resource as well, and he has quite a list of locations gold is known to be found all accross the country. It will at least get you started, and there is a great forum with lots of prospectors who are glad to help you if they can. Prospecting is not like fishing or hunting... Try getting a fisherman to tell you where he caught his trophy bass and how he caught it... Try getting a hunter to tell you the secret of getting his big trophy... Not gonna happen. But, prospectors are happy to show you how, and generally where you can go, because generally they will at the very least know of a spot that has gold in it, but they themselves don't work in... And even most of the time they will tell you where they are working.
For example, massive amounts of gold have been found and are STILL found around say, Boise Idaho... Now, common sense would say not to waste all of your time looking for gold around Pocatello, which is mostly a phosphates mining region. Go near where gold was found in the past. And the larger the river, the more likely it has gold, but the more likely it is very fine stuff called flood gold that can be panned off the shore and gravel bars, and that the good stuff may never see the light of day, because no one is going to dive 100' under water and somehow dig who knows how far to get the big gold caught in the big river. In my opinion, the same forces that made incredibly rich ancient gravel deposits thousands of years ago are still at work. I mean, there is massive amounts of gold under the major rivers, but the sediment is so deep, and bedrock so deep, it's more or less wrote off on the very large waterways. But, you can look for the tributaries that added the gold, and you can also look for old bench gravels the stream left when it was flowing higher than its present day streambed.
In the interest of time, and overloading you with information, TO BE CONTINUED!!! SOON! STAY TUNED AND FEEL FREE TO SUBSCRIBE TO BE EMAILED WHEN THE NEW POSTS COME OUT!!!
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