Question About Tailings Piles

[2Valen]

14 hours ago, Jim McCulloch said:

Another option, one that is biodegradable and unobtrusive, is to use the brightly colored yellow plastic forks or spoons purchased at party supply stores.

JIm,

The forks will work unless the soil is really dry, they break easily.

Also the plastic is not biodegradable any time soon.

[Jim_Alaska]

10 hours ago, 2Valen said:

JIm,

The forks will work unless the soil is really dry, they break easily.

Also the plastic is not biodegradable any time soon.

I think he meant to pick them up once you have marked the spot and detected it, not leave them there. This war on anything plastic is getting old.

[Jim McCulloch]

As detailed in "Advanced Nuggetshooting", I use two parallel rows of plastic spoons to grid an area, to more thoroughly work the area between the rows. Once an area is worked, I transfer the "downhill" row of spoons into the unworked "uphill" area, sort of a "leapfrog" kind of thing. Much more environmentally friendly than chaining. This is especially effective in stream beds, where I can grid a limited area, and then work that area both upstream and downstream. No, the spoons are not abandoned. When random hunting, I mark a nugget find spot with a spoon, and then I use more spoons to grid that immediate area to see if I'm onto a patch. An area which has several "find spot" spoons in close proximity gets hammered. Hope this helps clarify things. HH Jim

[Andyy]

On ‎1‎/‎26‎/‎2020 at 4:26 AM, nugget hunter nz said:

As for trash these can be really trashy. When I've hunted them I went over the area with gpx and placed we builders flags at every target then when I was done I went over each one with my monster 1000 dug the good targets left the bad and anything I was unsure off I took top layer off to get Beter signal. This alowes you to search with the more powerful pi but saves you digging 50 holes for nothing.. Just an idea but flags can be your friend even in creeks they work a charm 

I do something similar when in really trashy areas.  Instead of flags, I use the orange caps from Gatorade bottles to mark what I find with the GPZ and follow up with the GM1000.  They are plastic and you can see them fairly well.  

If you are night hunting I will use glow sticks from the dollar store.  In the really trashy areas you will swear you are walking on a hill with glow worms. 

[Andyy]

20 hours ago, Rob Allison said:

   Here is a short video I shot this weekend working around some old placers that contained drywasher screen piles and handstacking. There was potholes and digs all along the benches and places right in the creek bottom.  If you jump to about 2 minutes 10seconds, you will see the drywasher tailing pile, coarse and finer piles.  I found one nice 4+ grammer about 4 inches down using the Minelab GPZ 7000.  

Good video with valid example to the question at hand.  I am always interested in other people's techniques.  I myself, will never pass a dry washer pile or other small tailing piles.  The larger ones I have passed on many occasions in part due to my lack of knowledge of how it was put there and whether I am actually detecting an ore pile or a garbage pile.  But then I guess you rarely know for sure.

 

 

[jasong]

One other option to throw on the pile which I picked up from the geologists I worked with doing soil sample grids 400+ at a time: a small roll of flagging tape is $1 and stores in a hydration pack or pocket pretty easy. Rip a piece off, tie it to a rock or stick, toss it on the ground, pick up when finished. No metal involved, no sticking stuff into the ground.

[Lanny]

On 1/26/2020 at 4:26 AM, nugget hunter nz said:

Sorry I'm abit late to throw my 2 cents in I've hunted old tailings simalar to your pictures here in nz. Like mentioned big stones means you loose the depth of the stones but big nuggets can end up there so ounce plus nuggets will sing at good depth the smaller piles you can rake down if you want. As for trash these can be really trashy. When I've hunted them I went over the area with gpx and placed we builders flags at every target then when I was done I went over each one with my monster 1000 dug the good targets left the bad and anything I was unsure off I took top layer off to get Beter signal. This alowes you to search with the more powerful pi but saves you digging 50 holes for nothing.. Just an idea but flags can be your friend even in creeks they work a charm 

I really enjoyed this response, lots of good tips won from getting in there to find the gold.

I've hunted coarse and fine tailing piles and found gold in both.

Perseverance is the key as you'll need to move a lot of rock (for the coarse piles), and you'll need to do a lot of raking for the smaller stuff.

It does require dedication and lots of elbow grease, but it can pay off if, as Steve stated, you're in an area where there's been detectable gold found in the past . . . this is a critical tip from Steve.

All the best,

Lanny

[alaskaseeker]

One thing too you need to realize about tailings they were the dredge masters garbage dump so stuff was tossed around into the piles as the unit moved forward, some units had a lot of sluice, undercurrents and other items to catch the gold...If they were running thru mud some flat fine gold would also be lost...If you ever watched a dredge in operation you would understand the bucketline was also responsible for gold loss, The tremendous amount of material these monsters moved, what was lost was fairly negligible ....