What Do You Think I Found?

[jasong]

There are a few specific instances where I commonly find nuggets in the float or right on or near surface and two of them are important enough that all prospectors should know about them. The problem is shallow nuggets are much less common in popular areas so it's easy to think they just don't exist because they were mostly found and removed decades ago. Look at how many pounds of nuggets guys pulled out of Q right on or near surface though back in the 70's and 80's, and that was in gravel (not tailings) that can be up to 20ft thick.

 

Especially true in the desert SW. But I found quite a few up in NNV within a few inches of surface too and not even in gravel, just in fluffy dirt or clay.

 

It is coincidentally the subject of a video I'm currently making so in the spirit of this thread I guess I'll leave it to people to guess what I'm talking about if they don't know already. 

[Condor]

In my inartful response I neglected the role of physics and gravity that guides my economic sense.  It's well established that due to its specific gravity, gold, over time will continue to settle to its lowest point until something stops it.  Desert washes run perhaps twice a year, and have catastrophic floods at best once or twice in our lifetime.  When you see a 20 ft high cut bank with the strata of thousands of years of flowing and flooding you get the big picture.  The occasional big flood may dislodge gold from its hiding place and throw it into the outwash gravels, but it's not a regular event and not worth spending a lot of time pursuing.  The gold got laid down in those gravels thousands of years ago, a .22 cartridge casing or lump of aluminum foil got laid down in our lifetime and they lack the inherent density of gold to settle at those bottom levels.  So, if you spend your time in outwash gravels you'll find the detritus of our recent human activity and not the dense gold that has perhaps settled beyond detection range.   The fact that someone found a huge chunk of gold in dredge tailings doesn't change the role of gravity because in all likelihood that gold was resting at its lowest level until acted on and unfortunately discarded by the dredger.  

My tortured point is that especially in the desert southwest, I concentrate my efforts in areas that have not only produced gold, but contain settling bottom areas that are reachable with modern electronics. 

My own personal detecting guidelines, "deep outwash gravels, no bueno".  I want to stick to those areas where I have the greatest opportunity to detect and recover gold in its lowest level hiding place. 

My apologies for belaboring the point. 

[Norvic]

Condor, We all hunt in varied conditions, and the yellow stuff can certainly surprise you in some of the unlikely places we find it. Certainly understand where you are coming from.

Going back to a earlier thread and post I made of one such experience. I copy & paste below that post below.

 

On sink rates of coins or nuggets in dry country (all dry where I chase). As some of our dry country dries after the wet,(usually black soil) it cracks, which allows some targets to "fall" down these cracks, but sometimes this soil movement also pushes even solid nuggets further to the surface. Over the years speaking to cattle property owners they comment on how in some cases it even "pushes" the steel star pickets almost right out of the ground.

 

One such case in a back soil basin whose depth was more then a metre, I scored a 6 ounce solid about 6 inches deep. Nothing else until the ground was pushed to bedrock where the wash was. Can only deduce that nugget was pushed almost to the surface, it certainly did not shed there as it was fairly obvious the black soil came after the gold shed. This phenomena while not common is not so rare in the country I speak of. Well at least this is the only logical explanation I could think of.

 

All reinforce that old truism "Tis where tis".

I trust it is AOK to wander around a bit on this thread, Mitchel...... sort of brings out the "detective detectorist" in us, I enjoyed your Quiz and where we`ve gone with it. Certainly look forward to Jasongs video.

[jasong]

Your 6 ouncer find might be very similar to the same conditions which cause nuggets to be found right on or right beneath surface in nothing but fluffy dirt or maybe some clay in NNV. Which is 1 of 2 specific instances I mentioned above and I think Reno Chris was probably thinking about mentioning something about it too and maybe still will. Something like letting the air out of a raft...what is that word.   .

 

BTW, I'm gonna kinda steal and change your "detective detectorist" phrase and use "Metal Detectives" as the title for a little series of shorts.

[Condor]

I have seen places here in AZ where wet/dry cycles and freezing/thawing cycles push rocks to the surface and ultimately push fence posts right out of the ground. There are similar theories about our "desert pavement" which often overlays hundreds of feet of rocks and clay. I see dozer cuts through the desert pavement and there is no underlying stratification. Just random rocks and clay type soil.

[jasong]

The desert pavement is one instance of what I'm talking about. I'm not much of one for suspense or guessing, so I'll just say it. It's called "deflation" and its very common in the desert SW and can form concentrated little patches if you get many tens of feet worth of deflated gravel over tens of thousands or a hundred thousand years. The wind blows away the fluff slowly but steadily but the nuggets remain as the ground level keep decreasing. A lot of those areas were flogged by the early VLF'ers though, piles of old 9V's laying around them are around testament to that.

 

I think in a lot of cases most the gold was in the first 6-10 inches and then there wasn't much concentration beneath it where deflation hadn't really set in as much (it works from the surface down after all). I never really understood why I didn't find much more in those patches with my PI until I started finding them virgin and realize that there really just wasn't much gold deeper. 

 

But there is still one more very common place to find nuggets right in the middle of washes at or near surface though. And while it has a bit to do with erosion it has little to do with flooding or tailings.

[mn90403]

Norvic (and others)

 

I like the discussion that has evolved from my posting.  It doesn't seem to be a hijacked thread.

 

Keep up the discussion.

 

Mitchel

 

Condor,

 

Your description about digging is a constant for me at the beach.  The wet sand fills a hole faster than I can dig.  Sometimes they are abandoned because I don't have my BIG scoop.  I've broken several smaller ones.  It was one of the reasons I left this hole the first time.  I thought it was trash and I was willing to live with that determination until I thought about a deep target.

 

This hole reminded me of another desert wash/gully from a few years ago.  More on that on another thread.

 

Some holes I wish I never started.  But some beach detectorists find amazing things that are deep.  Sometimes nuggets are found in deep washes but you are right ... more trash is there than gold.

 

Mitchel

[Reno Chris]

I will only say that we all have concepts in our heads about good vs. poor places to search. They are very helpful in making our time more productive. We each make those choices based on our experiences and successes in finding gold. However, when we are too rigid in applying those rules and too quick to reject spots that don't fit our concepts, some of the places we reject out of hand will turn out to be much more productive than we would expect. So I would only suggest that when we reject places as "no good", we should do it very carefully.

I would add that I have found plenty of gold in places that many prospectors have walked or driven right past and ignored, and I have also seen other guys find gold in places that I thought would be "no good".

[dgatleyDP]

OK, I bit too, but after all that - Did you refill the hole?