Optimizing Ground Coverage

[jasong]

13 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

I think @jasongis one who will be particularly interested in this as he takes a scientific approach to prospecting and gold recovery.

Pretty much what Mitchell and Doc said. I am a prospector, not a detectorist. I just happen to use a detector quite a lot to prospect with.

What I mainly prospect for is geologic clues - structure, mineralization, formations, alteration, etc. I use topography, erosion, and gravity to narrow the search for heavy minerals down. Gold isn't a mystery, it came from somewhere and got to where it's at for a reason, no matter how convoluted and complex.

Very rarely do I wander wide open places swinging a detector, with little structure or other geologic clues available to follow. That's just raw detecting and not prospecting, and I don't have a whole lot of interest in it. So, the only time I really grid is when I'm working a small, defined patch area. Or, when I find scattered nuggets I will walk lines on my phone GPS across what I presume is the new patch, and map each nugget to look for distribution patterns/direction.

What I do absolutely grid is Google Earth. Entirely and completely in places I'm intersted in. I set a rectangle and then zoom in and scan each and every square foot of land on the aerials before visiting in person, and then set a new rectangle when I'm done with that one, and so on. Every night basically, instead of watching TV I do this until I've looked at every square inch zoomed in. I mark every single faint 2-track, footpath, prospect, abandoned building, foundation, dozing, or anything else that indicates human activity in the area, and I visit it.

With all the geologic and archaeologic points of interest downloaded into my phone, I simply visit them one by one on foot. And I very rarely miss anything major in areas I'm seriously prospecting. Just brute force covering every possible point of interest on the ground and thousands and thousands of hours on Google Earth aerial gridding every square foot. Often I don't even take my detector, I just cruise around on my ATV looking for things that tell me a place is worth coming back to detect or sample pan. I do that because I'm limited on time and I need to concentrate on the best possible places when I'm exploring for new ground.

For any new guy without old timers to show them the old known patches - this is the way. Brute force prospecting, with a focus on efficiency and not sweating getting 100% of everything, everywhere. 

[geof_junk]

As Jasong has pointed out Google Earth and Geo Maps can cut down the time spent on useless ground. The point to consider is how much time to spend testing the location. In virgin ground I see a few spots that has had someone walking through it with a chain. The amount of time the spent there was less than five minutes before they left the spot. I spent  over 50 hours gridding there and got 400 plus small nuggets about four ounces and plus a couple of good bits over an ounce.

Before covid hit I started a post (which I should continue another time) on nugget spread       .....LINK......         I took some Google earth shots of the patches and included a scale to show how far and varied the nuggets were from one and another. Some patches were large some small but considering the time spent to cover 5% of the spread and you can still miss the first.

By the way GB_Amteur

Gold has always been a hobby of mine and the gold I have sold were used for continuing the hobby. Don't worry I only got rid of the ugly specimens😁 and fly sh!t😁  but I'm sure I have had more skunk days than others but have exceeded 1 oz, 10 oz , 100 oz targets that I set my self, but the next seems out of reach.🙂

If you can limit your search by selecting good ground the odds will be in your favour, an a good sampling method will add to you success, but to stay sane you have to go to fossicking area for a break.  

By the way GB_Amateur it great to see the input others have contributed to your post.

[Norvic]

There you go once I would go along with informed geological only prospecting areas, but time has taught me without the 5+ years of geological learning by geologists I am lost, plus time has taught me even that is not enough, the geo I call on has told me way back, he can tell me why geologically I found gold where I have found after it was found but he cannot tell me specifically where to look tomorrow or not to look with certainty. 

Geologically my country was under the sea 300 million years ago then it got folded up when our land run into another land, it got folded up mostly on a weak line, a fault line and created what in Oz we call the Great Dividing Range, but 250million years ago in my area a series of volcanoes erupted and just west of that Great Divide and spewed out 3000 cubic kilometers of overburden into the mix, with the accompanying 250 million years of erosion etc what do we really know geologically, that is only the last 300 million years , the earth has been here 4 billion years.

The last 50 years we have used gold detectors using history and geology to guide us, but those areas are flogged, to find more virgin areas we have the option to remove those history and current geology knowledge constraints and broaden our search, remove those blinkers, using the most potent surface prospecting tool man has ever had... todays gold detectors, expand your horizons and accept our knowledge is very time limited or flog old likely ground.

[mn90403]

More on what Norvic said.

 

https://www.livescience.com/hidden-continent-new-subduction-zone.html?utm_source=notification 

[Norvic]

Wow MN only 45million years ago, that author explains it in easy to understand terms. But is really all above me, something for the Geologists, I follow and read as much as I can of Ian Plimer`s (OZ Geo) geological writings of my backyards forming years hoping to find some clues to help in the gold quest but just wandering about randomly is all I can manage, it de-fragments my "ram"😉.

[geof_junk]

A simple way for those are untrained look at  geological maps and google visual location features. Look at the areas of your GPS reading of your nuggets and the area around those locations. This will indicate the ground and geo condition that have been good to you. Similar geo and visual spots will be exceptional the best spots for your experience and knowledge to be successful . This method is a good guide for those that have not had 5 year of schooling to read the geo features of the area you are in. Take note of the geo condition/type of the ground near and out side your nugget spread.

Come on the rest of you give us some of your experience it may not be correct but it will give the rest of us an idea that may be useful to extend our thought of extending our knowledge that will increase our gold yield.