I Got A Picker Tonite

[nugget65]

Yeah we were at Owen Putnam State Forest

Spencer,Indiana last yr this time and stayed in the primitive cabin ... it was cheap..$30 a night and the creeks ran all around it.. found a few pickers and alot of geodes..we had a blast...we busted bedrock and used a sandman....stayed 4 days...

[tvanwho]

those sure look like nuggets to me, NICE....

 

-Tom

[tvanwho]

I use my brass or copper  dowsing rods when sampling isn't doing the trick, success rate isn't as good as I'd like, maybe 30%, been at it 30 years. Sometimes it works great and sometimes not at all. But no method is perfect. Just wish my fellow prospectors would stop putting me down for using dowsing rods? Its not magic, most everybody can do it.Heck, I even discovered if am having a bad day doing it, I can take Vitamin B12 tablets and make it work better for a short while. Where the rods cross, I dig and go back to sampling. Sometimes I can mark out an area where the rods cross. At Gold creek in Indiana, I marked out an area like 20 x 40 feet and color was there all over where my rods crossed every time. That was a GOOD day. A gold dredger up in Maine that I taught to dowse, found a spot with her nephew, she told me ,where they just left their dredge for 2 years and she was getting pea size nuggets, until a hurricane filled in their hole and almost washed her dredge away she said.

I even let my chief Indiana dowsing critic use my copper rods to locate a silver quarter I hid under a carpet. He found it right off BUT still gives me a hard time ??  Dunno why?

Sometimes I can locate gold deposits on maps and aerials work the best. Found a spot in Lafayette,Indiana last year doing this and the gold was all over in the one hot gravel bar I had targeted on the aerial photo but nothing downstream as I had determined from home, 150 miles away. Too bad it was all fines? Maybe I didn't dig deep enough in the gravels? Was down 18 inches and still getting color but nuthin big.Need to go back again this year and see if can get permission to dig in a hotter part of that creek. My 2 buddies had wanted me to map dowse that creek and I showed them where I thought the gold rich parts were, and they confirmed it, so that was a boost for me...doesn't always work out that well tho, have had my share of disappointments too...

 

-T

[nugget65]

I seen a guy one day using them and I was like .."that's crazy"..lol but aabout an hr later my wife lost her ring at the campground and he kept bugging me to let him find it and sure as a pigs butt is pork he found it in like 5 minutes and it was buried in the dirt...so yeah I'm a believer now...oh and here in cali we call those pickers...When I showed the lady at the ranger station she about flipped bacbackwards asking me where I found them...i told her... All that gold was found in bedrock and mud and in the rain and snow.. still had a good time...

[rumblefish]

Maybe it's not so much the rods, but the person holding them that is more sensitive to where the gold is. Curious effect anyway, and if it helps you find some gold, fantastic!

[Steve Herschbach]

The problem with dowsing Tom is your 30% success rate. My success rate is better than 90% using research and common sense. If you like doing it though I would be the last person in the world to give you a hard time about it. The only time I get concerned is when I see people spending big money on dowsing devices disguised as electronic instruments.

[tvanwho]

Me and some friends went the big money dowsing route many years ago and it was a BIG waste of money needless to say.I gave up and went back to homemade copper or stainless steel dowsing rods which work reasonably well and dirt cheap.

[tvanwho]

Nugget,

 

How did you happen to be at Owen Putnam SF in Indiana when you live in California? I'd like to hear the story? I was hoping some of us might get together over there this year perhaps? Were you on Rattlesnake creek or Fish creek or ?

Thanks. Ps, I didn't know they had a cabin to rent?

 

-Tom

[nugget65]

Tom,

it's actually quite a story for me..

my mom passed 3 yrs this coming March 12..anyhoo I lost my best friend that day..I fell into a spiral downfall and relapsed..A mth later I lost it all and was a single dad trying to raise 2 teenage daughters ..long story short we became homeless living in a mini van and camping in a tent .. i got clean and made our way to california from fl and found my first piece of gold on fathers day 2013..IT WAS ON ...MY NEW ADDICTION...GOLD!!! I stayed in the river 7 days a week 5-10 hrs a day.. In one mth I got us out of a homeless situation by thanksgiving of 2013 I found over 9oz of gold...I was sniping ..sluicing ..panning..In Dec of 2013 we set out and mined Oregon...indiana..montana..idaho..n. carolina..georgia..and colorado..In April 2014 I grounded in Douglas City Ca. With my wife and daughters...gold has blessed me and saved my life in more ways then one.... metal detecting is my next level of mining...just don't have my own yet..saving for a decent one ..been metal detecting with my neighbor who has found lbs of gold over the last 30 yrs and has showed me some decent oz+ size nuggets..anyhoo yup I'm a newbie to mining ...an olé timer told me I have a gift for it.. yup gold feeds my family..NOPE NOT RICH!!!.. anyway thnx for letting me share my story ...first time I've talked about it... next expedition is going to be Alaska..it's on my bucket list!!!!

[Gold Seeker]

Tom,

it's actually quite a story for me..

my mom passed 3 yrs this coming March 12..anyhoo I lost my best friend that day..I fell into a spiral downfall and relapsed..A mth later I lost it all and was a single dad trying to raise 2 teenage daughters ..long story short we became homeless living in a mini van and camping in a tent .. i got clean and made our way to california from fl and found my first piece of gold on fathers day 2013..IT WAS ON ...MY NEW ADDICTION...GOLD!!! I stayed in the river 7 days a week 5-10 hrs a day.. In one mth I got us out of a homeless situation by thanksgiving of 2013 I found over 9oz of gold...I was sniping ..sluicing ..panning..In Dec of 2013 we set out and mined Oregon...indiana..montana..idaho..n. carolina..georgia..and colorado..In April 2014 I grounded in Douglas City Ca. With my wife and daughters...gold has blessed me and saved my life in more ways then one.... metal detecting is my level of mining...just don't have my own yet..saving for a decent one ..been metal detecting with my neighbor who has found lbs of gold over the last 30 yrs and has showed me some decent oz+ size nuggets..anyhoo yup I'm a newbie to mining ...an olé timer told me I have a gift for it.. yup gold feeds my family..NOPE NOT RICH!!!.. anyway thnx for letting me share my story ...first time I've talked about it... next expedition is going to be Alaska..it's on my bucket list!!!!

 

 Nugget,

 

 That's a great and inspiring story, the best I have heard of someone getting started in gold prospecting and getting their life back on track , you're an asset to the mining community, IMHO!!

 

  Thanks for sharing your story with us, I wish you the very best for the future!