Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories

[Lanny]

16 hours ago, geof_junk said:

Lanny you make it sound hard over there in USA 😉 Over in WA Australia I found about 40 nuggets one afternoon,  about half were sitting in the sun having a tan.😎 Most were about 2 or 3 grams in weight.....LINK...... I guess us Ozzie's are a bit blessed or maybe lazy. 😁 Thanks again for your detailed description of your adventure.     👍

Yes, I'd say it's harder to find nugget patches here in North America for most people. Some of the California/Nevada/Arizona nugget hunters seem to have more luck, but here in Canada, where I'm currently chasing the gold (I have chased it in the United States, from Arizona to Alaska), it's not a likely thing to find large patches of nuggets like you do in Australia. That's why someday, I'd love to chase the gold in Australia to get a crack at some of those sun-bakers you find just laying around. It's been a rare thing for me to find sun-bakers, but I have found a few.

I popped over to one of your threads and looked at your aerial views of some of your nugget patches, made me drool all over the keyboard!

All the best, and thanks for the information about Western Australia, 

Lanny

[Lanny]

A New Learning Curve

My son and I loaded up our blue mule (Dodge 3/4 ton diesel) and headed for the mountains Friday evening.

That meant we'd be doing part of the drive in the dark, and setting up camp in the dark, but when we're out chasing the gold, that's no hardship at all.

Early the next morning, we did an equipment check: gold pans, a bucket full of sniping equipment, a couple of picks, as well as several detectors. On our way to check freshly uncovered bedrock, we wanted to make sure we had what we needed.

My son had his Minelab X-Terra 705, a machine he's got about 600 hours on detecting for coins and jewelry (and he's done very well!), a machine I gave him a few years ago, but he's never used it to look for nuggets, so this trip would be a new learning curve for him.

The 705 is a machine that Minelab put a lot of extra technology inside for the price-point at the time, and it had sniffed out nuggets in the past, so I knew it would do the job on shallow to gold bedrock that wasn't super hot.

To leave camp that Saturday morning, we ignited the throaty roar of the diesel and left camp slowly, as in August the super-dry roads in camp are blanketed with fine clay dust that mushrooms a cloud of dust that goes everywhere.

When we hit the main forest service track, we opened it up a bit more, but the washboard condition of the gravel roads wouldn't let us go too fast without shaking the truck to its core.

Next, we hit the paved highway and made excellent time.

It was a glorious, windless day. The sky was completely cloudless, the ceiling of air a perfect cobalt blue, the pines and firs a deep green that contrasted beautifully with the flawless blue sky.

After seventy minutes, we finally arrived at the mine, this after leaving the highway then slowly navigating a logging road, one heavily rutted from recent haulage. The road included what the locals call "punchouts", places where the roadbed has been pounded through by logging trucks that leave dangerous soft sections. If you hit those sections at speed, the front end of your truck dives down deep and fast and you experience the "punch"! Then you come flying out. If you enter too slowly, and not in 4-wheel drive, you get stuck, so it's an ongoing challenge.

At the mine site, the owner was chatting with the vacuum truck crew, the group cleaning the bedrock for the next couple of days. After his meeting, he told us where we could work away from the vacuum crew, but he also wanted us to check their progress to see if any gold was being left behind. We did from time to time, and we directed them to spots where they'd left some gold.

To work the bedrock effectively, I made sure my son had a magnetic wand to deal with the never-ending bits of steel from the excavation. Moreover, with the bedrock super-hard once again (like last week), the magnet would clear the surface signals so the softer sounds of gold could be heard.

We fired up our detectors. I chose the Gold Bug Pro as I love the digital meter on shallow bedrock as an aid to ID'ing the gold. Moreover, for any iffy signal, a quick swipe with the magnet usually solves the puzzle, or some quick pick and magnet work either tells the tale or requires more investigation. Furthermore, in several cases where the meter read lower than gold, the nuggets were sitting among pieces of magnetite (ironstone) that skewed the digital reading, but once the magnet had removed the ironstone, the gold signal was nice and clear.

While I was collecting a nice catch of nuggets, my son was having some frustration with his detector due to all of the bits of steel, but he kept at it and at last he found two nuggets with the 705! Well, the dam burst after that, and he showed some innovation as well. When he'd get a signal that was strange, he'd quickly switch to discrimination, and if he got any positive response, he knew it might be a nugget. He kept toggling back and forth over the next couple of days to verify signals, and it worked out very well for him.

The bedrock we worked was often broken in sharp slabs, so we had to be very careful while walking over and through those troughs of iron-hard bedrock as the footing was bad. To slip would be to get a nasty cut, and luckily, we avoided any injury until the second day my son did a nice circular slice around his finger when he reached too quickly into a crevice to check out a signal.

In the bedrock, there were slabs of clay stuck to the sides of the troughs either where the excavator had broken chunks of bedrock out or where we used bars to pry apart sections. That sticky clay held the gold! Sometimes, after locating a target, we could see the gold stuck to the clay and only had to pry it out.

I scanned a section of bedrock where there was a deeper hole. The excavator had hit a soft spot within that super-hard bedrock, and at the end a bedrock rise, there was a small pile of channel stones. I got a cracking response that turned out to be a six gram nugget! We kept at it until it started to get dark, and by the time we headed up to the mine boss's trailer, we'd caught just over an ounce of nuggety gold.

The next day, I let my son go solo, and I only hung around to give him tips if needed. However, he did well fine tuning his own system of ID'ing targets by toggling back and forth from prospecting mode to discrimination. He kept gathering a nice collection of targets in the little orange bucket he threw his signals into. (Rather than take the time to visually ID each target, he'd throw them in the bucket so he could pan them all out at the end of the day.) As well, when he'd get a broad signal under the coil (which often indicates a concentration of flake gold), he'd scoop that dirt into the bucket as well.

As darkness closed on that last day, he panned out the dirt in his bucket. He'd caught half an ounce of sassy gold! That included a three gram nugget he'd found through determination. He was detecting a flat chunk of bedrock that held lots of steel signals, but he kept swiping them off with the magnet. Then he got a good sound right on the edge of the flat bedrock where it dropped off into a pocket of water. He worked the signal with his pick until he popped it out, and that was how he found his nice nugget! Without removing the steel shavings that produce such a nasty racket in the headphones, he'd likely have missed the nugget.

So, we got a 1.5 ounce bounce for those two days, but golden memories of a hunt together that will last a lifetime.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Wanted to post some pictures to go with the last couple of stories from this summer:

 (Half an ounce of goodness found by my son with his X-Terra 705.)

 A 3-gram nugget he found on a lonely little shelf.

 A nice piece my son found all by himself, his first time using the 705 for nugget hunting (he has over 500 hours on it coin-shooting though).

 

 

 It seems to be good luck to wave your hand over a pan of gold before you start detecting, certainly worked for us!
 

The main haul we both made the first day, largest piece 6-grams.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

(Annual Christmas Poetry)

Santa’s Fate

One winter’s day, in ’82,
Well, things were lookin’ mighty blue,
Cause Santa’s sleigh was runnin’ late,
And this produced an awful state.

The kids was feelin’ mighty down.
‘Cause Santa might not get to town!
An avalanche had closed the way
To block their local Christmas sleigh.

Now Santa’s name was Honest John,
A muleskinner off and on,
He cussed and chewed, he liked his booze
And in a brawl, he was bad news.

So, not your average Santa, no.
But Christmas set John’s heart aglow
That he could freight the gifts and toys
To all those little girls and boys.

His mules he’d garb in greens and reds,
With antlers mounted on their heads,
Then off they’d scoot to meet the train
Down far below, out on the plain.

So once again they did the same,
But Fate had run a crooked game
And choked the pass with tons of snow.
So, Honest John was stuck below.

A telegram he quickly sent,
And this is how the message went:
“Just meet me at the closest spot
Where all that snow just ain’t quite got.”

The folks was stumped just how to go
Through all the piled up winter snow.
Why, snowshoes might just do the trick
To meet their hometown Old Saint Nick!

The Sheriff rounded up a crew
Of miners, ranchers, gamblers too
With packs and bags they quickly went.
This telegram to John they sent:

“We’ll get to you just at that spot
Where all that snow just ain’t quite got.”
This news was something mighty big!
So John, he danced a merry jig

To know the good he done each year
To fill that town with Christmas cheer
Would once again get carried out,
On Christmas Eve, without a doubt.

Well, Honest John, he met that crew
And filled their bags and packs up too.
He turned his mules out far below
Then snowshoed off across the snow.

*******************************

On Christmas morn, the kids they found,
With wondrous feelings quite profound,
Their toys and goodies 'round the tree
Just like the way things used to be.

But Honest John was fast asleep.
His promises that he did keep
Had left him tuckered, plumb worn thin.
Yet on his face, a peaceful grin.


All the best, and a Merry Christmas to all,

Lanny

[Lanny]

I found a prospecting entry today from the summer of 1997 that I’d like to post:

“Most of the prospecting I get to do is in the summer (up here in Canada) because that's when things thaw enough to get out and root around. Well, one summer in the Omineca region of British Columbia, I was working with some miners who were stripping a large placer cut in an area that had historically produced coarse gold in quantity.

They got down to bedrock and as they worked the excavation of the pit, the gold got better and better as they worked from the front (south) to the back (north) of the pit.

When things got real interesting (that is when nice nuggets and coarse gold were turning up in the sluice) they hit a massive series of what the local miners called drift mines (they described drift mining as tunneling from a lower elevation in relation to the pay-layer to allow for drainage from seepage). Once the old-timers hit the pay-layer, they worked back and forth following the good pay. It could be done underground all winter long and the stockpiled material was then processed in the Spring.

In fact, the entire back end of the pit had been roomed out (roomed is the term they used when the tunnels were so close together they went back and forth in a series of parallel tunnels literally taking all of the material from a pay layer, thus leaving a large underground pillared and lagged [wood that forms the roof of the room].

At any rate, the placer pit was now abandoned and scheduled to be refilled. They said I could poke around, but to stay out of the old drifts as they were dangerous. Well, that didn't take any convincing on my part. I have done a bunch of caving and rappelling but the tunnel works were there for well over a hundred years and the wet lumber had changed somehow and broke in chunks with the consistency of celery, nothing like wood at all.

As I poked around, there was seepage everywhere, and the lagging on the ceiling of the tunnels was all cracked and caving. In addition, the pit was rapidly filling with water from the front to the back where I wanted to prospect, so I didn't have much time.
The modern miners had displaced a bunch of the large upright pillars (large hand-hewn logs) with their machinery when they hit the drifts. I panned some of the material from the false bedrock and true bedrock they had scraped. There was a little gold, mostly small flakes. I reasoned that when the old-timers were putting in their pillars and posts they must have covered up some pay, even if it was a small amount.

As well, I knew from all the work they had done (extremely difficult manual labor) that the pay had to have been excellent; the modern pit had proven that as well.

So, I found a nice fat displaced pillar, levered it out of the socket with a large bar and carefully collected the material from around it and in the socket forming the bottom of the hole. I panned it out and man you should have seen the pickers!

I scratched around the base of another pillar but I couldn't move it out of its place and yet I still found some more coarse gold.

However, time was running out. The seepage was real bad and the upper bank material started to slough off from above, and let me tell you, when that starts to happen, it’s time to get out fast! All the gold in the world isn't worth a lick if you’re dead.

Standing above the bank I watched as the wet material oozed down into the pit which then collapsed the bank, with a slurping sound, down into the cut.

There would be no more getting the gold there anymore, it was kind of sad, but I had found out something truly valuable: anytime I come across old drift workings that are exposed by modern mining, if the conditions are safe, I'll happily gather the material from around those old pillars and pan it.”

I found out more about the type of gold some of that false bedrock (I mentioned earlier) was holding on another day, but that’s a story for a later time.

May you all find something golden to smile about, and all the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

***Annual Christmas Prospecting Poetry***

Christmas Blizzard Gold

A minin’ boom drew young and old
To find the fabled yellow gold
That Nature’d cached in hills up high
So long ago, in days gone by.

A town erected far below
Was clogged with folks, their hopes aglow
That soon they’d bag some treasured gold
Before the winter got too cold.

Well Jill and Jim were clever folk
Who listened well when others spoke.
They took down notes for finding gold,
Birthed from that fabled Mother Lode.

Those golden tips they cached away
A-waiting for that special day
When grub-staked Jim would ready be
To glean the gold to set them free.

To chase the gold, you’ll need the will,”
(Was told to him by his gal Jill)
“That drive to go and never quit
No matter what to get to it.”

“Then lookey here,” said Jim to Jill,
“I think I’ll prospect yonder hill
Where alders grow all mighty thick
Along its steeply flowing crick.”

So, Jill helped Jim into his pack.
“Now hurry off and don’t come back
Until you’ve found the nugget gold
That Nature’s hid from times of old.”

So Jim, he grabs his mining kit
And then he goes out after it!
He pans the stream and finds some specks
So farther up that crick he treks.

He scouts a spot with workings old
Ones antler-dug, while chasing gold.
Stout trees there grew up out from it,
That long abandoned placer pit.

“Well here’s a mystery, yes siree.
I’ll dig around a bit to see
Jest what those diggers dug for here.”
(He digs a bit, then gives a cheer.)

“Well I’ll be durned.” He says aloud
“These nuggets here will do me proud!”
I’ll rustle up some more of these
To give my Jill a life of ease.”

The work was tough, the days were cold,
While Jim dug out that precious gold.
The season turned, and winter rose,
But Jim toiled on through frost and snows.

He soldiered on through brutal days
A diggin’ through the rocks and clays.
At last he hit the bedrock true,
That cradled clay all colored blue.

He stood there dumb and gazed in awe
At all the gold he surely saw.
“This here’s bonanza gold for sure!
Them nuggets bright look awful pure.”

He worked the clay and freed the gold
That slumbered there from times of old.
He bagged it up, then started down
On Christmas Eve to get to town.

But on his way, a blizzard grew
The drifts were huge, so Jim he knew
His hopes of getting back to see
His precious Jill might never be.

Now Jill was home, and worried sick!
Her Jim was in that blizzard thick.
He’d promised her that home he’d be
To help her trim the Christmas tree.

Her snowshoes stout were resting there
Beside their cabin’s only chair.
“Before I go, I’ll write out quick,
A prayerful note to Old Saint Nick”:

“Now Nick”, said she, “I’m in a bind
Yet filled with hope my Jim I’ll find.
My wish is that I’ll git to him,
Although the chance is mighty slim.

But if you’ll let me find my beau,
In all that whirlin’ winter snow,
We’ll give what gold my Jim has found
To help the needy folks around.”

Well, Jill set out into the night
In all that howling wintry fright
In hopes Saint Nick would surely show
Where Jim was lost in all that snow.

She trudged and toiled for quite some time
Before she heard a sleigh bell’s chime,
When wind had lulled enough to know
She’d heard that noise out in the snow.

“A bell,” She said, “A way out here?
Saint Nick’s sure sign my Jim is near!”
And she was right. Her Jim she found
By seeking out that wondrous sound.

No bell was found on Jim or pack.
His nose was froze, his toes were black,
Yet Jim was safe on Christmas day
So Jill gave all the gold away. . . .

No needy folks could then be found
In all the country there around.
And Jill, well she was mighty quick
To give her thanks to Old Saint Nick.

******************************

The seasons changed, the warmth came back
And Jim put on his mining pack.
He winked at Jill, and grabbed his kit.
“I’d best be getting after it.”

“And what is that,” said Jill to Jim,
“That gets you out on such a whim?”
“I marked a spot,” said Jim to Jill
“With nuggets thick up on that hill.”

Merry Christmas 2021, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[rvpopeye]

Lanny

Author ? and poet , I guess yes. You have "the gift"sir !

I just spent almost a week reading your thread here.. and it's good to see the reboot recently , I'll be looking for your next Lanny's Gold Tales installment !!

it was a good week. I had almost as much fun as you seemed to be having . (I didn't find any of the gold 😛)

 Those nice permissions and patches you've described so well will be envied by many !

There's gold here in the Northeast Corner but more beneath the beach sands than in our streams and hills. 

 🖖

 

 

 

 

 

[Lanny]

Great to hear from you, glad you enjoyed the thread.

Covid and it's accompanying lockdowns, plus the bad forest fires has kept me from the diggin's, but hopefully next year brings some golden opportunities.

All the best to you, and Merry Christmas

[Lanny]

Bugs, Blood and Gold: Tales from the North.

(Warning--Prospecting humour based loosely on some true events)

In the summertime, here in the northlands, hundreds of prospectors line up to donate blood. This is no donation at a clinic but a bizarre, annual event conducted in the boreal forests.

To provide some background, if you’ve never been deep in a northern forest, I’m afraid you’ll have a hard time relating to the True Northern Prospector (known as the TNP from now on) that heads off each season to donate blood.

To begin, try to imagine a place of incredible beauty and peace. A forested wonderland of massive pine, cedar, tamarack, and fir—a glorious spot with forest floor lush in undergrowth, a pristine site where crystal streams run unhindered, where lakes teem with trout, grayling, and arctic char. As well, picture the carpeted forest of mountain green that rolls on until it meets the cobalt blue horizon.

This seemingly wondrous setting drastically changes once you exit the 4x4. A buzzing black cloud engulfs every warm-blooded being. (Yet, you might say, surely any prospector worth his salt has faced mosquitoes the size of humming birds, or horse flies big enough to ride?)

Beyond the protection of the 4X4, the bug-cloud sets the TNP’s dim brain to defence mode. His arms flail at the attacking bugs, and this desperate action launches the detector he’s packing through the air—the price paid an inconvenient memory. Running back to the truck, he finds the vehicle locked, his partner gone with the keys. (Moreover, the partner has the bug dope in his coat’s front pocket, the spray he swears is ridiculous, citing some bull about real men never fearing such small, flying creatures. The partner follows up with sass that anyone needing bug spray is unworthy of the northern prospector’s stripe!)

Raw panic soon widens into a chasm of terror. There is no place to hide! The bugs are everywhere. This seals the TNP’s fate, which begins the bizarre annual blood donation event.

Engulfed by a buzzing, hissing mass of wings and teeth (vampires, by comparison, lag thousands of years in evolution), he accidentally kills an entire squadron, breathing them in while gasping in terror.

Regardless of his small victory, a new attack begins, a covert one where the bugs climb inside your pant legs. The troops are the dark demons of the northern other-world: the dreaded blackfly—which Webster’s refers to as “any of various small dark-colored insects; esp: any of a family of bloodsucking dipteran flies”. Dipteran? A disturbingly calm word such hell-on-the-wing!

(To add to the terror, each season, the blackflies get bigger. I saw a swarm the other day packing intravenous poles with blood bags to use on some wretch they’d caught trying to bathe in the river! I realize you think I’m exaggerating for effect. You’re right. The victim had only slipped, then fell in the water; he wasn’t trying to bathe at all.)

Now, I’d hate to leave you wondering about the TNP caught without his bug dope. (Which reminds me—I’ve often pondered on the annoying name given to that spray. But, one day it came to me. The name “dope” refers to the idiot that has none with him!)

As to the earlier attack of the blackflies, their assault goes unnoticed during the daylight hours. Using anesthetic as they feed, the bites will be discovered during a sleepless night, caused by unimaginable itching which only lasts about a million years. (And, you will hate being such a jack-wagon to scratch them in the first place, as it makes the itching much worse.)

Thinking nothing could top the itching of your legs, you ear begins to itch, but not on the outside, no. Deep down in the ear canal a new torture begins. The rotten flies do not fight fair. As well as the ear canal, the cursed flies have the power to attack in unmentionable places—enough said.

By way of flashback, remember the horse flies mentioned earlier? Well, the TNP has been known to use a rope as a strategy—not to swat or slash at them—but to lasso the smaller ones. (To elaborate, some prospectors brag of saddling those bugs, flying off on them to use in rodeos and races. But that’s a bald-faced lie; the mosquito’s wings can’t work while covered with a saddle.)

And, to counter a different claim, some people swear you can shoot the mosquitoes up north with a shotgun. This is absolutely false! A shotgun won’t bring them down. However, a 20mm cannon has been known to blow off a wing or leg, now and then.

But, what of the absent partner, the one with the bug dope. The TNP found his sorry hide at last, his partner wildly waving his detector over a patch of exposed, red-hot bedrock. Then, suddenly hearing a low moan, followed by a screeching sound and another low moan, the TNP frowned, thinking his partner might have found a nugget.

Imagine the TNP’s surprise when he found the sound was coming from his partner as he fled the bedrock, while outpacing a flying blood-bank, only to have that cloud quickly cover him again.

The TNP raced toward his partner, seeming ready to offer assistance with the flying demons. (To provide background on the bug cloud, it was so thick that the TNP used his Bowie knife to cut out a square plug, giving him a quick glimpse of his partner inside.) Yet, the TNP flashing the Bowie, appeared to lunge straight at his partner’s throat! However, at the last second, the TNP shredded his partner’s jacket pocket instead, removing the bug dope, then running off, bug-cloud in tow.

Now, this story may seem inconsequential to most of you—perhaps even rather bland. But I assure you—it was a serious matter, with some truth added for effect.

And what of the TNP’s partner you ask? Why, it’s rumoured he’s still holed up deep in an abandoned northern mine, where it’s dark and cold—far too cold for Bugs, but not too cold for dopes.

All the best,

Lanny

[rvpopeye]

It all sounds too familiar........😳 

(In the end  both victims were lost due to running out, no not out of blood ... out of the WOODS !)