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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories


Lanny

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Thanks Lanny!!!

That is beautiful country for sure...so is the gold!

I went over to Bill's forum to make sure there weren't two Lannys...Excellent resume in the Nubbie section.

I thought I had the link but no so...sorry

fred

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On 2/28/2019 at 1:10 AM, kiwijw said:

Hi Lanny....yes I remember those days all too well. They were barmy days for sure. But sadly they are a wee while ago now & the gold hasn't grown back.:blink: 

These are some early day Zed finds

20170824_132551

 

20161217_184705

 

 

20170930_131446

 

20170820_114209

GP 3000 Gold

6 hours detecting.

9 grams

poolburn scrappings 1

 

SL C gold

 

13.85 gram nugget

 

Gold 4.1 on coil

My biggest ever. GP 3000 & 11" mono. 18.75 grams

18.7 on coil

This was a magic day for sure

Gold Finds

Sadly they are becoming distant memories.

Best of luck out there

JW :smile:

JW, thanks for posting the pictures of your moose-sized nuggets!?? Those are the incredible pictures I remember, the photographs of your halcyon days when you were out gathering sassy NZ nuggets. (You really do take great photos and often set off your nuggets in interesting ways for effect.)

As they say in the movie, Mother Lode, there's always one place you haven't looked . . .   

So, I'm sure you'll get your coil over some chunky stuff again one "barmy" day.

I appreciate you taking the time to find these amazing pictures, nicely done, and all the best,

Lanny

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On 2/28/2019 at 5:48 PM, fredmason said:

Thanks Lanny!!!

That is beautiful country for sure...so is the gold!

I went over to Bill's forum to make sure there weren't two Lannys...Excellent resume in the Nubbie section.

I thought I had the link but no so...sorry

fred

Hi Fred, I hope there's not another Lanny out there chasing the gold and posting on the forums, that would just confuse me :huh:, and I'm already confused enough as the older I get, the harder it gets to remember things. 

Thanks for your kind comments about the pictures of the country and the gold. The Rocky Mountains certainly are beautiful, and I have the privilege of chasing the gold in a country where there are still massive wilderness areas, all while looking for the gold in the 2nd largest country in the world where almost no one lives, compared to its overall size that is.  (For example, California has about three million more people packed into just one state!)

All the best Fred,

Lanny

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Golden Bonanza Days, Part 3: This section continues with the description of the cut and some of the detecting conditions.

(I have been stunned sometimes by the gold I’ve found doing this bedrock examination or scouring process; It was a learning curve to stop the temptation to follow my eyes, but relying on the detector’s brain instead has been a tactic that has paid well.

However, at other times when the bedrock was extremely hot or littered with highly reactive rocks, I’ve put the detectors away to rely on the slow process of sniping by using scrapers and crevicing tools to feel out the hidden gold traps. Of course, this tactic is used in areas where I’ve already been finding nice gold, and where all of a sudden with a bedrock composition/mineralization change or a sudden plague of hot-rocks tight on bedrock, I have to switch gears to look for the gold with the age-old, yet proven, process of sniping and panning. [I have a story about this as well for a later date.]

The area my son was working was not an easy spot to detect. He was swinging his coil on that aforementioned steeply rising iron-hard slope of bedrock-wall, all while trying to keep his footing secure in order to gather targets, and yes he slipped more than once [as I did when I checked it later after he’d finished], so it was definitely a sketchy place to work. We both had a few scares, but the gold was there for the getting, so we were game.

That wall of bedrock held all kinds of little traps [we even had to do hammer and chisel work to free nuggets], and those traps held wonderful gold. The hardness of the bedrock made trying to reduce it with machinery economically unfeasible for the placer miners as the damage to profit margin ratio would no support the cost of repairs involved; moreover, the miners recovered incredible gold regardless of what they had to leave behind as that ancient dinosaur channel that bedded the entire cut paid off exceptionally well.

So, in summary, the composition of the cut was undulating bedrock with a variety of low spots, crevices, water-filled traps, small yet intact areas of ancient stream-run, large gutters, warped and twisted bedrock, contact zones of bedrock with varying compositions of hardness, terraced ledges, etc., plus a steeply sloping wall of invincible bedrock riddled with small gold traps.)


12409716_Mountainsunset.thumb.JPG.0c44380892d2adfc2bef1f74cded828d.JPG


To be continued:

All the best,

Lanny

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Where do I chase the gold?

Here's a few pictures, taken over the years, of one of the rugged areas where I chase the gold.

1726017130_XTweezeme.thumb.jpg.e77bd3249581d4160bf0848844be7156.jpg

275751428_VerdantPine.thumb.jpg.9b24b88fde7fc5169122995ba87057d4.jpg

Overlook.thumb.jpg.2a8acf26d57c528111ef918a97cabeda.jpg

565447709_HighUp.thumb.jpg.e64710d5dff10cc3dbb165dc5dc2ca15.jpg

1675879212_FarOff.thumb.jpg.008fff674f5abc600b310c0c225caf84.jpg

1507592077_BearSpray1.thumb.jpg.24960fc1a272cf239c6ffcddf5f0c0ea.jpg

2001139402_Alpineridge.thumb.jpg.56d4f16dee16f95ade49cdff1a403fa6.jpg

361080793_AFarBlue.thumb.jpg.8ad03b5dcd1809cfdf0c9bad6b4b13c4.jpg

1914542080_UpTop.thumb.jpg.64b981fd81146d35a690c58f923efb54.jpg

1630601553_Nuggetbunch.thumb.jpg.d211b0207b86d6e42332b4cf63545f87.jpg

And of course, the first picture, and the last picture, that's why I'm in those mountains; moreover, that's why I write the stories . . .

All the best,

Lanny

 

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Question about the first photo, Lanny.. Is that:

1) Primary water recovery ( dredge / high-banker / sluice and/or pan & screens etc. ) or
2) Need to crush vein material \ other hard rock source / contact zone material prior to recovery..?

Earlier days regardless..?

Thanks,

Swamp
 

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On 3/3/2019 at 5:02 PM, phrunt said:

That's an artistic photo of the gold Lanny, boy does it look nice!

Our Hills/Mountains are very different to yours, ours are mainly grass/tussocks/rocks, conifers/pines like that are a pest and they attempt to eradicate them, they're known as wilding pines.  They're not native and spread like crazy as we seem to have the ideal growing conditions.  They do massive aerial sprays to kill them off to bring back the natural environment but it's an endless battle.

Thanks Simon!

That's really different that you're trying to kill your pines, and we're trying to save our pines and spruce from bugs and fires, as forestry is an exceptionally valuable resource here. 

However, thanks to your explanation, I now understand why your hills are bare, which I never quite understood, mystery solved.

All the best Simon, and I hope you find a nugget big enough to cover your thumbnail,

Lanny

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12 hours ago, fredmason said:

Not two...just you!

However I feel the same...

fred

Glad to know I don't have a carbon-copy out there Fred, as for the memory getting worse, it's part of the challenge of getting seasoned, I guess . . .

All the best,

Lanny

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18 hours ago, Swampstomper Al said:

Question about the first photo, Lanny.. Is that:

1) Primary water recovery ( dredge / high-banker / sluice and/or pan & screens etc. ) or
2) Need to crush vein material \ other hard rock source / contact zone material prior to recovery..?

Earlier days regardless..?

Thanks,

Swamp
 

I believe (it was some years back) that gold was sniffed out from cracks and small depressions in bedrock using the Falcon Gold Probe, then sniped, then panned, with the pickers removed. So, nice flake gold in the picture that the Falcon can easily see, plus when there's a picker playing hide-and-seek with the flake gold, it really roars.

No hard-rock crushed and panned. (The only time I ever did that was when I found a vein in a test tunnel in Montana, followed it with my Scorpion Gold Stinger and broke out quartz whenever I'd get a signal.)

Yes, earlier days.

Thanks for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

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