PG-Prospecting

There are lots of old timer workings all over the place. Both hardrock and placer.

I also took some video of both days so once I get those put together ill post them as well.

Thanks guys! And I would bet that if the east coast had a similar climate to Arizona or Australia as well as open access to land and not private property, that you would see a lot more nuggets coming from the east coast. The area that I detected with the GPX, like I said was detected before, about 5 years ago, and the gold they got from it is nothing less then amazing with the biggest piece being 7 ounces and many other large nuggets as well as small ones. Needless to say I cant wait to get back to this spot and hit it hard.

Got to go detecting on Saturday on good gold ground that was just recently clear cut. This area has been detected in the past but it is a huge area and the clear cutting has surely made more gold detectable. One of the guys who originally found this spot came with me. Having first hand experience on hand is always helpful. I was using the gpx 4800 with a coiltek 11 inch elite mono. I started off in normal and at the factory presets, after digging a number of hot ground signal, I switched to enhance and this removed the hot ground that was giving me issues. The first hour or so of detecting yielded normal small bits of trash, and one target that I thought for sure would be gold, but was a piece of rusty iron about a foot down in cemented gravels (that was a let down lol). We moved up to the logging road and began detecting it, after a few trash targets, I got a nice mellow signal, it was easily heard, and upon scrapping down about 3 to 4 inches out pops a coarse little 8 grain nugget, my first piece found with the gpx. I continued to detect this area of the road and pulled out three more small nuggets, the smallest being 5 grains and the largest just over a gram. By about noon the I was beat and the heat was almost hitting 90 with about 100% humidity. So we packed up and hiked back out. All in all I was very happy with the day, and it showed me what my gpx4800 is capable of, and now I have more trust in its ability to find small gold at pretty good depth. Then today I had to go down to my normal prospecting area and pull my dredge out, and while I was there I fired the gold monster back up and went to my little picker creek picker hole. Found some more nice little pickers with the monster, and finally got it over a larger nuggets. Man does it scream on bigger gold. The area that the bigger nugget was in looked like bedrock with no evident cracks. I had to bring the crow bar over and just ripped up the soft decomposing bedrock, and out pops a nice 1 gram nugget. I detected for about 1.5 hours and got 5 nice pieces with one being a little quartz and gold specimen piece. So all in all a fantastic weekend with gold from two separate locals, with two different detectors. Total gold was about 4.5 grams for the two short days of detecting in Virginia.

Great posts on this one. The QED is interesting and when it gets a foot hold in the US ill take a harder look at them. For me right now im set with Gold monster, EQ800 and GPX4800. Simon - Something that may help you with your speed and coil control while detecting maybe to film yourself detecting then go back and watch it later. This is done in a number of other sports and hobbies and there seems to be something with watching yourself do something that hits home and helps you see what your doing wrong and right and take it to heart. Just a thought.

Also recently we got another dog, so he is now in training. He is a king shepard border collie mix and is only 5 months old and 50 lbs, full grown he i will be around 110 to 120 lbs. So needless to say he is going to get a pack and carry stuff for me and ward off bears and other wild animals lol.

Yep Jax the gold dog, he is my overwatch when my head is in the water.

After much research and mapping, I believe I have narrowed down the area where the old timers found ounce sized nuggets back when my creek was actively being mined. Two areas in the creek fit the description. I had to piece together info from multiple reports and geologic descriptions, then use property boundaries, court house, records, geologic maps, lidar maps and lots of hiking and scouting to find these two areas seem to match. Only time and lots of dredging will tell if i got it right or not. Hope you all enjoy the video and stay tuned for more.

Thanks for all that info Clay, it will take me little time to digest and commit to heart. Have you ever heard of any one getting permission to detect or prospect Indian Reservation land? Or is that pretty much always going to be a dead end?

That screen shot was taken from the glorecords land catalog. Thanks for all the help.

Another question, in the below picture over half of the area in 21N 5E is not gridded. What does that mean? Had is been withdrawn from mineral entry, and prospecting is not allowed? Its all in National Forest land, and is not part of a Monument nor is is private land. Also im using this area as an example, it is not an area that i am interested or has any gold or other valuable minerals.

Yeah NM seems to have a perfect storm of things working against the prospector. Not enough water to run equipment, but the soil is too moist all year round to dry wash it effectively. Your right though that there is almost zero chatter about any gold currently being found in NM. Some of the lesser known district have almost not published info on them either. But i am optimistic, that if i move there is will get on good gold. The way i look at is that ive found awesome gold in VA which is a state that has produced only about 167,000 oz, in comparison NM has produced over 2,000,000 oz. So NM has far more gold then VA to say the least.

Yeah im more drawn to abandoned mining districts that have no active claims, or the smaller districts that everyone ignores. I dont like land that has been thrashed by everyone and there brother lol. I already have a few unclaimed areas that produced gold in the past, picked out for sampling when and if i do move out there. Lack of info in the smaller areas is making me wonder if there is detectable gold there or not. But boots on the ground may be the best way to find out.

Im going to miss the simple black and white of private property lol. Get permission and call it good. hahaha. You can swing a metal detector over an active lode claim and not be considered claim jumping correct?

Thanks for the info. Another question, if its a 160 acre placer claim, that would occupy the entire quarter section, correct? Or at least it appears to me that a quarter section is almost exactly 160 acres in most cases.

So with the possibility that i may be moving to New Mexico in a year or so, i have started to delve into researching gold mines and claims in New Mexico. Ive figured out the whole BLM map and claim system fairly well, but what im wondering is, is there anyway to narrow down what spots are claimed. Currently with the BLM system i can get it down to the quarter section, but that is still a very large area. So say there are two 20 acre placer claims in the same quarter section, is there any way for me to know where they are in the quarter section before heading into the field? Preferably online, but it sounds like the local BLM office will be the only place with that info. Since i prospect in Virginia currently, the whole claim system is new to me, but so far seems fairly strait forward, and im already trying to find ground to fringe hunt around active and abandoned claims near where i would be moving. I read the article about how to file a claim in the April 2019 issue of the ICMJ, but like i said that doesnt seem to narrow it down past the quarter section. Thanks for any and all help.

Found this little gem a few weeks ago. Shows the uses of Lidar for the gold prospector, and I also learned that Oregon has great lidar data that is easy for anyone to use. Oregon Lidar viewer: https://gis.dogami.oregon.gov/maps/lidarviewer/

I agree i have yet to find someone who is as interested in gold prospecting and treasure hunting who is younger then me. Im 29 and have been prospecting now since i was 24. Anyone i have met who prospects or detects regularly has generally been at least 10 years older then me. I grew up camping, building forts in the woods, playing paint ball, riding dirt bike and most other out door activities. My parents both taught me lots in that regard, and while my father was never into prospecting or detecting, his father was a very active detectorist and use to detect with him on the beach and after the local county fair. My uncle was geologist and collected minerals and fossils, and is part of the reason i went into geology, and ive always had a love for rocks. So once i found out there was gold in VA, both prospecting and detecting came easy as a somewhat new passion. As for getting the my generation and the younger generations into prospecting and detecting, im not sure what the best way is, as i seem to be an anomaly, and more old school then most people in my generation. Some say these types of things skip a generation which i can see as my grandfather detected but my dad doesnt have an interest in it. But many of these types of hobbies are hurting. My father is private pilot as a hobby and builds his own airplanes and flies constantly and aviation also has a severe lack of younger people. Hunting is also experiencing this problem, so its not just a problem in our hobby but many outdoor hobbies. Maybe something a detecting company could do to get younger people interested is make Virtual reality treasure hunting/ detecting game. lol Steve - thought you might enjoy some J-3 cub pictures, since i think i remember you saying you have your pilots license. First two are of my dads 1941 J-3 cub on tundra tires that he rebuilt many years ago, and the third is of a pseudo carbon super cub, which is also now on tundra tires. He eventually plans to fly the super cub all the way to Alaska.

Thanks Steve. And yeah not too shabby for the east coast. Cant wait to get back there and keep working that hole forward. Should be a change in the geologic formation up creek from where i was dredging, which usually means a quartz vein. A possible source or if not still a great gold catch.

A few other pictures of the pottery.

Had a great weekend out prospecting and dredging a club property in Virginia. Got to meet some new people and have an overall great time camping and dredging. So i just started prospecting this creek and club property this year. Ive panned and dredged it a few times, all was basically sampling activities. From research of old workings and looking geologic and lidar maps i choose a specific area to focus on, and the last time out sampling with the dredge started to sniff on decent gold in a 1 hour sample hole with a 4 inch dredge. The area consists of a spot about 100 yards wide in which the creek has always had to cross since sheer cliff walls bound the stretch on each opposite bank. A gold bearing feeder also comes in within the stretch which is an added bonus. The thought is, is that since the creek has always had to cross that 100 yard stretch then an old paystreak should cross it somewhere was well, from back in the days when this area had more conducive climate to being able to transport gold. From what ive heard and seen within the club most people avoid prospecting this creek, due to difficult access, deep overburden and generally not finding much gold once they get in there. So i have not heard of decent gold coming from it. But the old history reports say otherwise and state that it is one of the few creeks in this area that was never placer mined due to difficulties that the old timers in the 1800s couldnt overcome. Sounds like my type of area, if im going to prospect a club property. Sample dredging the creek a few weeks before Memorial day weekend. Notice the 15 foot tall silt bank behind the dredge, its all alluvial flood plain material. Gold from the 1 hour sample hole with the 4 inch dredge. Not fantastic but far above the back ground gold count for this creek. Camp all set up and the dogs are happy with it. Getting the dredges set up. I decided to bring the 5 inch since the ability to move more material out weighed the extra weight in my opinion. Dredging away. Luckily the overburden depth was only about 2 feet at most, so i was able to cover some ground with the 5 inch. Got about 2 full good days of dredging in. Found some Indian pottery while dredging. Always awesome to find Indian artifacts. And the best part, Success! Good gold with some nice pickers. 2.4 grams on Saturday and 1 gram on Sunday. I love when research, sampling and hard work culminates into some great cleanups in new areas. Got a new spot to continue to work know, and i know there are more pickers and possibly nuggets nearby, just gotta get my dredge nozzle over them. Hope everyone else had a great memorial day weekend. Heavy pans!

I picked up my 4800 about 2 years ago for $2300 but it came with a 15x12 mono, 17x11 AI coil, 17x21 DD, and 8X12 DD. $2000 euro is probably close but to me seems a little high, but you may be able to get the price lower.

I use a GPX 4800 in Virginia, and it handles the mineralized soil here well. A buddy of mine who uses the GPX5000 went into the fine gold settings and gave me what the settings in each value was for fine gold, so that i could go into the settings on the GPX 4800 and get a close approximation of the fine gold setting. Id snap it up if its a good price. Thats what i did.

Finally go the video finished of comparing equinox 800 to the gold monster 1000 on in-situ targets in the field. This is my no mean the comprehensive review as im sure the settings on the equinox could be tweaked more produce even better results. But from what i saw on my ground they were vary evenly matched. The gold monster seemed to pop a little harder on the targets, but the equinox still hit all the targets the gm1000 hit. Since i detect mainly creeks the equinox has a leg up since its water proof and i dont have to worry about it getting wet or falling in the creek. Hope you guys enjoy the video and ill take more footage as i work this little patch.

afreakofnature: there is good gold all over the east coast, the biggest hurdle that most people dont overcome well is gaining access to private property. Since all the old mines are on private property, most of the areas havent been touched in a very long time, and it can be difficult to gain access especially for people who are from out of state.