jasong

Another update the sheriff dept conveyed to me: If anyone had (or knows anyone who had) any mining equipment stolen, deputies have recovered a bunch of mining gear and its stored at the annex. The thieves and/or their associates were running some sort of mining operation which the sheriff dept described to me as "digging out a big hill" back apparantly near where my ATV was recovered. It sounds as if most of it is wet washing stuff (sluices, pumps, etc) or maybe a small washplant. Also good news is for general crime control, they will be doing patrols when possible down Gregg's and environs. There was also cartel involvement with this thief ring, though mostly on the meth distribution side of things. Sounds as if it's been dealt with, but be aware on those remote backroads as that is what they were using and who knows if they might be back. If there was any question about the seriousness of the crime back there, the scale, or the danger, it was justified. But it sounds like they are confident they have eradicated the "big dogs" now, even though arrests and investigations may be ongoing. Mitchel, was that deputy in his 60's? If so, I forget his name (Brooks?) but he used to patrol out there and then retired. He was awesome, old school law enforcement guy.

The GM 1000 seemed to run a lot quicker over variable ground when I saw it in action and I'm ready to stop twisting knobs so much if i don't have to. Also seemed to be a little more sensitive despite being lower in frequency when I compared it to the GB2 on micro and disseminated stuff depending on the ground. Speed means a lot to me, figured it was time to upgrade since I'm using a vlf more these days than I used to.

No idea but I'm guessing when they commit 35+ burgalaries in that short of time, that they can't sell everything, and so stash it. The deputy told me there were at least 4 stash houses/lots and they were still finding more as they unravel the theft ring. My ATV had already been sold by original thief and transferred to another thief who was stripping stolen stuff on a vacant, hidden lot. They probably stash stuff, let it cool down, and then try to find a bulk buyer in LA, Vegas, or Mexico and then get rid of it all at once. The sheer amount of stolen items they had would overwhelm all the pawn shops and swap meets in Kingman, Bullhead City, and Lake Havasu combined if they tried selling it at once. Not to mention, it's the first place people like me start combing to find my stolen stuff and they'd get caught quickly. So clearly they have some other network to get rid of the stolen stuff. My impression was they were stealing RV's like basically every day, or whenever they found one that no one was looking after daily. That's a lot of stuff to store. I am looking at a few of their residences on Google aerials now that I have names, and their houses are already full with vehicles, ATVs, and RV's. So, they probably steal stuff then dump it off on an abandoned lot while they work to get rid of it. There are thousands of abandoned lots out there, many with buildings on them. So they can just stash stuff for free wherever they want and the odds are very slim the owner will ever show up, most of those lots are owned/inherited by absentee out of staters who've never seen them, and a lot are owned by Chinese investors who never will step foot on them. I have the lat/lon my ATV was recovered at, and this appears to be exactly what happened with my stuff. There is a well organized, large network of thieves there in Dolan Springs working together to steal, hide, and fence stolen goods. And that says something when you realize how few people actually live there, the number of crooks there on a per capita basis is off the charts. It makes sense though when you look at how few businesses are there and wonder how these people actually support themselves or make money. Drugs and theft is a huge part of it.

Interesting. I am about --><--- that close to buying a GM 1000 and hanging up my GB2 finally. Now I'm giving some renewed thought to the EQ 800 again since I'd like to do some yard/abandoned homestead detecting again along with gold. I'm guessing for hard rock type tiny stuff there is still no substitute for the GM 1000 though?

That's great news, I hope they arrive in the US in June too, has any NF dealer in the US heard an approximate arrival date here? If I can afford one I'd love to compare it to the 12" X Coil just out of curiosity. I'm curious if the very long development time means potentially some small increased performance or new incremental development ala spiral wound coils when NF first released them, or if it just means a lot of time was spent getting the license for the chip and/or conforming to rigid ML engineering standards? Either way, good to see an aftermarket coil that (presumably) doesn't need the snip n solder.

Thanks for the heads up, I am checking into laws regarding towing and recovered property in AZ right now, if I have some way to pursue it, I will do it. I've had so much stuff stolen from me the past few years that I'm going to pursue any thief, claim jumper, and general crook until my last dying breath with every legal avenue I have, for as long as it takes. Companies or individuals. Thankfully my detectors were in Wyoming with me when my AZ property got hit so I still have all of them. Definitely lock your vehicles up out there, even if in sight. The yucca harvester guy on the Mardian Ranch told me they stole his sons truck 15 minutes after he parked and walked over the hill to say hello to dad. He's out behind Gold Basin and carries a rifle with him now. The thieves are all armed and obviously not afraid to get in shootouts too. There was 2 shootouts on the same freakin' day in nowheresville. What are Dolan and Chloride combined, maybe 1000 people? Then of course that murder down off Gladiola and Gregg's. These people are crazy. It's an unfortunate situation out there, the Sheriff really needs to do regular patrols 2 or 3 times a day down Gregg's Hideout. They do have a permanent deputy in Dolan now, so that's some improvement. I spoke with Deputies Loi and Williams and they seem like they actually care about the remote areas, unlike the last joker deputies who couldn't even be bothered to return my calls, emails, or investigate anything because they didn't want to make the long drive.

The sheriff invited all the thievery victims to sort through the recovered items in the warehouse. They "forgot" to call me, and of course all the stuff was claimed by now. So all my stuff basically got stolen a 2nd time. I submitted a long, detailed list of almost $20,000 worth of stolen tools, prospecting equipment when the burglary happened, etc and they said they "lost" it. I said BS, I emailed it to them a number of times months ago and then magically they found it 15 seconds after I said I would find it for them. Still, too late. They did recover my ATV and no one else could claim it since it has a unique VIN in the stolen database. But no one told me they recovered it and the towing company which the sheriff hired to remove it is charging more than it's worth now in "storage" fees. The towing company never told me they had it either, despite having my name, address, and phone number. So, they now own my ATV via what looks to me an aweful lot like legalized extortion. So, even though a lot of my stuff was apparantly recovered, other people apparantly have more rights to it than me. Or something. I'm not too happy about any of it, but I really can't do anything about it, so whatever.

Caught and killed. Mohave County sheriff just informed me this guy was responsible for the burglarly at my place in Gold Basin, he got in a shootout with a neighbor on another burglary. According to the deputy I just spoke with apparantly he was involved in 35+ burlaries and there in the Dolan/Gold Basin area at least 3 or 4 more people/safehouses involved in the ring as well. They recovered so much stolen stuff it filled a large warehouse, and they still have more. A prospector came up to my land this winter and told me their buddy just had their drywasher stolen in the 30 minutes they walked back to their pickup for a sandwich. Virtually every one of those houses off Gregg's Hideout and Rubicon road has been hit too, when you start talking to them. It's epidemic levels of thievery out there and the sheriff is not inclined to spend time curbing it from my experience with them. Be aware out there, it looks peaceful but there exists an underbelly of meth fueled scumbaggery, and it's getting more brazen. Anyways, just wanted to give an update as this case is now closed. There were 2 other parties involved in seperate phases which the sheriff has been presented evidence against and who he is monitoring, but this guy here and his buddies are who stole most of my stuff by the sound of it. I can say now that they picked all my locks and so are experienced crooks (4 supposedly hard to pick padlocks and a hitch lock), not cut, and they work the Gold Basin area as they got into my property by offroading during the night, a way that requires knowledge of the area. They are/were quite experienced thieves and some are still free and out there. They appear to drive around and stake newly arrived property out, then hit it when they think people aren't looking or are gone (or at night time).

Do shots make you nauseous and pass out? They do for me if I look at them. Cholla spikes used to do the same if they got in real deep, about 5 minutes after I'd pull them out. Doctor told me it's a vagus nerve response and is subconscious for some people when they see a puncture or wound in their own body. Oddly, same thing happened when I watched my vet pull porcupine quills out of my dogs snout, even though it didn't affect me when I tried to pull them out myself earlier. Had it happen when I broke my collar bone, then when I broke my hand, then when I broke my foot, I can't help it and it's really frustrating because its times like those I need to be conscious and helping myself, not passing out. You might have looked at your hand as you drove after adrenaline (hence no pain at first) or low grade shock wore off and then had a vagus nerve response? No idea, just sounds like what happens to me when I look at a wound, I'm like a fainting goat.

This is a Midget Faded Rattler, and was taken in 2016 in Central Wyoming. I swear these things are virtually identical to Mohave Greens, even the white markings under the eyes, they are so similar I literally cannot distinguish them while staring at them. Makes me wonder if the venom might be very similarly deadly too as they appear to be closely related. Unfortunately this was taken on a potato-level quality $50 Walmart phone I was using to make videos at the time. Sorry Clarke didn't mean to make your gold thread so much about snakes.

Do you mean the Midget Faded rattlesnake or is there a pygmy one here too? I kept seeing rattlers here in Wyoming that I swore up and down were Mohave Greens, I finally got a few photos and took them to the Game and Fish, they said they are likely Midget Faded rattlers. I've never seen a place anywhere in the US that has more rattlesnakes than Wyoming, I have trips where I'll run across 15 or 20 a day. I've only seen 4 Diamondbacks in 10 years or more of prospecting Arizona, and maybe 1 Mohave Green but I wasn't absolutely sure. They are definitely found in Gold Basin though, just rare. The Mohave Green Rattlesnakes are as lethal as some of the nasty Australian and Asian snakes. They are one of the most venomous snakes in the world, and in many places where you are more than 1 hr from town, your chances for survival can be in question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotalus_scutulatus

What Goldhound said. For gold prospecting most of the usefulness to me personally is in tracer elements. Arsenic for instance is a very common one. My main interest is in locating hidden/buried hard rock deposits, and tracer elements are a great way to do this. Once assays show what is consistently running with gold, then you can use the XRF not to look for gold itself, but to look for whatever element is associated with it. An XRF isn't a substitute for an assay. But assays are expensive, take a very long time, and all the samples are cumbersome. It's much easier to use an XRF in the field to do a quick, qualitative analysis in order to determine if samples merit collecting and sending in and paying for the assay to get a quantitative measurement. Soil assays are definitely the way to go over an XRF, a gold pan is still more useful to me if it's gold itself I'm tracing. Gold is bad element to chase with a XRF, for a number of technical reasons the threshold of detection for gold is fairly high and kinda useless for most prospecting endeavors if only looking for the element gold itself. This can also apply to certain PGM's or silver, since the elements are often used in the electrode and thus interfere with measurement and require higher thresholds. XRF's are also way useful outside of the gold prospecting realm. For instance, you can tell the difference between serpentine and nephrite with an XRF, even when the two are very similar in macro composition, it's quicker than thin sections. Also, I am looking for a lot of other non-gold stuff that I can't really go into here on a public forum, which I've found an XRF to be an extremely useful tool for. In summary, an XRF isn't really a great tool for a gold prospector looking for placer gold. It's an ok tool for gold hardrock exploration. But it is a great tool for a general prospector or exploration geologist who has a clear idea of what they need out of it and the limitations and power of the tool in specific applications.

There aren't really any known tellurides in the Gold Basin area that I'm aware of, the first sample is more likely to be feldspar and muscovite. There may be some quartz mixed in there, as pegmatites are common intrusive features in the area. Felsic dikes and sills are one of the main features I associate with nuggets out there. The gold associated with these rock types is often free and visible, does not require roasting. If you find softer pieces that feldspar will scratch, especially if they develop a slight green hue, that is sericite which is an alteration product of the mica, and indicates the pegmatite was in contact with a hydrothermal fluid bearing fracture, a common source of nuggety gold out there and something to look for. The second piece is a piece of ore containing quartz and maybe some calcite, and the shiny bits are probably a sulfide of lead, iron or something of the likes. This type of ore does require roasting after crushing. I've been watching MBMMLLC on Youtube quite a bit during this Covid break, his videos on roasting, smelting and assaying are pretty well done and easy to understand for anyone interested in that whole process. He's showing quite a few different methods and covering a lot of bases that I never heard of. https://www.youtube.com/user/mbmmllc/videos

The few people I had interested in buying a couple ounces disappeared after the economy went bad. Now that gold seems to be decoupling from the equities market again and acting more normal, has any US demand for gold returned outside of the ultra premium collector type stuff? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of buyer demand right now on the forums. Ebay seems to have quite a lot of bidders on average type gold lots now though, but mostly just on the 1 gram or under lot sizes, which takes foreveeeeer to sell an ounce of gold. There has to be a better way. It's hard to sell bigger pieces or bigger lots on Ebay. I'll sell gold down to 7% under spot depending on size if people are buying in 1+ oz lots here in the US. Or trade for an older XRF (InnovX DS2000 for example) with geochem, mining or soil timings.

Museum quality, nice!