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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Thanks for adding to the volume of knowledge about getting gold from bedrock as chasing the gold on and in bedrock is something I've done for a whole whack of years, and I've really enjoyed it. One of the anomalies of gold deposition where I usually chase the gold is that glaciation sometimes messes up the general rule that gold is found on or in bedrock. Sometimes it's stratified in many layers well above bedrock, and the bedrock itself is barren! Thanks again, and all the best, Lanny -
Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Bedrock Tips, Part 1 How many of you have had the chance to work virgin bedrock? By virgin, I mean bedrock exposed by modern mining, bedrock not seen since the dinosaurs ruled the earth or perhaps even earlier. Furthermore, a chance to detect bedrock like this is a rare one as it needs previous, special connections with the large-scale placer miners to get access to such bedrock and claims, or knowledge acquired of former placer mined areas that now lie abandoned. Moreover, it's downright expensive to remove forty to sixty feet of overburden from bedrock which financial output stops some miners from granting access. In addition, some miners simply won’t allow others on their virgin bedrock. Added to this are insurance and mining regulations which might result in a hard no even if there’s a personal relationship with the miners. This makes the chances quite slim to none for access, unless a nugget shooter is lucky enough to find abandoned sites through research or word-of -mouth. But if such an opportunity pops up, for either scenario, there's a few things that will help find that bedrock gold. First and foremost, ask lots of questions. Find out where the heaviest run of gold was in the excavation. For example, was the gold deposit heavier in a dip in the bedrock, on at the start of a rise in the rock, heavier on a shelf, or at the bottom of a long drop before a steep rise, etc. As well, find out if there were certain colors in the dirt that indicated better pay: oranges, reds, grays, purples, blacks, etc. With the answers to a few questions like these, you can improve your odds of checking the most-likely places in an open-pit excavation. For instance, you'll find areas that were barren by asking the right questions (areas of loose wash, glacial striations where gold was gouged out, smooth bedrock, heavy sand, sloping rock, etc.), and you'll locate areas that were hot spots for nuggets by asking enough questions to get some tips. All the best, Lanny -
Still no response from Jim Hemmingway, but my buddy will keep on trying. There was a deadly storm in his area that knocked out power and communications. So, If I get an update, I'll let you know. All the best, Lanny
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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Sniping Black Bedrock (Taken from my notes, summer of 1997) Prospecting has been a hobby of mine for many years. My son and I spent the past two summers working with some large-scale placer miners (we help them, they help us) on their claims in the far Boreal forests. Two summers ago, I located an ancient channel for them. In gratitude last summer, they left a small area of the mined Tertiary channel’s bedrock open for my son and I to snipe (the overburden of heavy, clay peppered with boulders, ran about 20 feet in depth). Sniping virgin bedrock was new to both my son and I, and I’d only sniped existing stream bedrock before, with limited success. So, we tried to remember all the pointers we had read or heard from others about trying to find a virgin crack or crevice, one filled with tightly packed, intact material, often darkly stained (red/orange/purple) The intact crevice would then need to be cleaned out, then broken open for a deeper cleaning. Then, looking carefully, we saw a bedrock fold that ran perpendicular to the ancient stream’s flow. I told my son to sample it, and he returned with material scraped from the fold and once panned, he had some nice, small, rounded pieces of gold. I told him to check the base of the fold to see if it hid a crevice. After some more scraping and cleaning, he called me over and showed me a narrow crack about half an inch wide, by about a foot long. That crack was filled with tightly packed material, little stones, clay etc., and it was hard to see because the covering surface material was black, just like the bedrock). I told him to get the pry bars, a small sledge hammer, screwdrivers (one bent with an L-shaped end), and an old stainless-steel tablespoon to work the crevice, and a whisk broom and dust pan to use to carefully gather all of the material. Leaving him to it, I worked the bedrock downslope, and about twenty minutes later, I heard someone hoofing it over the stones to where I was. I turned and saw my son, carefully carrying his green gold pan. To my surprise, his mouth moved, but the only sounds he made were like he was having trouble breathing, and every step closer, he kept pointing at his pan and breathing harder. So, I sprinted over to have a look. There in the bottom of his pan were six nuggets (all multi-gram-nuggets), along with a pile of smaller chunks. No wonder he couldn't breathe! My goodness was he happy, and boy was I proud! Needless to say, that electrified me to keep looking, and after a lot of hard searching, I found a crevice about half as long as his, and it held two smaller multi-gram nuggets along with some nice pickers. What amazed my son and I about this gold experience was how little material came out of those cracks and yet how much gold they held (that’s the beauty of sniping). Moreover, we found two other nuggets with our detectors and added more chunks (close to half an ounce gold take for the day) by sweeping and cleaning the surface of the bedrock. All the best, Lanny -
Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Thanks for dropping in to leave such a nice note, truly appreciated. All the best, Lanny -
Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Old-Timer’s Did Not Get It All (From my notes, May 25, 1998) I wanted my son to have a good experience gold panning, to find gold big enough to see, and to hear it hit the pan when he dropped it back in. (There's something about that sound that never gets old.) We drove up a logging road through thick stands of pine and spruce, then down a steep slope to a spot where the river cut through some black bedrock narrows. The old-timers worked this place hard and cleaned off the bedrock at river level, as well as high above the current stream which held an ancient channel. We picked a place far above the stream and started to snoop around. (In fairness, I’d snooped earlier in the week to know we wouldn’t get skunked.) There were hand-mined stacks of boulders and large cobbles all over. (Nearby lay the ruins of an old steam powered winch, one used to pull freight and ferry goods across the river in the 1800’s.) At every ancient gulch and pinch point in the bedrock, all the rock was stacked to get at the coarse gold on and in the slate. This hard work made me think, what if some of the miners were tired, homesick, were in a rush to get to the next gold strike, hated their boss or were forced to work for someone else? If that was the case, they might have done a poor job cleaning the bedrock. So, my son and I moved a bunch of rocks and began to look closer. We found places where the old-timers had left small patches of virgin dirt! This was the stuff that could produce good gold. However, the spots were small, cup-sized and smaller. (But small volume can still hold coarse gold for exciting finds.) The missed dirt was easy to identify by the material it held. If we found a little depression or crevice in the rock and the material was tightly wedged in place (packed clay with sand, little rounded stones of various sizes and often accompanied by a red, orange or bluish or purplish stain) we carefully removed every bit of it. (Stuff that had already been worked was loose with numerous gaps, usually had lots of powdery clay with decayed vegetable matter, sharp broken pieces of bedrock, etc., as well as randomly placed rounded stones of all sizes.) We spent about an hour and a half gathering the material with small sniping tools. It partially filled three pans with material, then we made our way down to the river to pan. We panned out nine chunky pieces that each made a sweet sound when dropped in the pan. Did we get rich? If the only concern is a dollar value, then no. But who can put a value on one-on-one time spent with my seventeen-year-old son? Furthermore, searching for missed virgin ground taught us valuable lessons that paid off handsomely the next summer we went mining. All the best, Lanny -
Congratulations on your finds; you're surely learning that detector and well on your way to getting it interconnected with your brain. Nice to see more people are having success with the machine and nicely done on your part to have figured out how to operate it so well. (I understand that compared to its predecessors, it's a far shallower learning curve?) All the best, Lanny
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Sounds like a great, fun time with lots of adventure. Glad you're getting back there for another shot at the gold. Hope you stub your toe on a big one! All the best, Lanny
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Nice list Gerry, one made from lots of years of experience. Steve's list is great as well. The nice thing about both lists, and the added details provided by others, is that a rookie wouldn't really know where to start, so you've both provided hard-earned wisdom on what is needed while chasing the nuggets out there in the wilds. All the best, and thanks for taking the time to post your list, Lanny
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Pick Magnet Mounting Location (updated With Followup)?
Lanny replied to GB_Amateur's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
If you can find one, get a telescoping aluminum wand (around 3/4 to 1 inch thick, not the little wimpy wands), about three to four feet or so long, with a super-magnet on the end. They are light to swing, and you can get that small end right down into cracks, low spots, tight areas, etc. that you'll never get a magnet on a pick into (not talking about one on a pick handle). And, they pack super easy as you can collapse them. I love mine, and it's great when working a trashy area of bedrock that has lots of bits of track and blade that generate obnoxious signals. I know this is not an answer to your question, more of a suggestion as it's something I've been using now for about ten years, and I used pick-mounted magnets for many years prior, and I'm never going back. (My pick gets hard use, and I got tired of messing with trying to weld, drill and screw to fit, etc.) All the best, Lanny -
Simon, You do a stellar job in your write-ups, lots of useful information, and it's fun to tag along as you learn. All the best, Lanny
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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Thirsty Bear Invasion While spending the summer with some full-time gold miners in the Omineca mining division of north-central British Columbia (an area known for chunky nuggets), they told me a true story about a rowdy bear. One of the miners lived in a trailer parked near the site they were placer mining. In the trailer he had a 24-can flat of cola and 24 cans of beer. A nosy bear came along while the crew was out mining and decided he wanted a personal tour of the trailer. (I guess he was upset he hadn't been given one earlier.) He busted through the window and got inside. Then, he took every can, all 48, punched holes in them with his teeth and drained them dry. At this point, extremely hammered and very sleepy, the bear crawled onto the bed and slept it off. When he woke up, he just couldn't remember how he’d gotten in, so he smashed through the door and let himself out. When the thirsty miners got home that night, it was to a dry camp! All the best, Lanny -
Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Some serious luck involved that day but I catch your drift.😀 As for the calf, it never slowed down enough to thank us, and I'm glad the mother didn't come back with vengeance on her mind as a cranky moose is no respecter of persons. (I've dealt with them before, and they're some of the most dangerous animals in the bush.) All the best, Lanny -
As for Jim Hemmingway, I've got a buddy looking into it--he contacted me today and he's going to spend a few days looking into what he can find out. All the best, Lanny
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Jim, you're a man that's helped so many gold prospectors, and I include myself heartily (very grateful for your help and advice over the years), and I'm so glad you're such a good man. All the best, Lanny
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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
A Blazing-Fast Bear Encounter In the 1990’s, I was in the northern mountains of British Columbia searching an area known for coarse gold. My brother-in-law and his brother were with us as visitors in the gold camp. They’d made a thirty-hour trip to join us, and the next morning, we headed out for a river, one known to hold pickers and even nuggets in areas of exposed bedrock. We worked some nice bedrock where the river had cut back on itself to produce a big suction eddy, large iron spikes and nails were cast up on the bank at that spot. The two rookies worked the bedrock, hit some nice crevices, and soon had not only pickers, but a couple of nice multi-gram nuggets. (You couldn’t pry the smiles off their faces with a crowbar.) Having hot gold fever now, they wanted to work a fresh bedrock outcrop, so we headed upriver. The river forked, and they went left a short distance, and my mining partner and I went right, working our way upstream where we discovered a large area of brush growing on a flat. It was a nice spot to unload gear. We were just lowering our equipment to the cobbles when we heard a crashing sound. Looking up the opposite mountainside, we spotted a mother moose tearing madly through the trees. Crossing the river, she hit the flat and blew through the brush like a freight train, just missing us! We had no idea what was going on but sure were happy to still be alive. (Getting smoked by a charging moose, pretty much fatal.) The crashing up the mountainside continued, but this time there was as bawling sound. We looked upslope again and saw a juvenile moose (of the mother moose) ripping down the mountainside, a grizzly bear gripping the youngster’s rump in its claws. The trouble was, the slope was so steep, and the moose so terrified, nothing was stopping that moose, not even the grizzly bear’s claw-assisted brakes. The young moose hurtled down the mountain, straight at us, following its mother’s path. My partner, far smarter than I in a moose, near-death, bear crisis, slammed his shovel against a boulder. The loud clang startled the bear so much he let go! The terrified moose raced onward. We dove out of the way. The bear, lightning fast, swapped ends and tore back up the mountain. Our rookie gold camp guests heard the noise of the mother moose smashing through the brush and arrived just in time to see the bear’s fumbled attempt at stopping the moose. Not the kind of excitement they were looking for when they left camp that day, but a blazing-fast bear encounter they’ll never forget. All the best, Lanny -
Truer words were never spoken Steve. All the best, Lanny
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Yes, I've noticed Jim's absence as well, not sure what's going on. Jim is a very knowledgable fellow with a boat-load of skill. I have a buddy out in Ontario that might be able to help look into it. I'll see what I can come up with. All the best, Lanny
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Many thanks to those that reached out to help about Largo. Just got off the phone with him, had a great chat, wonderful to reconnect. Thanks again for all the help with this, and all the best, Lanny
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Yes, he really is a top-notch guy, and thanks for the info. Gerry and Goldseeker, truly appreciate it. All the best, Lanny
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Just trying to reconnect with Largo. Anyone know how he is/where he's at? All the best, and thanks, Lanny
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Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Who Knew? One of the strangest bear events was the day I saw a snorkelling black bear. It wasn't a big bear, but it sure was cute. We stopped beside the logging trail when we saw it entering a small lake. Soon the lake was too deep for the bear to keep its head above water, and all that was sticking out as it swam toward the shore from where we were watching was its little nose, snorkelling for air as it swam along. It soon reached our side of the lake, the water quickly shallowing, and its head popped out. It saw us, turned right back around, and snorkelled its way back across the lake! All the best, Lanny -
Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
The Bear-Alarm Camp In relation to the screwdriver gold tale, here is a connected story. One hot summer’s day, when there was an equipment breakdown that the welder had to mend, the same placer miner told me to hop on the Honda 400 to follow him in his truck. He was going to show me where there was some chunky gold shallow on bedrock. We tore along the logging road, and all at once, the road took a sharp turn to the left and dove quickly down the mountain beside a steep gulch. When we bottomed out, we were on a flat beside where the river had once run, but the entire river had been diverted in the 1800’s (1870’s) when the Old-Timers were chasing the gold. On the flat, there was a campsite, long abandoned, but ringing that campsite was a line of poly-twine hung with tin cans partially filled with rocks. It was a first-class mountain bear-alarm system. (If a bear tried to sneak into camp at night, it would hit the poly twine, rattling the tin cans so the miners could swing into action! And, there sure were a lot of bears in the area.) Leaving the flat and climbing up the gulch we saw a long sluice trough made of wood that led to some exposed bedrock. My mining buddy took out his screwdriver and once again started popping pickers out of the bedrock. Furthermore, he explained that the bedrock was hosting a seam of pay that ran right-to-left across the gulch. And, the abandoned camp was home to a couple of bush(as in living in the bush, off the grid)miners that had found the seam and then dug out the gold while using the sluice section to shoot the gold down the gulch to the camp for processing--quite the slick little operation. This place would also be a spot I’d love to visit with a premier light-weight VLF, as it’s mighty steep, and a heavy PI or hybrid would knock the fun out of getting that gold. All the best, Lanny -
Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories
Lanny replied to Lanny's topic in Detector Prospector Forum
Screwdriver Gold While prospecting in the goldfields of north-central British Columbia, in the Omineca mining division, one of the large-scale placer miners asked me to go for a walk with him one day so he could show me some chunky gold. But before we left, he grabbed a screwdriver. So, I thought, this was a strange way to look for gold, but I went with it as I was his guest. He strolled into a gulch, looked closely until he discovered where the bedrock was visible beneath the forest-floor vegetation, and then he bent down and started mining with that screwdriver. Right quick he popped out a nice round picker! Then he walked up the gulch a bit more and popped out another one. He repeated the action again at another spot. I was blown-away. I know how hard it is to find gold of any size, let alone pickers. And, there he was popping them out of the bedrock as if he was doing an everyday task, like putting on his shoes. Now that I think back on that experience, I’d love to head back with my Goldmonster to scour the bedrock in that gulch. What a perfect environment for a hot, light-weight little VLF, and with the price of gold way up from then (gold was around 400 dollars an ounce), it sure would be a lot of fun. On a different day, he took me to a bedrock hump beside their placer cut, and he popped out some pickers there as well. Obviously he knew a lot of places where the gold had been running, experience earned from many years of placer mining. Quite the operation, mining for gold with a screwdriver, but he sure knew what he was doing. All the best, Lanny