Lanny

Just trying to reconnect with Largo. Anyone know how he is/where he's at? All the best, and thanks, Lanny

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

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

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

I spent a short time chasing the gold in Alaska, and the place was thick with bears! I always pack bear spray and a bear-banger pistol now (12-gauge), and I hope I'll be able to get that bear spray out quick enough if I run into a bear in tight quarters. All the best, and thanks for your much appreciated comments, Lanny

Bear Troubles People ask me about bears, if I’ve seen them while out prospecting, if I’ve had encounters with them, if they’ve ever bothered me, etc. Yes, seen lots of bears, yes, had encounters, yes been bothered. For the most part however, when a bear sees me, they usually head for the timber, bust it over the mountain, dash from the trail, etc. The bears seem to enjoy being left alone, for the most part. But, every once in a while, one breaks from the ranks to start trouble. My mining partner (now retired due to his age) and I were way up north prospecting an ancient channel. The side of it was exposed along the edge of a trail. We were minding our own business setting up our detectors, when up a neighboring trail from the river came a huge black bear. Now, most black bears aren’t huge, and maybe that should have been a tip-off that this bad boy would have attitude. We were close to the green Dodge diesel my friend drove, and he reached into the truck bed and pulled out a long-handled shovel. He rapped the shovel sharply against a boulder. (The crisp sound of metal against rock usually sends bears running.) The big bear kept advancing, coming straight up the trail toward us. I honked the horn, and it echoed loudly up the three branch canyons. The bear, way too close to us now, paid no attention. My partner quickly opened the truck door, reached behind the seat and pulled out his Winchester lever-action 30-30. He spanked a round into the dirt right in front of that bear. The echoing boom racketed up the three canyons, and that bear instantly sat in the middle of the trail, totally confused as to where that shot had come from. After puzzling it over a bit, he shot up and high-tailed it over a fallen log. Over the next couple of days while we worked in that spot, we never saw him again. In a different area, more than a thousand miles to the south, I was at our mining camp standing beside a truck camper one day, when working his way through the brush, a black bear came straight at me. I waved my arms and shouted (this often sends them packing), but head down, he muscled straight on. Footing his way along a ridge of old hand-workings that led to our campsite, he was quickly getting too close. At that moment, some dim instinct in my brain kicked in and I grabbed a cobble and hucked it right at him. That got his attention, but he kept coming. After whipping another cobble toward him, he gave up, dropped from the ridge into a gulch, and that was that. (On a side note, the large-scale placer miners on that lease had a similar run-in with a cougar, and they also chucked rocks at him, and the cougar left as well.) Several years later, my partner and I were running placer material through a trommel. All at once, over a bedrock rise, two rolling-fat and sassy grizzlies sauntered toward us. Looking at the trommel, and cocking their heads from side to side, they kept on coming. I had the Honda 400 right there, so I fired it up and gunned the engine, thinking they’d scat. No such luck—it only made them more curious, so curious they stood up quick. If you think a Griz is big on all fours, wait until they stand up! I shut that Honda down pronto. The two Grizzlies dropped back to the ground, sniffed the air a bit, gave my partner and I one last look, then off they shuffled over that bedrock rise. My partner, an old outfitter and hunting guide, pegged them as two young grizzlies that had just been booted out by their mother (around three-years-old). So, the day they visited, they were off exploring the world, a brand-new place of discovery and wonder. On a different summer day at the gold camp, I was contemplating life in the shade of a lone pine that overlooked a river-side cliff. All at once, I heard a loud roaring sound, the kind that makes the hair on the back of the neck stand up. Next came the screaming of a woman and the terrified yelping of a dog. I knew our friends were dredging down in a gorge below that cliff, so I jumped on the Honda, fired it up and raced back to the main camp to grab a rifle. That roaring sound could only be a bear. The screaming woman left no doubt there was serious trouble. My partner hopped behind me on the Honda, and we tore down the trail to the gorge overlook. Hopping off, we saw our friend walking back down the trail to the gorge bottom. We hollered at him, and he stopped. We ran down the trial with the rifle and followed him back to where his wife and the dog stood shaking beside the dredge. Then we got the story. A black bear had been stalking them that day and had finally crossed the river. (There was only one exit from the gorge, and it was back up the trail.) The bear went straight for the dog, who was between the woman and the bear, and the bear and the dog went at it (the roaring and yelping I heard). The woman screamed to frighten the bear off, but it wasn’t working. Her husband popped up from dredging, grabbed a large flat rock, held it over his head (to make himself as large as possible) and charged toward the bear. The bear bugged out and hoofed it up the trail. As the bear shot over the lip of the canyon, the man turned around, heading back toward his wife. It was at that exact moment we came roaring down the trail on the Honda. What we didn’t know was, after the husband turned to head back down the trail, his wife saw the bear return, ripping down the trail after her husband, but our noisy arrival made the bear turn around and fly out of there. They were both grateful we showed up when we did that day. (She even cooked us a Huckleberry pie and made us a fantastic supper too!) All the best, Lanny

Looks like you've had some productive outings Simon, and sorry you're still having struggles with that 6000, but you're not alone, and that troubles me as to why Minelab shipped those faulty units out without proper testing beforehand. However, it looks like you'll have to give that DD a go to see if it makes a difference. Good luck, and all the best. Say hello to JW the next time you see him. All the best, Lanny

I was out detecting around some old workings one day looking for gold, lots of test pits everywhere. I swung the detector as I walked along a bit of road that connected two old workings, and I got a screamer of a signal. It was a 1920's Mercury dime! Totally shocked me as it's rare I ever find a coin while looking for gold. Enjoyed your write-up Simon, and all the best, Lanny

Yes, when in an area of heavy trash, I use discrimination. I also make sure I have a small super-magnet on an extendable aluminum wand (light and easy to use that way), saves a ton of time as the small magnet size lets me root around in the dirt in tight spots a magnet on a pick head will not let me get into or down into. I've spent a lot of time detecting bedrock worked by large equipment where there's so many bits of track and blade I'd go crazy trying to dig every target, so I use discrimination first for obvious signals, then go back and use the magnet on the wand with discrimination on the detector. Then, if time permits, I go low and slow without discrimination as we have a lot of ironstone where I detect and it throws the numbers off on the nuggets. I also use similar trash-rich-area tactics if I'm in a spot with lots of bits of can and the lead sealings that accompany the old cans from the 1800's. (Have to dig the lead sealings though.) When working exposed bedrock left by modern-day placer miners, I usually don't have a lot of time as they're right behind me waiting to fill the cut back in, so without the discrimination on my detectors and the wand tactics, I'd never get finished in time without them. All the best, Lanny

Those really are some sweet finds. I'm using the Goldmonster more now, and I like how light it is and how capable it is. I now dig every target just to see what it really is as that first swing over the target doesn't really tell the story. The last swing over the target when right close to the target is much more telling. Thanks for the picture, and all the best, Lanny

Good to see your smiling face again Doc. Congratulations on being published--you're a good man, nicely done. All the best, Lanny

Watched a bunch of episodes as well, some entertainment value for sure. All the best, Lanny

Digging A Hole to Bedrock After my son and I had found, deep in the forest, a few sub-gram nuggets with the detectors (April, 2022), we switched things up and headed off to a storied gold stream to find some flake gold. As it was April, there was no spring runoff yet, and the river was very low, which made it a great time to find some exposed or shallow-to-gold bedrock. My son waded the river and started to work a pocket in some exposed bedrock. He was getting flake gold every other pan or so, but not many flakes. I walked upstream a bit and found a large boulder. The boulder was sitting high amid the cobble, and as I looked across the stream, there was a patch of exposed bedrock. Digging around the boulder a bit, I hit the bedrock. So, I started trenching toward the river bank, away from the gut of the stream. The bedrock I started to uncover was rough and irregular, which should have made it a great gold trap. (I was removing around two and a half feet of overburden to get to the bedrock.) However, when I panned the material tight on bedrock, all I was getting were bits of ironstone, no gold. I decided to sample the layers all the way from the top of the overburden down to the bedrock. Looking carefully at a seam about six inches above the bedrock, I noticed a lot of red iron stain in that damp layer. Sampling the layer proved the gold was riding six inches above the bedrock! Sometimes there were up to twenty small flakes in the pan. However, knowing how much gold loves bedrock, I kept sampling the bedrock, but still no gold. So, I called my son back from over the river, and we both made the cobbles fly as we kept trenching toward the bank, gathering material from that seam. But there was a problem. The boulder on the bedrock I mentioned earlier was creating a low-pressure zone behind it and letting water run back into our hole. So, I shovelled material from downstream that had some clay in it to build a sort of dam to block the river from flooding the hole. Even with the dam, a lot of water kept seeping in, so we kept bailing out the hole with a five-gallon plastic bucket. By the time we were done, we’d found all kinds of sore prospecting muscles our bodies had forgotten about over the winter, but we both had a nice catch of flakes in our gold bottles. The value of gold in our bottles, not so much. The experience of chasing the gold with my son, priceless! All the best, Lanny

Simon, sad to hear of your problems with your shiny new detector. You'd think someone would have turned the machine on to check its performance before shipping it to the dealer. And, if the problem is a solder connection that has been the problem with other machines, that's something you'd think would have been caught by quality control and remedied. I know you've now got your machine running by using a precision tool (whacking it with your hand), but I can tell it's been a frustrating experience for you which should never have been the case if there were stringent quality control protocols set in place before the product was shipped, especially considering the steep price of the machine (which others have commented on as well). Sure hope you find a lasting solution to your new detector's problems. All the best, Lanny

Gold Monster Nuggets My son and I got out for five days in the mountains (April, 2022) to chase some gold, and we had fun. We got to detect for some nuggets where the current placer miners had cleared a spot in a large boulder field. The Old-Timers had worked the area by hand many years ago, and evidence of their workings were everywhere among the pines and fir, spots where they'd moved the big boulders around to get the gold trapped behind and underneath them. The pay layer was a huge outwash left when a large glacial dam burst, creating a massive debris field of boulders that carried placer gold with it in a surface deposit about six feet deep. The gold is flattened from the boulders acting like a huge ball mill, but it's gold that runs about 91% fine, so it's worth recovering. My son and I recovered three sub-gram nuggets. He got one with the Gold Bug Pro, and I found two with the Goldmonster. The interesting thing about the Goldmonster is that at first the nuggets did not read in the gold range, the LED display swung mostly to the left, but as I dug and got closer the display started to flip more to the right, until I got right close to the targets, and then the display pinned to the right. What I learned? When in a good location in gold country with the Goldmonster, I'll dig every target to visually ID it as I couldn't believe how much the reading on the nuggets went from ferrous to non-ferrous by the time I’d dug until I was right next to them. And in the area we were working, there just weren't that many targets. Moreover, any trash targets were quickly taken care of with my wand magnet, and anything non-ferrous? Well, there were only a few targets (a couple of 22 caliber casings, some 22 caliber leads, as well as a piece of birdshot and some lead sealing from an old tin can) in the ground. All the best, Lanny

Sweet little thread with lots of good info., thanks to all for their contributions, much appreciated. All the best, Lanny

The way the gold got massively moved around up here by glaciation and glacial rivers, and glacial dams bursting, I'd say yes. I've seen glacial striations on the bedrock of rich placer channels marking where the glaciers ground down to solid bottom and carried off the gold that was once part of a rich channel, only to carry off and deposit said gold to some unknown location. (The local miners called them robber glaciers--the miners would be on bonanza gold in a channel, only to make their next excavation to bedrock to find no gold whatsoever, only the telltale cuts in the bedrock to show a glacier had swept away the gold.) I just got back from detecting some nuggets in an area of a glacial dam blowout deposition (more like what the information you provided relates to I believe) where there's almost no black sand in the deposit, but nuggets and gold are plentiful in a surface deposit and there are car size boulders everywhere and huge bedrock chunks the size of garages and larger, just imagine the volume of that water to move rock of that size? As well, the water either cut through ancient channels as it excavated downward, or it scooped out shallower deposits and blew them across a larger area. (The gold is also flat, having been hammered by all of that large rock.) I'm no geologist, but if the same forces were at work in Idaho, then yes, it's likely indeed. (I chased some gold in Idaho quite a few years back, fun times.) All the best, Lanny

Nicely done Simon. Glad to see you're getting some of that sweet gold. All the best, Lanny

Always fun to watch someone getting some gold! Thanks for the video, and all the best, Lanny

Did not know that, thanks for the clarification. All the best, Lanny

Beautiful, amazing find! Nicely done, and all the best, Lanny

(A field note from Sept. 6, 2011) Found some more gold: detected some more nuggets; panned some nuggets and flake gold; dredged some chunky, sassy gold; met a couple of legends in this region of the prospecting world; saw a bear, a moose, and a huge bull elk, all this weekend; came across a mystery wreck deep in the mountains; got to see stars I've never seen before because the night sky was perfectly clear and unpolluted by light or any man-made substance; had to throw rocks at a bear and shout and yell to keep him from coming into camp; found an outcropping with beautiful peacock pyrite; detected a small-caliber pistol ball from the mid-1800's; saw mountain valleys and peaks I've never seen before; breathed untold gallons of pure, undefiled mountain air--it was quite the time. All the best, Lanny

A very enlightening and educational thread, thanks. All the best, Lanny

A little tip about chasing gold signals in the dirt. Because gold is so heavy, when you're trying to chase a nugget in a pile of loose ground on bedrock or packed clay (with a scoop or by hand), as soon as you disturb the soil, the target drops quickly or hugs the bottom as it slides around. When you're moving the dirt trying to pinpoint the target (with a pin-pointer or coil), any searching movement, and the target slides around, hugging the ground. You can reproduce similar results by getting chunks of lead (flattened BB's or spent 22 caliber lead) and get a very close result as you try to capture the lead targets in loose soil. Iron or steel pieces and other lighter metals, by comparison, seem to "ride higher" in the dirt, making them easier to capture. They won't have that sluggish slow slide along the bottom that gold does. I don't know how many times I've experienced this peculiar to gold and heavy metals quirk, it's happened a lot, but I just thought I'd share it, as for me, when I get a sluggish target in the dirt, it can be a good sign. All the best, and hope you get some nice gold, Lanny

I used to love dredging, glad to see someone still gets a chance to get some. All the best, Lanny