Social Distancing While Slow Hunting For Ridiculously Small Gold

[flakmagnet]

Firstly: I am using an aspect of JP's fantastic thread (among others as well), - the way he sets out his posts - because it is so instructional, I decided to give it a try. I had been thinking about why hunting in known areas is sometimes beneficial. Here are some brief thoughts based on yesterdays hunt.

I was able to drive to a spot I have been an incalculable number of times, to spend four hours doing what we all love. My only human contact was my son who accompanies me but then disappears to hike and sketch. The area is close to the Los Angeles area so, as you might imagine, it is incredibly worked -  I decided to look just on the outer edge of an area that has a similar "look" to where everyone usually goes.

This is the geology of the general area. It is strewn with basalt, iron stone and a number of other types of conductive rock. It takes a lot of concentration to pick out targets among the myriad of inputs. I used HY/N, no Smoothing, conservative settings for the rest. I tried Low Smoothing which was nice in one way; it lessened the amount of ground feedback - but it also mitigated the target signals enough so that I switched it off after testing each target with it before I dug.

These are not spectacular finds - they are to show two things; one, that working outside a known area sometimes can be successful and two, working carefully and yes, slowly - can pay off. There were a number of dig holes in the 40 yard square area from a long time ago, they missed these.

found just beside the basalt stone.

this was about 6 inches down and a really faint signal at the start

In contrast, this was found after two boot scrapes - but had the same faint tone as the deeper one above -go figure. Below are some other finds from the day.

As you can see, these are nothing to brag about, but for sharpening skills this area has been perfect.

 

 

 

 

 

[flakmagnet]

Hi Phrunt, to be clear, that was a rare amount of finds for that general area. Usually I am happy if I find one in the same time period. I attribute it to the fact that this small area resembled the larger area most people usually hunt in but was sort of out-of-the-way…but that's a guess. Although the area is vast, there are only very specific parts of it that are gold-bearing. As well as modern-day gold hunters, the old-timers by the thousands combed these hills. They didn't miss much.

[fredmason]

Nice gold, Flak

diligence and patience pays...

fred

[dogodog]

I see you've been washing your hands a lot !!!  They look like mine. looks like you have plenty of distance for safety. Oh I forgot nice gold there Flak !!.

[flakmagnet]

I wear gloves (except for photography). The dirt has a lot of silica and stuff that cuts your fingers to ribbons.

 

[Norvic]

On ya Flak. Keep wandering out into the fringes there`s a nice patch out there, has your name on it.

[flakmagnet]

Sadly those are considered good-sized for this area…it's my classroom...

[beatup]

Well done ,on working a bit out of the norm

[Norvic]

13 minutes ago, flakmagnet said:

Sadly those are considered good-sized for this area…it's my classroom...

Tis the same in most our  backyards/classrooms I suspect that size is the norm wherever, the bread and butter, naught to be sad about. In those vids of monster finds the finder doesn`t elaborate on the hundreds of hours spent getting naught nor the average piece size. In the magic of the monster find that is all forgotten. That Eureka moment awaits you too somewhere out in the fringes.

[fredmason]

Or, digging one of those obvious trash signals that everyone assumed was trash!