How Often Do You Get Skunked?

[tboykin]

My buddy Josh and I have been on a good run, but last trip I had a skunk day. Just when I think I got it figured out… That got me thinking, how often do you get skunked? To me it seems like if you’re really prospecting, not just going back to tried and true sites, that skunks are gonna happen a lot. But this time I got skunked returning to a place I found quite a few pieces at last time. Maybe we got it all.

Tried to make the most of it by documenting our struggle. Still a good day out with a great friend. And the day before my wife and kids got to see me dig a piece of gold within five minutes of turning my truck off. That’s something I’ll never forget!

 

[Gerry in Idaho]

Getting skunked at old sites is very rare for me.  Say Rye Patch for example, I do not think I could hunt a day and not find gold.  That's how confident I am about RP and my skill level with the detectors I feel give me best chance for RP and the size of remaining gold.  Now when I go prospecting for new ground, the skunk happens more than success.  That's exactly why they call it Prospecting and not Gold Finding.

Man the terrain you guys swing is so much different than what I'm used to.  Moss, steep terrain, heavy vegetation, probably high humidity......and then the trash.  So, what does mean to seasoned veteran detectorists?   There is a really good probability of gold still being there for those who want to work for it.  With all those detractors, most folks give up to soon.

Mindset - It's most important and I am glad you mentioned that Tom.  When the mind starts wandering, the body is aching and your ears start missing those weak signals, or your Sweep gets lazy...You just missed that nugget.  It's time for a break and then a fresh start.

Thanks for sharing and sorry you got the skunk at a proven site.  It happens to the best of us on occasion and that's part of why we cherish even those little nuggets we find.

[Lanny]

I look at getting skunked while chasing the gold just like great long-ball hitters in baseball approach each new at bat: They know they're going to strike out a certain number of times, but they still keep swinging to hit those big blasts. To me it's just like never giving up on swinging that coil each time Mother Nature provides a new at-bat.

Getting gold-skunked in iffy spots makes for easier failure of course, but getting skunked in excellent spots happens too. However, having a better chance of a find in a great spot seems to heighten the senses and drive the will to slow down, and  to listen for every little threshold break, to scrape away any overburden on bedrock, to clean every crevice, etc. I'm a great believer in where gold has been found in abundance it is yet to be found; that's been proven to me many times.

All the best in your adventures, 

Lanny 

[Norvic]

Many Skunk days even sometimes weeks of them..... the price of chasing virgin patches. I`ll wander back to old patches when it gets toooooo frustrating and confidence wains.

[oldmancoyote1]

Last year after visiting a prolific hydraulic pit many times, I found just a 1 gram piece.  My buddy who  started swinging wild and loose looking for the big one, has not found gold in two years.  The first time we visited this site (4 or 5 years ago), I found 51 pieces is two days and he found 79.  Your experience may vary.  :  )

[dig4gold]

23 minutes ago, Lanny said:

having a better chance of a find in a great spot seems to heighten the senses and drive the will to slow down, and  to listen for every little threshold break, to scrape away any overburden on bedrock, to clean every crevice, etc. I'm a great believer in where gold has been found in abundance it is yet to be found; that's been proven to me many times.

That's the truth right there. I am with you on that score. I was at a spot the other day that I had not been to for ages as my first time there I got nothing. I have learnt a lot more since then. The other day there were signs of old dig holes & scrapes not backfilled but had grassses growing in them. I saw no recent activity so the thought crossed my mind that maybe there just isn't any gold left. Obviously at one point there was & I had to believe that there still was. 

The area was high above a gold rich river that was littered with old worked ground. Water races & tailing races cutting through the schist bedrock, layers of stacked rock of both river/glacial & also broken up bed rock. Lots of exposed schist bedrock but mother nature was doing its best to repair the scars that mankind had inflicted & was quite quickly now covering the bedrock. 

I saw some scaley rotted flakey schist bedrock on the edge of a steep drop off down into the river. Waved my coil very slowly over it & got a faint signal. Scraped away at it & it was a small bit of gold. Then another. Then nothing. That run of bedrock then started to have a layer of deeper material over it & for no other reason than the bedrock had coughed up some bits of gold for me I just scraped away some of that material to get the coil closer to the bedrock. Bingo.... more gold. 

This bedrock ran along to a quite big crevice that had a small dead tree in it but with the branches sticking out everywhere I couldn't get my coil in there. I went back to my iron horse & grabbed a pair of loppers I had in there & trimmed off all the branches & managed to break out the trunk. Long story short, I got three nice little bits of gold for just shy of 2 grams.

Moral of this yarn is that no gold is easy gold & you need to do a bit of rock & material removal to get your coil into those spots that the gold likes to hide in & that nobody else has bothered to do or just didn't think about doing it. You will be surprised at the gold left behind.

D4G 

 

[Gold Catcher]

1 hour ago, Norvic said:

Many Skunk days even sometimes weeks of them..... the price of chasing virgin patches. I`ll wander back to old patches when it gets toooooo frustrating and confidence wains.

You nail it Norvic, that's exactly the same for me. I have about a handful areas where I practically always find some gold, I would say 9/10 times if I work hard. But to me that is not the kick, at least not mostly. Enjoying a beautiful day outdoors hiking and perhaps finding a virgin patch is what motivates me the most. And in these cases I get skunked most of the time, with some exceptions here and there. But this does not bother me a bit. It is the journey that matters, not the destination. 🤠

GC

[klunker]

 I've never ever been skunked - ever.

 Now there a few times when to come home with any less gold I'd of had to take a nugget with me while detecting and leave it, but I always come home with something valuable. Sometimes in my pouch and sometimes in my head.

[fourtyniner]

I've gone 30 days without gold when patch hunting in the Golden Triangle. This isn't unusual these days. 21 days was my second worst skunk. You've just got to keep slogging on, knowing that you'll eventually walk over one. If you're a negative/ pessimistic person you won't last long in this game. The patches I've found over the years  doing this sure helps me stay positive.

[beatup]

I would say on average around 1/3 of the days I spend out detecting are skunk days