Golden Grams Of Goodness: Nugget Shooting Stories

[Lanny]

On 6/13/2019 at 1:04 PM, kiwijw said:

Always a pleasure Lanny. Thank you for a good start to my morning. ?

Good luck out there

JW ?

Thanks for leaving a note, and many thanks for being such a good buddy all of these years. Always good to hear from you, and I wish you all the best as you chase that sassy NZ gold.

Lanny

[Lanny]

On 6/13/2019 at 3:13 PM, OFS said:

I always love seeing the old cabins and outbuildings, you can almost always see something that leaves you in wonder.

Thanks Lanny,

Shane

I agree, and there's always something I haven't seen, which is amazing all by itself. In addition, the ingenuity of how they made things work out there in the middle of nowhere as necessity required it, truly remarkable.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Catch and Release Gold:

Did something the end of the summer season I haven't done before.

I went to visit a friend of mine that runs a large placer operation.They had made a cut 70 feet deep to bedrock, and they'd piled the dirt up near their huge wash-plant to be processed. After the large run was finished, there was a small pile of pay left on the big area they'd scraped to push up the remainder of the piled pay-dirt.

My friend told me to take my detector over to the pile to have a bit of fun. I was shocked by his offer, but of course, I giddy-upped to the site and started swinging my detector. Within minutes I had my first repeatable good signal that was pinning at 40 on the Bug Pro. Using my Garrett Carrot, I'd soon pinpointed a nice, flat nugget in the pile.

I kept working my way around the pile, up and over the pile, and worked my way carefully all the way around the bottom of the pay-pile. In this way, I recovered 5 sassy nuggets, which was much like shooting fish in a barrel, but way more fun.

However, my gold fever brain kept nudging me to try to the scraped area around the pile, a much larger undertaking, so I headed out into the wilderness of flatness . . .

About ten feet out from the pile, I got a good signal under a rock about twice the size of my fist. At least, that's what I thought. But, when I levered the rock out (which was a hot rock), the signal was more to the front of the rock (as it faced the direction of the pay pile). The hot rock had been distorting the signal.

I scanned the hole again where the rock had been, and sure enough, the signal was coming from the area described above, and its signal was pinning in the 60 range on the digital display of the Bug Pro. I used the Garrett Carrot to pinpoint the signal, and it sure came back nice and loud! Moreover, I could see the edge of the nugget.

I reached down at the tip of the Carrot and pulled out a flat and sassy nugget of just under six grams! (The flatness was likely why it read so high on the digital meter.)

I kept working the scraped area and recovered another three nuggets, so by the time the rain hit to stop the party, I'd pulled out nine sweet nuggets in total, weighing in at over a third of an ounce.

It was a fun way to spend a couple of hours.

Of course there were lots of bits of steel blade and track shavings, but the gold was consistent due to the loaded nature of the area I was working.

I made my way over to my friend's truck to show him what I'd found, and he was surprised that I'd found the biggest nuggets in the scraped area, and he assured me they would sure scrape deep before they were finished with the pay-pile area.

I decided to give him all nine of the nuggets, even though he wanted me to keep some of them, as he's been great to me over the years to let me detect on his claims wherever and whenever.

Fun, fun catch and release day.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

JW, thanks and great to hear from you. I've exceeded my number of likes for the day, so this note will have to do.

I hope you're still out there chasing the gold . . . 

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Warning! Annual prospecting poetry!!

The Ballad of Shifty Eye and Curly Sue:

A handsome thing, named Shifty Eye,
Just never worked, nor would he try.
Yet he was always flush with dough.
Well, this set folks to wonder so

Just where that Shifty got his cash.
Was Shifty doin’ something brash?
Like robbin’ sluices in the dark?
At night the dogs would often bark . . .

Some clean-ups seemed a little thin.
Was this that Shifty’s sure-fire win?
So, guards was set at every claim
To see if this were Shifty’s aim.

In spite of this, they never found
If Shifty had been sniffin’ ‘round
That sluiced up gold of Montanny,
Fer Shifty, he was right canny.

All dressed in black on darkest night,
He’d rob a sluice and do it right.
He never took the total take,
As that would be a huge mistake.

A bit from here, a pinch from there,
He’d do his shopping everywhere!
Yes, equal opportunity
Described his actions perfectly.

He wasn’t dumb, nor was he thick
His brain was rather quick and slick
It helped him tune his robber’s game,
That is, till trouble one night came.

T’was New Year’s Eve, when he got caught,
Plumb lucky that he wasn’t shot.
A doe-eyed gal named Curly Sue
Drew down on Shifty, froze him true.

But Sue was lookin’ for some fun,
‘Cause shootin’ someone with a gun
Creates a sort of end to things,
And Sue was thinkin’ wedding things!

She’d loved that Shifty from the start;
The love got rooted in her heart
When first she’d spied him on the street.
Since then, Sue’d thought him mighty sweet.

She yelled fer Pa up in their shack
A ten-gauge shotgun he did pack!
“Now look-ee here” her pa declared,
“A sluice box robber, mighty scared.”

A miner’s court was called right quick
With Shifty lookin’ mighty sick.
They had that Shifty dead to rights
Fer robbin’ sluices all those nights.

A necktie party soon would be
The thing to stop his robbery.
But Sue declared, she loved the sot
The miner’s court devised a plot . . .

A shotgun wedding was the plan,
They all agreed, down to a man,
To hold a spree that New Year’s Eve.
(They had no will fer Sue to grieve.)

A priest was brung—some duds was found.
The miners gathered all around
While Shifty married up with Sue,
On New Year’s Eve of ’62.

A handsome thing named Shifty Eye
Learned how to work and even try.
And Curly Sue was sure happy
She’d found a way to wed Shifty.

Happy New Year, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny]

Warning! Annual Prospecting Poetry.

The New Year’s Shift

Now Blackjack Bill rode the outlaw trail
But he somehow dodged the marshal’s jail.

He’d rustle cows when his poke was slim,
Then rob a stage if the mood hit him.

He tried his hand at the minin’ game
Then dreamt up ways to improve his claim!

He’d salt it hard, and he’d salt it good.
Just to fleece big shots because he could.

But Blackjack Bill wasn’t rotten through
Deep down inside were his good points too.

With lines right clear in his brain defined,
They formed a gulf from his outlaw mind.

Now women folks was a point in case,
He’d see no harm nor cause disgrace.

Well, killin’ folks was a big no, no.
Would he rob the poor? That weren’t a go.

The rotten rich and the proud were game,
And anyone else of haughty fame.

***********************************

In the minin’ camp one winter’s day,
A gang of scum cast their lot to stay.

Some deeds were done in the dark of night
And the camp soon knew an awful plight.

A widowed gal who had lost her man
Got her nest egg stole from her coffee can!

A peg-legged man with a humble store
Had the windows smashed on his new front door.

The camp’s new church, with its copper spire
Was set ablaze by an arson’s fire.

Two guards was shot, at the mine payroll,
That gang of trash took a fearsome toll.

They roughshod rode every night and day;
The marshal shot when he made his play.

So, Blackjack Bill of the outlaw breed
Renounced his past with a brand-new deed.

The shiny star which the marshal’d wore,
Was pinned on Bill ‘cause he was sore!

 With Bill as boss, he could choose his crew,
At the mines he’d find the right type too.

His posse new was the perfect thing
To rout that gang, and to make them swing.

On New Year’s Eve, with his worthy men
He cleaned them out at their bandit den.

Well, Blackjack’s shift was a thing to stay.
It stuck with him to his dyin’ day.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Discouraged at not finding a nugget?

I've been doing some reflecting lately on the topic of finding that first nugget.

I've read many posts on this forum over the years of people that buy a nugget machine, but then they're quickly discouraged after a few trips to the gold fields, and then they get discouraged and either sell their machines or let them die a slow death in a dark, claustrophobic space somewhere.

I keenly remember how many targets I dug before I ever found my first nugget.

I started off chasing gold nuggets with a Garret Scorpion Gold Stinger way back when, and I actually got some good signals on a river bank way up north one day, but all I recovered were square nails. Now, the reason I bring this up is that the next year, I went back to the same spot, but Mother Nature had torn up that bank and exposed nuggets and square nails a plenty!

If I'd have stuck with the Stinger, I'd have likely found the nuggets among the square nails from the 1800's, but I simply got discouraged with digging so many square nails. However, now that I reflect back on that river bank, many things make a lot of sense today that made no sense then.

For instance, the square nails were there because they were heavies that were being drawn out of the current by a big suction eddy, the bedrock on that bank being shallow underneath the river run. The abundance of nails should have been my first clue that I should have slowed down and investigated throughly, but I didn't do so as I was a green rookie. Nevertheless, the next year when I returned, I was running a sluice and running the bank material through it, and that's when I hit the nuggets (along with lots of square nails). In fact, that bedrock was such a good trap, I actually found nuggets by eyeballing them as I cleared off the overburden!

However, I've wandered from my original topic, and I'll now address it by telling about all of the junk I dug before I ever found a nugget with my detector. That second year, as mentioned above, I went back to the gold country with a shiny new Minelab SD 2100. (The previous year, my prospecting buddy had found nuggets with his Minelab 1700 while all I found was trash. I actually put the trash I found in 4-litre ice cream pails, so I had a record of what I was recovering.)

In the pails I've mentioned, I had bits of copper wire, spent rifle and pistol cartridges (which always sound sweet), musket balls of various calibers (which also sound sweet), pistol rounds of various calibers (lead sure makes a sweet sound!), bits of blasting caps, many ends of square nails, lots of intact square nails of various sizes, lead sealing portions from tinned food, lead keys from meat tins, bits of rusted tin cans, steel wire of various gauges, lids from small tinned goods, bottle caps going back to the birth of bottled goods, bits of harmonica reeds, gears and parts of old watches, shotgun bb's and cartridge ends of various calibers and sizes, wire mesh bits, boot tacks (steel and non-ferrous), bits of aluminum, chunks of copper sheeting, as well as other junk I can't recall right now. The point is, I kept on digging and collecting because there was no discrimination on the SD 2100, so I dug everything, but with detectors that had discrimination (my buddy had the Gold Bug, the Minelab 1700, a friend had a Whites with discrimination), they would not handle the extreme mineralization where the best gold was. Therefore, I had to slug it out with the 2100 day after day.

The buckets kept filling up, but no nuggets . . . .

That is, until one day, when I'd been detecting a spot with lots of hand-mining test holes from the 1930's, my fortunes changed. As the spot was littered with round nails, I'd been digging a lot of them that day, plus I was recovering lots of bits of rusted tin from cans as well as bits of wire and screen. Nevertheless, on the rim of a test pit, I hit signals all the way around the top and sides of the excavation. I recovered round nail, round nail, round nail, round nail, but then something heavy hit my palm that was just under the moss. It didn't feel like a nail at all. It was my first nugget and a multi-pennyweight/multi-gram beauty. I still have it and will likely always have it for sentimental reasons as it represented when the dam broke, so to speak.

For after that find, on the same trip, I recovered a slew of multi-pennyweight/multi-gram nuggets. It was like there was some kind of invisible barrier that I'd finally breached, and the nuggets have kept on coming ever since.

So, to those of you that are discouraged, that are thinking of hanging up or banishing your detector after a few outings, you have the right to do so, but there seems to be an up-front price to pay for nugget hunting, one that can't be substituted with any other option.

On a related note, my son has found many nuggets, but right now he's been tuning his brain for finding coins and rings, and he's doing very well. I gave him a detector and told him to put in at least 200 hours to learn his detector, and he's done so, and is now finding silver and gold rings. For any of you that hunt rings, you know how challenging that can be, but the reason he really knows his detector is because he's invested the time, along with good techniques, to go find the kind of targets he wants to keep. Does he still find trash? Yes, lots. Do I still find trash, of course, all kinds.

The message I'm broadcasting is to go put in the time, to use proper techniques, to go to the places where gold has been found, and eventually you'll get your coil over a nugget.

Point in case, I have a nephew that's chased the gold for a few years with a detector I gave him. He's found a lot of trash, but he'd never found a nugget, that is, until last winter down in Arizona. He finally got his coil over a beauty. He's off to Arizona again to try his luck this winter, and I'm betting he'll get his coil over some gold again . . . .

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Now, for a few things I've learned about working bedrock.

When checking bedrock, always look very closely at the surface. Clear all of the material off of it first. Moreover, any clay, and associated material, that is sticking close to the bedrock, carefully save it, so you can pan it out. This means that you'll need some sniping instruments to clean out all the visible cracks and crevices as well.

Go to a wholesale supply store, a place that sells lots of various hardware/automotive items, to get some things. Several screwdrivers of various sizes is a place to start. Take a slot screwdriver, place it in a vice then bend a couple of inches of the end into an "L". This will make the screwdriver into a little digging/scraping tool, very handy for cleaning out crevices. You might buy an awl as well to use for probing. Also, if you can find them, you can buy dental-type instruments--they come in all kinds of hook and scraping conformations, making them excellent for working narrow crevices, and they're made of stainless steel, making them robust and not prone to rust.

As well, buy several sizes of wire brushes, from the small, almost toothbrush sized ones to the larger ones that you'd scrape a wall for painting preparation. You'll need a variety of chisel sizes as well to break open crevices: the good gold goes down deep, and even if the crevice is narrow, it wasn't always that way. I've taken nice nuggets out of crevices that were far too narrow at the top to let in the nuggets they held.

This opens up all kinds of theories as to how the nuggets got there, but regardless, they are there, so it's irrelevant how they got there. Bust open those crevices until you're sure you're at the bottom, and rip up the bedrock bottom--a note on this later.

A note on chisels: you can buy ones that have a protective shield on them so you don't smash you hands and fingers. To run the chisels, you'll need a small sledge. Buy a fibreglass handled one as they're much tougher than the wooden ones, and the water doesn't affect them. As well, paint your sniping tools fluorescent orange--trust me, you'll leave things laying around and it's much easier to spot them later.

You'll need a variety of brushes, from stiff bristles to softer ones as well. Also, you'll need something to sweep your sniping concentrates into. Those little plastic shovels that kids take to the beach work well for tight places, and plastic dust pans work great in larger areas. A plastic gardening/planting scoop works wonders too. It's also a good idea to have to have a steel one as well; they're a lot tougher for digging.

Stainless steel spoons of various sizes are handy for digging and for collecting, and sometimes a tough, small plastic spoon will work in a pinch.

An important point, that I'll now address, is that after you've cleared all the visible cracks and crevices, and cleared and or washed the bedrock down, take a very close look at the bedrock to see if you can notice any subtle differences (colour, texture, folding, etc.). Also, watch out for a purple stain with any adhering clay as for whatever the reason, this purple colour sometimes indicates hidden crevices and gold.

To elaborate a bit on the bedrock's subtle differences, the reason for this is that sometimes, eons ago, the stream was running little bits of material the exact same colour as the bedrock. This material, in combination with binding minerals, formed a matrix that cemented in cracks and crevices, and often, gold was already trapped in those crevices. The cemented material makes the crevices virtually invisible, but if you look very closely, and if you chip away at any suspicious looking spots, you may discover a hidden, once invisible crevice. Furthermore, any cemented material should be carefully crushed and panned as I've found a lot of nice gold this way.

Now, the best way to find these obscure crevices is with a detector if the nuggets are big enough. I've found many a sassy nugget completely hidden in camouflaged crevices. Moreover, the matrix is as strong as the host bedrock, and the bedrock will break off with the matrix while chiseling the nuggets out. Always work well to the sides, and above or below the target signal, so you don't damage the nugget as you chisel it out.

This is where it's critical that you have the right detector for the temperature of the bedrock--by temperature I mean that a cool temperature would be a low mineralized bedrock that a VLF would run smoothly on; and by hot I mean bedrock that only a premium pulse or GPZ type machine will operate on. If your current detector just screams and gives up on hot bedrock, go borrow or buy one that will run on that bad bedrock just to be sure you're not missing gold. Moreover, if any of you have further tips on sniping, I'd love to hear them as well. I know there's always more I need to learn.

All the best,

Lanny in AB
 

[Lanny]

 

Checking old hand-stacks of rock and old bedrock workings

I ran into a guy from the Yukon a few years ago while I was up in north-central British Columbia, and he was running a big placer operation in the Yukon. He told me that they always pushed off the piles of hand stacked rocks from the old-timers and then they carefully checked the bedrock underneath with detectors for gold. Not only were there nuggets the old-timers had missed, there were sometimes virgin strips of ground that he said were incredibly rich. He explained it this way: in the rush to mine the bedrock, the old-timers had stacked their rock piles over virgin ground, and then got too busy, or rushed on to new diggings, etc., and they never got back to the virgin dirt they'd buried in the first place.

I know of a nugget shooter that found an incredibly rich patch under such a pile of rocks. He took out hundreds of small nuggets, and some nice fat ones too, and the strip was only about three feet wide at its widest point!

This makes me think of tales some old-timers up north told me of how mining companies were in a hurry to get to the bedrock, and to quickly get the chunky gold, kind of like skimming thick cream off of milk and not really caring about the milk underneath, and that some of those companies were very sloppy in their recovery. As well, there were always other rushes going on that lured them away to "better" ground.

There are countless piles of hand-stacked rocks where I'm working, and I've winched rocks off before and found good gold. In fact, in the area I'm referring to, for years nugget shooters have been winching the boulders off the bedrock, and they've recovered a lot of nice nuggets as the detectors can see what the old-timers could not possibly visualize in that bedrock. 

All the best,

Lanny