Prospecting & Detecting
Ask the Experts
November 2012 by Chris Ralph
Heading for Australia to metal detect for gold. Tips? Suggestions?How to Stake Your Own Mining Claims—Part II
I’d like to offer some practical comments about staking and maintaining mining claims. Owning your own claim is the dream of many prospectors. I’ve made good money off my mining claims, both from the minerals I have found on them as well as from leasing out some of my claims to larger mining and exploration companies.
Using Structural Clues to Locate Buried Placer Channels

How Long Does It Take to Find and Recover An Ounce of Gold?
Some ask if a prospector can collect an entire ounce in a day. It is possible; I’ve done it before.
Comments on Gold Rush and Bering Sea Gold Series
The 316 Mining Company has not been all that successful, but does not ever seem to learn from their past mistakes.
Iowa Hill District
For the last two years we’ve held a hands-on prospectors training session in the Iowa Hill district of California’s Mother Lode country as a part of our Gold Prospecting and Mining Summit event. Because of this, I thought it might be good to take a look at the history, geology and opportunities that the Iowa Hill district still offers to the individual prospector.
Metal Detecting Old Hard Rock Mine Dumps
The type of mine dump that is best for metal detecting are the ones that consist of mixed sizes of rock and are located near some sort of excavation, commonly a shaft or adit. Sometimes the piles located along a trench dug by the miners can be productive as well.
Indicators and Hillsides
The placer gold shows up in ground sluice areas, hydraulic pits, secondary channels and hillside diggings. It is coming down the hillsides from an ancient channel left high and dry millions of years ago.
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