With the recent surge of interest in gold projects, it’s about time to revisit a subject that strikes fear into the hearts of small-scale miners: Permits.

I love it when I am in the middle of a high trash area and all the ferrous bars go away, the screen number goes to a three or an eight, and the meter is forty to a hundred. I don’t know for sure that I have found gold, but it narrows the odds down.

I had some success following this premise this summer, finding a few nuggets in places I think I overlooked in the past.

My intention was to end this discussion with waypoints and routes, then I found USGS maps of the Plainfield Quadrangle.

We dug and extracted for two more hours. This time, as I dumped the concentrates, I saw a piece of gold three-fourths of an inch long and as big around as a pencil.