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.

…early last fall, I found my first gold-rich patch along a few crevices in the same river and found five grams of gold nuggets in one outing.

Every time we prospected here we found gold, sometimes some really coarse flakes, but no large nuggets (yet).

The problem is every other nugget hunter and drywash prospector had the same idea. As a result, you can spend days, weeks, and even months detecting these areas and not find a single nugget.