… I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Brent Weaver, Garrett’s chief design engineer to talk about gold-oriented detectors, how they work and how prospectors can get the most out of them.

At the end of the day, Jerry showed me how to clean out the sluice box and then how to pan out the concentrates. As we finished panning, there it was—a little tiny smile of gold...

Winter is the time for research, and if you haven’t already done some research to find new places to prospect, now is the time to cram in some last minute research before the good weather arrives.

I probably swung over a few targets without noticing them. My first target came  about ten minutes later as I went over a part of the high bench in this wide section of the dry wash.

Prospectors deal with black sands in lots of different ways. I know that some prospectors worry about getting every speck of gold and save black sands in buckets until they have hundreds of pounds.