Prospecting & Detecting
Northwestern Alaska Mineral Resources
February 2016 by Steve Herschbach
Gold and jade are actually only minor mineral resources for the Northwestern Alaska region as a whole. Modern prospecting has focused more on base metal than precious metal resources.
Prospecting Research
These are just some of the ways I have been able to find new spots to metal detect for gold.
The Hunch
The mysteries of this spot were only just starting to develop. There is nothing but very bland granite-type rocks here, meaning no bold, favorable indicators.
Swing and a Miss
A very good baseball hitter might get a hit roughly one time out of every three at-bats, but for prospectors often the results are much sparser and it may take many trips before the prospector hits a home run.
Back to Basics--Finding Gold With a Pan and a Sluice
Don’t hunker down and just keep digging in one spot where there is very little or no gold—if you don’t find it, you’ve got to get up and move on!
Lost Sally's Gold
She said a few thoughts did cross her mind at the time; she thought maybe she should have looked more thoroughly for that hand-drawn map to the claim that we had given her the previous year.
Divide and Conquer—Detecting Old Placer Grounds with Friends
He no sooner had turned around and started moving when I hollered again that I had another nice one.
Using Vegetation and Soil Conditions as Prospecting Aids
Wouldn’t it be great if you could know if there is gold in the ground without setting foot on the ground? Well you can, to a certain extent, if you can recognize mined ground from unmined.
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