Prospecting & Detecting
The Half-Mile Claim
December 2019 by William Hepler
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.
A Gold Mine on a Washington Beach?
Bela and Barbara Kovacs began prospecting for gold about seven years ago as a family orientated outdoors activity. A welder by trade and lured by the simple fact that beach sands can contain small bits of precious metals, Bela decided a few years ago to build a sand sucking contraption that can sift the shoreline for anything worth keeping.
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.
A High Country Patch
As he was working near the extreme low end of the ground sluicing, I heard a yell through my headphones. Making my way down to him I could see the smile from a long distance.
Time For Some Desert Gold!
March 2023A Serious Discussion on Prospecting in Arid Environments. Part 2
Old Water Channels Provide Important Clues
After washing the top sixty to ninety feet of gravel, the old- timers hit the bedrock. The bedrock paid one-eighth to one-half of an ounce to the square foot…
Uphill Battle Continues for California Dredgers
There are currently three controlling agencies or entities over suction dredging in California—and you can make that four if the state legislature decides to further muddy the waters with additional legislation to block suction gold dredging in the state.
Prospecting for Pegmatites
…in some cases pegmatites have produced individual mineral crystals that are enormous, attaining lengths of over 40 feet long, and many of the world’s largest mineral crystals are examples that were found within pegmatite deposits.
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The Bawl Mill
• Ask The Experts - How do I obtain a map of Montana gold & sapphire gravel bars?
• Ask The Experts - How do I process this white quartz with black striations?
• Ask The Experts - Does gravel + bedrock = gold?
• Back to Green Valley--With A Sluice
• A Lesson In Underwater Sniping
• More Fiddling While Forests Burn
• Achieving Accurate Metal Detector Discrimination
• My New Passion--Crystal Hunting
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: White Knuckle Mining
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Legislative and Regulatory Update
• Unique Rare Earth Mine in Texas
• Gold in The Midwest--Part I
• PLP Update: Another Suction Dredge Case Heading to the US Supreme Court
