Prospecting & Detecting
Thinking Outside The Creek
March 2015 by Shannon Poe
Imagine for a minute the year is 1850. You’ve read and heard that gold was discovered in California and the creeks are so rich you can just scoop it up with your hands.
Detecting Old Pocket Diggings
Looking around, I could tell that this was an old hand-digging. As I walked around the perimeter of the digging I could see shovel and pick marks scratched on the clean, hard clay and bedrock.
My First Carolina Nugget
On my weekends off I spent many hours dredging the Second Broad River from Cane Creek Road up to the headwaters. I used a three-inch dredge with air and graduated to a five-inch with air.
Mother Lode Leaf Gold
After removing about six inches of dirt and cobbles, the sound was a bit more recognizable. I was now confident that there was a definite target and not just a ground noise.
Quit While You’re Goin’ Good
Then I came to a section of recently exposed gravel that looked unworked. Water seeped out all around, making the ground beneath a sea of slick mud.
Picking Our Way Through Bedrock
Once again the coil was put over the spot but the target was in the pile now. I pinpointed, grabbed a handful of dirt and began sprinkling it over the coil until I heard that mild thud.
All About Native Silver
Some of the wire forms are strange and fantastic, with wires sticking out in twisted, seemingly random directions. Others have deformed crystals and all of them have significant value to collectors.
Return to Chicken, Alaska
I figured it would be quite conservative of me to shoot for about four ounces of gold instead of the twelve ounces I had found in 2013.
Subscription Required:
The Bawl Mill
• Our Readers Say
• Ask The Experts
• Ask The Experts
• Ask The Experts
• Just Another Ordinary Weekend
• Small-Scale Hard Rock Mining With Water Recycling
• The Paragenesis of Gold & Silver Deposits
• Getting A Successful Start in Metal Detecting for Gold
• Placer Mining At Chititu Creek, Alaska
• Gold Rush Continues in Africa
• Gold Refining In The Ancient World
• Tasers and Mining Don't Mix
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
