Because gold hunting is taking on interest for so many recently, I’ve been posting some information here on the Gazette for avid new gold enthusiasts. It suddenly occurred to me, though, that I may have put the horse before the cart a little bit in some of my articles. I’m going to correct that now and let you in on exactly where the gold hunt really starts – and where it starts…is on paper.

Serious amounts of gold have been found in about 3 out of every 5 states in the US. While there is still untold amounts of gold to be found it’s not as easy as it was in the 1800’s to find open land to prospect. You can jump right in and start fishing through streams for a cache, but it can also be a risky and disappointing way to go about any serious prospecting. There are a few things to consider before loading up the mule and heading off to the mountains that will greatly increase your odds of success – and decrease your odds of ending up in court.

Just because a mine or claim is no longer worked does not mean that the gold is gone. That particular property might or might not be still be off limits to hunters. Public lands are not always free for all gold prospecting areas, either. Some public land contains claims and other places are off limits to hunting at all. Some areas are restricted hunting, meaning you can use a pan, but not a dredge, sluice, or other equipment. If you are thinking that you can just slip into off-limits areas and slip out without notice, you are taking one healthy risk to your wallet or freedom. By getting some research under your belt before diving into the creeks with your prospecting gear, you can avoid not only fines, arrests, or being shot for claim jumping, you can also get a pretty good idea where your best bet is to find a good productive placer. The search for records can be time consuming, but it is a “must” do for anyone serious about gold prospecting.

While you will want to know the ownership status of the land you wish to hunt, it’s not going to do you much good to hunt if there isn’t a decent amount of gold to be found in the area. You may have heard that gold can be found just about anywhere, but a few flakes dropped by glaciers aren’t really going to make a hunt worthwhile. You should start your search by studying mining records to find areas from which good amounts of gold have already been found. State Bureau of Mines offices will have information about mining in the areas you are researching. Remember, thousands of people already have searched the country for gold. You aren’t likely to make much headway in new and untouched territory. Your best bet is to stick with known territories. While some people believe that areas that contain mines are tapped out, this is rarely the case. Gold in these areas still works its way down into streams and forms placers downhill from the sources.

The BLM office in the area you are researching will have mining and mineralogy maps. Once you study these and are content with pursuing prospecting in an area, you will want to do another bit of study. The BLM also has maps containing land status plats that show the ownership of public lands. You will find there where you are free to prospect. You may also want to check for claims that have been abandoned.

Claims can become abandoned for many reasons. Some might be abandoned because the area had been worked until the claim quit producing. Others may just have never been fruitful in the first place. Others could be abandoned due to other difficulties that the owner encountered, such as inability to get to and from the claim, illness or death, and a myriad other reasons. If a claim is abandoned and the land is open to prospecting, you might be able to pick up the claim for a low price and continue work on it. If it has been a considerable amount of time since a claim has been worked, it may contain fresh gold which continues to wash down into placer areas over time.

Local assay offices are sometimes willing to provide information about their own records of gold assays from local area claims, although sometimes you will be charged for records searches. If the claim produced gold recently enough, someone in the office might just even remember if it produced well.

A bit of geological study about gold is always a good idea for those who are extremely serious about prospecting, too. What you learn may just help you identify “new” localities near the older, known ones.

While these studies can be time consuming, most areas have several months a year (in some places most of the year) which are not suitable for hunting in the field so these are excellent months to do your “indoor” prospecting.

Once you have the information you need about open land and available claims, you are then ready to go out into the field and try your luck in the 2010 Gold Rush.

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Tags: Geology, gold panning, Gold prospecting, rock and gem hunters, rockhounds

Sure gold is “where you find it”. Anyone even thinking about taking up prospecting has heard that one. It’s probably the most frustrating answer any beginning prospector ever hears when asking where to look for gold. Where the heck exactly is “where you find it” located and why do people keep telling you that?

While that answer is a bit frustrating for the beginner there is a lot of truth in it. Gold can turn up in some pretty unusual places. Sometimes it has been sprinkled through areas by ancient glaciers or waterways. There are stories of people finding gold and thinking they had found a place to stake a claim, to discover later that they had only found the remnants of some unfortunate prospector’s lost cache. Trains and carts being wrecked while hauling gold to smelters have spilled loads of ore which might be found later in the streams downhill.

While you might run into bits of gold scattered by such events, you might also appreciate a word of where you might be more statistically inclined to make an actual strike of some good concentrations of “color”. It’s really not as mysterious as it has been made to sound.

When you get to a gold bearing region you must choose a spot to hunt. Your main concern is that you are not hunting on someone else’s property or claim. There are places you can still be shot for this, and some places where the claim owners take this right very seriously, so always make sure you know you are not “claim jumping” before you dig in.

The best place for the beginner to start is where you know that there are mines or claims uphill and upstream from your chosen location. Gold will wash downhill into a stream over time. If you can find a spot where a stream flowing downhill from known gold localities converges with the stream you are going to hunt, this is a terrific place to start.

Gold is heavy. It can be carried by a rapid current, but when the current slows down, the gold will drop to the creek bed. Start by hunting down stream from a converging creek or area of color uphill from you. Look for spots in the creek where fast moving water is impeded or slows down. The base of a small waterfall is always worth checking as are areas where the current is diverted by large rocks. Bends of the creek where water rushes in the middle but slows along the shore of the bend are another good area. Don’t be afraid to be creative. I know a man that swept a year’s living expense worth of gold from an old corrugated pipe that ran under a road where a creek passed through. The grooves of the pipe had served as a sluice to catch the grains and nuggets.

When panning, you will want to dig a bit rather than just scoop from the top dirt. You might find some traces of color just scooping the top of the creek bed, but because of its weight, gold will work it’s way down until it eventually hits something that prevents it from going any further. The smaller the grain or the more recently it has been dropped, the closer to the surface you might find it. The deeper you dig, the more you will find if you are searching a good area. Cracks and crevices in rock are also a great place to find grains of gold, but you may need special suction equipment to get it out. There are items you can buy very inexpensively that will help you do that.

Just as there are the right places to look for gold, there are also the right times of year. You will want to wait until late summer or early autumn which is when the streams are at their lowest and slowest. A good plan is to go look the creek over during it’s high season and take notes of the currents when the water is high. Returning later during the low season, you will already have an idea of good places to look for gold that has been spilled by the full spring currents.

Through practice you will soon become able to size up good spots on a creek to pan. When you take your cache and proudly show it off, if someone asks you where you got it, you can just smile and say “it was right where I found it”.

Don’t forget folks — You can find everything you need for a successful gold season at: Black Cat Mining

Tags: Gold, gold panning, Gold prospecting, gold prospecting tips, prospecting equipment, rock and gem hunters

If you are new to gold prospecting, here’s a head’s up for you. You have probably heard a lot of tips about how to prospect gold, but rarely have I seen anyone mention gold trapping, although I know many prospectors practice trapping.

During run-off season water is rushing too fast to do any panning. You can however set “traps” in areas you think might produce gold. By doing so you can save much time later in deciding where is and where isn’t a great place to pan. As any experienced prospector knows, just because a spot on a creek looks good to prospect doesn’t mean it is, and knowing which ones are productive ahead of panning season is a great help.

To set a trap you will still want to find areas in the waterways that current is slowing down enough to drop small particles of gold. Just under small waterfalls is a great place to put a trap. A sluice box is a good item to use for a trap under a small waterfall. As the water flows over the edge of the fall and into the sluice box, the gold which would have usually fallen onto the streambed and worked it’s way underneath will be caught at the bottom of your sluice box instead. Later you can just pan through your sluice box to see if it contains gold. If it does, you know where to pan for all the gold that has been dropped in that area before you got there to check things out.

If you see an area in a creek that a rapid current slows significantly enough to drop gold particles, you will want to place the trap right where the current begins to slow. a ribbed sluice will do the trick for many areas. You will want to put something at the front of the trap that will will slow the water hitting it and redirect the current around it. A sheet of metal or a rock will serve this purpose. Gold will hit the blocade and fall into the trap as the water is slowed. Later in the season as water levels fall and slow down you can pull that trap out of the water and check it for gold particles.

When panning season comes around you will only need to pull your traps to find which areas will be productive places to begin your panning or dredging. You get to spend your time panning the gold instead of searching for places that you might find gold if you pan. You should place at least three or four traps in varied locations. The more you place, the more likely you will be to find a productive location to begin prospecting later. Check your traps periodically and if you find they are not producing any gold, move them to a different location.

A last note about placing traps, though, is that you want to place them where others are not likely to run across them before you get back to them. Find spots that you can monitor with ease. Whenever possible, set the trap in a way it won’t be noticed by someone just walking by the trap. Your aim is not to help someone else locate the mother lode.

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Tags: gold panning, Gold prospecting, gold traps, rock and gem hunters, rockhound supplies, rockhounds