Truth be told, most of the well-known nugget producing areas in the US have been hunted hard over the past several decades. There’s still gold to be found on public land, but you have to outsmart and outhunt the hundreds of detectorists that have come before you. The best thing about private land is that […]
As a prospector, I’m always thinking of easier ways to find gold. After all, it’s no easy task to accumulate even a small amount of the yellow metal. I’m usually content to find even 1 or 2 grams of gold after a long day of digging. Let’s get this out of the way first… GOLD […]
Finding gold nuggets with metal detectors should be easy, right? The detector beeps, you dig, that’s it! Not really. Not only is it difficult, using metal detectors to find gold nuggets is a painfully slow process that requires patience and skill. Big nuggets are like finding a needle in a haystack. Most are tiny. Heavy […]
What do most people think of when they think of natural treasures? I consider the natural mineral that come from the Earth… things like diamonds, emeralds, gold, silver, rubies and sapphires. Natural gold is of particular interest for a couple of reasons. Over the past few years this precious metal has hovered between $1200 and […]
One of the most underutilized methods of metal detecting for gold is what we call “gridding.” The process is simple, but lots of prospectors don’t do it. And many who do end up doing it poorly, resulting in missed gold. This is certainly not a secret method, but most people just don’t do it properly. […]
Some of the areas that you come across when you are exploring new prospecting ground just look perfect. You just know there is gold lurking nearby. If you have been prospecting for any length of time you know what I am talking about. There are some areas that just look gold. There are rock piles […]
Metal detectors respond very differently to a solid, dense gold nugget than a thin, wiry gold specimen. Sometimes these unusual, “non-traditional” gold nuggets are virtually invisible to certain types of metal detectors. It isn’t just the size of the gold that makes them hard to hear. I have seen large multi-ounce specimens of gold that […]
Patch hunting is a relatively straight-forward gold prospecting method. The idea is for the prospectors to spend time searching for “virgin” ground, rather than prospecting in the known gold-bearing locations. To do this effectively, you have to accept that its going to be a long process that takes patience. The thing about hunting in the […]
Old hard rock mine dumps are often overlooked by prospectors, who often gravitate toward the placer deposits in creeks and rivers rather than hillside deposits. This can be a mistake. Even though a lot of mine dumps will be unproductive, some of them can be very rich if you learn how to hunt them correctly. […]
Metal detecting have always been an efficient way to recover gold nuggets, assuming that the operator has the experience needed to use it properly. Many of the newer detectors on the market are quite good at discriminating out ferrous trash, allowing a prospector to focus on the better nonferrous targets (gold & lead). In gold […]