Professional Gold Prospectors

Friday, May 4th, 2012 at 9:41 pm  
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Living right next to the gold fields here in Arizona has its advantages. For one thing, a guy can get out into the field pretty quickly. Having several spots to detect within 20 minutes of the house is great and within an hours drive, it’s practically unlimited. If my family goes out for a hike anywhere near the house, we’re always in gold country and if I don’t have my detector with me, I can prospect with my eyes and my brain, taking notes for future forays. Heck, if I just want to see a little color, it’s not 2 miles to the richest (documented) gold strike in Arizona at Lynx Creek. I’ve spent a lot of time around this area just walking up and down the creeks and checking out what there is to see and you can learn a lot just by looking.

One thing I’ve noticed lately, say within the past year or more is the increased incidence of hunkered down individuals on the creek. These are guys who have a spot they are working hard. Now, I’m not just talking about the kind of hole a guy might visit on weekends or even every day after work. I’m talking about the kinds of holes that are under 12 or 13 hours a day of direct miner occupancy. These holes are defacto claimed and their owners are there working them and protecting them from dawn until dusk. The type of work is not light work either, it’s deep individual hand tool work where the miner is placering WAY down to bedrock and working really hard to get there. I’m aware of this one section of creek where three miners are working about a 100 ft stretch of creek and are practically creating new hand cobbled piles along the side. They work, don’t look at or talk to one another and generally don’t talk much at all. I know these guys are doing it for a living and probably not a great one but when other options are slim, it’s what they do. I don’t have any particular conclusions about it but am just saying I’m seeing a lot more of it. A natural result of a flagging economy and an elevated price of gold.

Coiltek Blitz Coils

Friday, May 6th, 2011 at 11:06 pm  
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New this week from Coiltek Manufacturing is the Blitz coil, which is part of Coiltek’s Goldstalker series.

The first coil in this series is a 14 x 9 inch elliptical mono that weighs in at 24.8 oz.

These new coils are wound with Litz wire and are the first of this kind for Coiltek.

These coils have been specifically designed to work with the Minelab GPX 5000 in the Fine Gold setting and are supposed to provide an enhanced signal on those small, at depth targets that the 5000’s have been finding. A friend of mine recently mentioned some of the nice dinks he’s been finding and surprisingly depth with the 5000 using the fine gold setting, even in uber hot ground. Who knows, maybe this coil will help further the efforts of dink hunters in the pounded patches?

SD and GP users should not expect to get any kind of unfair advantage over the regular line of Coiltek products which run a little less expensive than the Blitz line.

Check out the blurb:
Coiltek PDF

I’m looking forward to reading the field reviews from unbiased detectorists.

Retail on the new coil is $491 – Give Doc at
Doc’s Detecting a shout or visit your local Coiltek dealer.

Got Rights?

Friday, February 18th, 2011 at 2:40 am  
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Looks like there’s going to be a new boss in town (actually everywhere out of city limits of Wickenburg) in some popular nugget hunting areas. The Maricopa county government parks dept. has issued a Memorandum of Understanding which is intended to “initiate a formal working relationship and establish a general framework of cooperation upon which a Recreation Area Management Plan (RAMP) for the Vulture Mountain Cooperative Recreation Management Area (Vulture Mtn.-CRMA) will be developed to determine the recreational uses and needs of the area; and to identify the management actions required to reach the desired outcomes of the Parties, the public, and surrounding communities.” This is not Mining Legislation per se but a change in the administration of a large area comprising the Vulture mountains, Wickenburg and Buckhorn ranges. You’ll see when you look at the map that this change includes all of the Vultures, Rich Hill, Little San Domingo drainages AND there are a wide variety of special land designations within the proposed boundary.

Basically, it’s the establishment a FEE program and rules program that will be initiated in this vast gold bearing area.It very likely will mean closures, claims invalidation and definitely FEES and Road Closures. It looks like the entire Vulture area, LSD and Constellation Road area is designated as a “Special Cultural Resource Management Area” No word on what this means but the bottom line is that they have plans. Incidentally, all the activities that they list are already happening throughout the area, they just need to collect at this time.

How long, when, how and if is anybody’s guess. As more information becomes available, we’ll keep you updated. For now, please familiarize yourself with the MOU  and take a look at the map of the affected areas.

Please stay updated on this issue as it will take a long time and there may be opportunity to get involved at least at the public comment level. If you’ve enjoyed this area in the past, the rules are about to change, so keep up! Public comments are already open here so feel free to let us know what you think.

Mining Claim Royalties?

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011 at 3:25 pm  
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 The Obama administration recently released it budget for fiscal year 2012.  It’s been blasted by both sides of the aisle and lauded by some as well.

There is one small item in the budget that you might not know about but will be of big interest to mining claim holders.

The section regarding the Department of the Interior “Provides a better return to taxpayers from mineral development” and “proposes a number of actions to receive a fair return from the development of U.S. mineral resources”, including “Charging a royalty on select hardrock minerals(such as silver, gold and copper)”

Read about it here:

Department of the Interior Budget overview 

They are suggesting a 5% royalty on new mines. This would effectively change the status of claims to something more like a lease as they do with oil and gas.

It’s interesting wording. By using the work hardrock, it brings into question the status of placer claims. What constitutes a mine? Does it mean they want 8% of a 2 gram nugget? A gram of fine gold from the drywasher?

So, what do you think? Good thing? Bad thing?   Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

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