So, you’ve found a wash that had a few nuggets in it. You pounded it to death with all your coils and machines. You’ve even hit the hillsides and perhaps you even found a nice patch in the vicinity of where the current or previous source of the gold was. Now what?

Well, if you’ve done the job correctly it should be time to move on and find a new spot. Have you done the job correctly?

One time I was taken to a “patch” one time that was purported to have yeilded in excess of 40 troy ounces of nugget gold. When I got there, it was obvious that very little if any gold had come from the spot. For one thing, when I started detecting in what was said to be the center of the nugget patch I began to find all these little rusted tin targets. Well, I don’t know about you but if I found a place that yeilded that much placer gold, I’d dig every single target. The other obvious indicator was that under the trees and cactus, there was remaining all manner of dead brush and detritus and no stones had been moved. If there was 40 ounces of gold found there (which there wasn’t), I’d say that most of the gold was left behind under rocks and brush.

Giving the benefit of the doubt for a moment, the guy that found this patch didn’t know the secret of successful patch cleaning. The secret lies in one word: Placer.

As in the verb.

Example:

“Me and Christopher found a bunch a gold nuggets and we are going back to placer the wash,” said Robert.

“Oh, you mean your going to drywash for fines?”, asked Earl

Robert said, “Heck no! What I MEANT was that we are going to process all the rich material in the wash by removing all the overburden so we can get into all the nuggets in the bedrock cracks covered by a foot or more of material. There are a lot of small nuggets under that overburden and trapped deep in the cracks of the bedrock and our GPX4500’s won’t reach down that far on those really small but copious nuggets that are literally EVERYWHERE in the wash but because no one ever digs down to them, they are still there, even though the wash is right next to the fricken road!”

“Oh.” groused Earl.

The point here is this: If you find gold nuggets in a location and you remove all the targets and use all the coils and machines in your arsenal but fail to move dead branches, large rocks, scrape areas and dig down bedrock in all feasable spots in a wash, you are leaving gold behind. Period.

Just to give an idea of how this works in real life I’ll tell a little story. Rod, Laszlo and I were combing an area which seemeda good bet for a virgin placer gold patch. After splitting up for awhile, we reconvened at a small wash where Laszlo had scored a couple of nice gold nuggets out of the wash. Needless to say we were all totally stoked. This spot was remote as hell and there was no sign of any detectors. The wash had been hit in the very distant past as indicated by the small handstacks and drywash header piles but how exciting! A new spot in a remote area untouched by modern detectors. That’s the brass ring boys.

We set to work and I think Laszlo got one more using his GP Extreme and Nuggetfinder 20″ SL. Rod and I got nothing for our efforts at pounding with our 14″ mono’s. The next trip also yeilded nothing for me and only one teensie little match head for Rod. I think a third trip yeilded nothing. Well, two significant events happened after that. Rod found a hillside piece and Laszlo’s detector broke in the field and he had no option but to dig. The hillside yeilded a lot of gold but some of the best gold came out of that wash after the digging began. Once that overburden was removed, the nuggets just kept coming and coming. Eventually, with expansion, the patch yeilded over 60 nuggets and a lot of those came from placering the wash by removing the overburden. I can assure you we expanded the handstacks and did a lot more work than the oldtimers did. No harm, no foul, the holes were covered and except for the extra rocks on the stacks, the place looks much like it did when we first arrived there. Placering was not the only key to finding gold in this spot but without it we would have left many nuggets behind. The hillside took dilligence and the digging was hard work but it turned a 4 nugget patch into a 60 nugget patch really quick.

Keep in mind I’m not suggesting you dig every square inch of every wash this way. You have to think. I’ve heard stories of guys detecting in major washes that have several feet of overburden and that is not what I’m talking about. You have to choose your battles and that is work best left to the trommels and backhoes. As metal detectorists we are looking for a reasonable compromise of exposed bedrock and areas where a foot or two of overburden can be dug to access the bedrock. Don’t waste your time in areas where it’s not reasonable to use a detector.

Another good example of a well worked patch is the famous Prescott nugget patch which to the best of my knowledge is under current lode claim. The oldtimers sunk a couple of adits here and, as I heard the tale, on one occasion they blasted and hit a really rich pocket of gold. When the blast went off, it sent a ton of matrix into the air which scattered down the hill and left it littered with nice specimens. The pocket was so rich that nobody bothered to go grab the species that now laid scattered. In the olden days folk used to go up and grab a few by eye if they wanted to go to the movie house or fetch some grub. Time passed and most of the easy stuff was picked up until someone researched the matter at the Sharlot hall, found out about the wayward blast of matrix and went up there with a Minelabs. This was several years ago and the results of their efforts, which apparently yeilded about 10 troy pounds of specimen gold, are still evident. There are no loose rocks in the area of the patch except those scraped into piles up under trees . There was a lot of scraping that occured there and it is a truely difficult area to score a nugget in. Another placer patch nearby shows similar efforts with a 25×25 area scraped clean with piles of rocks and totally devoid of targets. Now that’s patch cleaning.

Have you left gold behind somewhere? Better go back and get it!

There is a lot of discussion, theory and “gospel” about where to find gold in a desert wash. Most people have heard about the usual suspects such as finding gold on an inside bend, downstream from a boulder, gold nuggets settling within 1 foot of the gut of the creek, looking for the flat dropouts and so on. All these general rules can and do often apply to a given location where we might suspect to find placer gold. Learning to recognize and “cherry pick” these hot spots in a wash can lead to quick discovery of previously uncovered ground or ground previously covered by less experienced nugget hunters. However, there are a few situations where this cherry picking method of detecting is best left behind.

Awhile back when I was new to nugget hunting, I received a powerful lesson while out detecting with Travis Brown of Pro-Gold Prospecting in Youngtown. We were out testing some claims that Kevin Hoagland had acquired in the eastern Bradshaws near Bumblebee and Cleator. A lot of really nice nuggets had come off of these claims in the past and I got chance to see a collection of several ounces in the possesion of the former owner which had been found with a Fisher Gold Bug. Of course these claims had also been hit heavily with Minelab’s as well. Travis, who is a great detectorist and teacher, agreed to let me tag along with him and we went for a hike. Both of us had Minelab detectors. I was using my SD2100 with a stock 11″ DD and Travis had a nice new (at the time) GP3000 with a Coiltek 11″ DD Pro. After trying several areas we dropped down into a wash on the far corner of the claims which looked really nice. The wash was not to wide, and had lots of exposed bedrock. It wasn’t devoid of trash targets either and so seemed to have a good potential for gold. Travis kept preaching to me to be methodical and slow in my approach. We were leap frogging and I was in a rush. This was definitely a case of the tortise beating the hare because in the end, he got 2 gold nuggets and I got none. Travis later recovered at least 3 more and one of them was, humiliatingly recovered out of one of my dig holes.

Here’s how he did it.

With beginners, there is a tendency to rush. This applies most especially when the novice has not yet found a gold nugget with his or her detector. It’s really a mindset problem. Because the novice nugget hunter has so many challenging hurdles to overcome, coupled with the intense drive to find that first elusive piece of gold, missteps can occur when trying to follow the general rules. The novice might tend to try and use the cherry picking method before they really know where the cherry spots are. Being in a rush, they actually tend to not only skip over really good places to find gold in the wash, they also don’t detect the areas they do decide to scan very effectively. New detectorists also tend to gravitate towards the old spots. They might spend their first few times out or even longer detecting club claims or open ground in the more known placer gold areas. The thing about these places is that all the usual spots have already been detected thoroughly, sometimes 100’s of times. Not that there aren’t gold nuggets left to be found in choice spots, it’s just that thinking outside of the normal mode of operation is necessary to find gold more frequently.

If you are new to nugget hunting, try this excercise next time you go out. Choose a wash where gold has been found in the past. Perhaps it’s that really nice looking wash on a club claim which you’ve never found a target in. Or, maybe it’s the trash filled wash that nobody seems to want to deal with for more than 2 minutes. Pick your starting point and fire up your detector. Take your time because this is not rush work. Make sure your detector is well tuned and ground balanced. Set your threshold just right. If you don’t know how to do this, fake it like you are an expert and just trust that it is the best it will be. Look at the wash ahead of you and just breathe. You know there is gold left in this wash. Now, look down at your coil and begin to scan, slowly. Start on one side of the wash and make sure you overlap your swings. Detect up the banks as far as your detector will go. Shove the coil up under that brush. Turn the coil on edge and pinpoint in between any bedrock cracks. Move into and across the wash, slowly overlapping as you go. Check every thing you hear. If it sounds like it might be a target, boot scrape the sand and check it again. If there is a rock in the way, kick it out of the way and detect again. Dont just detect around the obstructions, get rid of them! Move all the way to the other bank and detect up the side and then move forward. Zigzag up the wash slowly, digging every target and detecting every inch of ground between your starting point and the headwaters.

If you are methodical, you will find out how much gold is left in the wash. At least for the coil and machine that you are using. Move forward in this way over many washes in the usual placer areas and you will find gold. It should go without saying that if you do find gold in a wash that it should be thoroughly pounded with whatever coils or detectors you might have at your disposal.

BILL MCHANEY and THE MOUNTAIN  It was January in the desert and it was cold. It had snowed two days back and now the north winds were blowing in at a pretty good clip with a lot of cloud cover. Bill McHaney sat the bar in the Oasis sipping a warm cup of coffee cussing the wind. He didn’t mind the snow he knew it would melt in a day or two but the wind; well it just drives a man crazy. The bar was empty except for Bill and Charlie the owner. Charlie hated the wind also. The sides of the bar were not that wind proof and Charlie goes through a lot of wood just to keep the chill off for the customers. The door opens and slams shut with a big bang as Charles Wilson, (aka Johnny “Quartz” Wilson, aka “Chuckwalla” Wilson)  comes in. As Wilson began to peel off layers of clothes to get a bit more comfortable, Charlie got him a cup of coffee with a whiskey shooter. Chuckwalla took one look at Bill and said to himself, somewhat out loud, Bill you look like hell. When was the last time you slept? Chuck, its not that I’m not sleeping, it’s this damn wind it’s got me nervous and all tied up in knots. I just hate it. I want to get back out to my cabin and that mountain (after hearing a story of a rich vein of gold somewhere in the area, Bill McHaney made his home near the south east end of Gold Park for 25 years while he searched for the lost lode).  Yup Bill your right, about this wind and cold weather, it drives me crazy too. Speaking of that mountain, let’s go over to the table by the fire, and talk about it and see if we can warm up some. As Bill and Chuckwalla settled in the weather got worse and it started snowing again although the wind died down. At this point there was no consoling Bill; he was just fit to be tied. Chuckwalla orders Bill and stiff shot and another cup of coffee and told him to take his medicine.   While Bill is trying to recover from the new snow storm, Chuckwalla goes over to the bar and talks to Charlie to see if he has any food to eat. Charlie said that he had a pot of beans in the back with some hard tack. Chuckwalla orders two big bowls of beans and hard tack for Bill and himself.   Wilson goes back to the table and tells Bill that that dinner was on the way. Charlie brought the beans to the table with two cup of fresh coffee and Bill started to calm down. He attacked that bowl of beans like he hadn’t eaten in days. Chuckwalla asks Bill when he ate last and he said, “Three or four days ago. He sad he could not remember”. Chuckwalla ordered two more bowls of beans for Bill and told Charlie that he would cover the bill.  The snow stopped around 8:30pm that night and Bill and Chuckwalla left the bar and headed to their own tents. It took two days for the snow to melt and another three days for the wind to die down. Bill had his gear ready to go and when the wind died down he loaded his two mules and headed out to his cabin in the southeast end of the Gold Park District. When Bill got to his small little cabin, which was hidden back up in a draw, the pack rats had taken over. It took Bill half a day to get things cleaned up and livable inside. Bill didn’t mind the little critters except that they would steal anything that was not nailed down and usually leave a piece of cactus in place of what they took. On the up to the cabin Bill shot two cottontail rabbits so he cleaned them and fried them up with a potato and onion. He figured that it was cold enough that he could finish the rest of it off for breakfast. Bill was glad that he built his cabin back up in this draw; it was out of sight and out of the wind. He had spent about a week digging out the bank for the cabin and corral for the animals. As he was getting ready for bed he put some hard tack out for the pack rats in hopes that they would leave his dry goods a lone. As sleep fell upon Bill he dreamed about finding nuggets on the side of the mountain.  Bill did not have much experience with Indians except the few that hung out at the Oasis. He got to talking to an old Indian one night that was about half drunk and the old man told him about two places he could find lots of gold. One was on scared ground and he should stay away from it but the other one was hard to find but the gold nuggets laid all over one side of this certain mountain. The old Indian agreed to show him where it was at the next day. As agreed, the old man showed up and took Bill and showed him the mountain and than took off toward Music  Valley. Bill made a dry camp that night and the next day located a place to build a cabin and stable.  Bill awoke with the sun and went outside to retrieve breakfast. As he brought it back in he noticed that the small table was covered with cactus and a few very small shiny rocks. He sat the skillet down on the stove, removed the cactus and took a good look at the stones. To his amazement they were not stones at all but small nuggets. As his blood started to pump faster he realized that he was in the right spot. He put on a pot of coffee and re-cooked the rabbit from the night before. After breakfast Bill cut some winter grass to feed the animals and picked up his rake, pick, bag and headed out toward the mountain.  For the next 25 years Bill raked the side of that mountain hand picking the nuggets he saw. Every once an while Chuckwalla would come out and give him a hand. Bill always paid his bill with gold when ever he came to town for goods and a visit. Today you can barely see the rake marks on the mountain and his cabin is pretty much gone. My father related this story to me many years ago yet I’ve never gone looking for any of the gold. Now with the onset of good metal detectors I may just be paying a visit to that mountain in a year or so.  

Copyright 2008

OL’29er