Digging dos and donts

[utah mason]

Digging do's and don'ts

Being a newbie, I want to make sure I'm not making any mistakes that get me in trouble with Johnny law.
I see big holes in banks and high up out of river or stream. I have been keeping my digging at water line, or below except last time, material I was digging was out of water but well below high water mark. How much do the rules change from blm, forest service, to private? I've been pushing big rocks back in hole and backfilling. A few different guys on YouTube said too for different reasons, trip hazard's for both people and wildlife. fish get trapped and its the law in some places. Thanks for helping me avoid a ticket and lecture.

 

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[et1955]

Always fill in your holes, when you finish mining it should look like no mining was done. Remember you are not the only one visiting the area. You don't want some family visiting the area and have their child fall into your hole and get injured, you know what will happen next, area will be closed to mining and more hate aimed at us good miners.

 

[Jimmydolittle]

Check with your DNR, or whomever has authority. In Indiana, it is not legal to dig in the banks. sand bars are fine, ad easy to dig for the most part. Lots of AU to you.

Being a newbie, I want to make sure I'm not making any mistakes that get me in trouble with Johnny law.
I see big holes in banks and high up out of river or stream. I have been keeping my digging at water line, or below except last time, material I was digging was out of water but well below high water mark. How much do the rules change from blm, forest service, to private? I've been pushing big rocks back in hole and backfilling. A few different guys on YouTube said too for different reasons, trip hazard's for both people and wildlife. fish get trapped and its the law in some places. Thanks for helping me avoid a ticket and lecture.

 

[nh.nugget]

I hate it when people don't fill in their holes. A couple of weeks ago I almost stepped into a 3 foot deep one! Good thing I looked before I leaped could of been nasty! All summer I have been filling in other peoples holes. I was actually thanked for doing it not to mention I didn't want to get blamed for it. Some people are just lazy or don't care! There is only one that I didn't fill it's a good one to pan in. I teach the newbies in it!

 

[Hoser John]

Each state, agency and land designation has different regulations. Open pits are just uncool and makes agencies close areas-good excuse anyhow. We just had this happen here as Pollard Flats absolutely decimated,1,000's of holes ,massive boulder piles, looks like a WWW2 battle field. All it took was a long mass group outing from the cancer on the Klamath and POOF gone gone gone. Jack ,first man down, and his wife came out to visit last summer prior and were absolutely amazed at the ungodly TOTAL decimation of all the river banks up to 100' from the river sic sic sic-John

 

[triple d]

These types of things can never be undone. Good things done by miners go unnoticed. But something like this happens. And we will all pay for it for a long time. If not forever. The signs say leave it like you were never there. Please do this. Its the best thing to protect us miners.

 

[Goldwasher]

Prospectors and miners dig holes...it happens don't feel guilty about it... Its pretty counter productive to fill a hole you got color out of the same day you dug it out... there is no law about filling holes. You may be back in a day or so.Or not? There are laws about where you dig them SOMETIMES..Try to take an area down in wide layers spread your cobbles out as much as you can instead of an unstable pile. its also up to people who go out walking around to watch where they put their feet. Any hole left before waterline won't remain a hole through the wet season. That's for placer mining.....when detecting..FILL YOUR HOLES

 

[nh.nugget]

That's how I did my spot, took it down in layers. seeing how the gulls took the over-burden all I had to do was scrape. When it stopped producing I moved over and filled where I had dug with my rocks.

 

[fowledup]

I have mixed emotions about this. Way too much shame has been associated to something that in the grand scheme of things is rather petty. People hike over hill and dale down into the canyons, climbing over logs, scrambling around and over boulders, climb thru the ravines, belly crawl the buck brush, jump over natures little mortar holes and complain about a 3' hole on the riverbank some miner left that nature will happily fill in before next spring. This isn't golf, on a manicured course. It's a small hole in the boonies, in an environment already littered with hazards to our fragile little bodies. Do we tell kids to fill in the holes in the sand box? No because you realize that when you go to a playground that along with the other hazards like flying frizbees or yuppies with their heads up their rears zipping by on their mtn. bikes, that there may be holes and piles of dog poo to step around and avoid. We allow ourselves to be needllessly shamed. Now I will say that if your in a populated public access area I do believe that it should be done as an act of courtesy and common sense, not because some idjits think it's another terrrible byproduct of our mining efforts. I don't know, I get so tired of everything we do no matter how harmless or insignificant ending up with a negative connotation assscociated with it.

Cracks me up- Your a mile down into the canyon and some guy climbs down a 50' embankment, shuffles under a widowmaker and belly flops over two six foot boulders to see what you got going on and in all seriousness offers up-- "Dude, yer gonna fill that hole in right?" "Uh yeah, u bet by the way there's a rope about a hundred feet downstream to help ya up the cliff, careful now!"

 

[nh.nugget]

Well it was in a public spot and it was behind a rock that we normally step over it was sorta, hidden not in a good spot. In the river no problem, but really in a place where there is a lot of traffic basically in a foot path no ryme or reason a little common sense goes a long way.

 

[fowledup]

Well it was in a public spot and it was behind a rock that we normally step over it was sorta, hidden not in a good spot. In the river no problem, but really in a place where there is a lot of traffic basically in a foot path no ryme or reason a little common sense goes a long way.

Absolutely- do it cuz it's the right thing to do!

 

[goldenIrishman]

I always back fill my holes even though I usually work in the middle of nowhere. I've made a few really big ones but once I get to a certain size, I start back filling at the same time that I'm digging. I do this by tossing the rocks and classifier left overs into the starting side of the dig site. This way, when I have finished, I don't have to go back and fill the entire thing in at one time. Works really well if you're following the bedrock in a wash or stream.

 

[mytimetoshine]

I agree one should back fill there holes but people should not be so quick to do it for others by assuming the whole was "left" unfilled.

Yesterday went back to the whole I dug the day before and some good Samaritan filled mine... yea thanks! I think you should wait till you've seen the same whole for a long period of time before "helping out "

 

[Goldwasher]

Foot paths no holes for sure and more access means more discretion for sure.....holes on claims they make great settling ponds and places to put tailings....

 

[OwenT]

there is no law about filling holes.

Here in WA there is.

 

[arizau]

Here in the desert, some of those holes are blessings in disguise and I often look for them as a prospecting starting point especially when they appear to be from way back when. I'm not blind yet and I don't walk around in the boonies texting and I assume most others are not or do not either so safety...pthhhh. I do obey the laws though. I always keep my eyes peeled for snakes so avoiding holes is a no brainer anyway. My biggest complaint is trash and most of what I see where I go is from illegal aliens. That both sickens me and scares me.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Another thing in the line of "DOs & DON'TS" that really should be a no brainer. Don't trash the area! You bring it in... you bring it out! If you can get rid of some trash left by others then so much the better!

It's an unfortunate fact that there are people that drive out into the desert (or other wilderness areas) and dump their trash in some wash or ravine. Some of it gets blamed on miners and even though WE were not the ones that left it, WE haul it out if at all possible.

 

[triple d]

I live in the East everything is private property. One of the best gold streams in Maine was closed. Because the whole place was dug up. If someone lets you dig on there land. A little respect. We fight for our rights to prospect. Every day. I realize mother nature will take care of it. But mother nature is not fighting for our rights. Just one person digging in the bank closed one stream. What ever.

 

[nh.nugget]

Up where I go the property is owned by the camp ground. That place got dug up and dredged to the point they have a worker come down on the weekends to keep an eye on what 's happening down there. Plus us seasonals keep an eye out as well! Some of them that come up have no resect for the river, land owners, (who are very nice)or the laws of our state.

 

[Goldwasher]

Here in WA there is.

And it is