Oh the irony

arizau

Bronze Member
May 2, 2014
2,479
3,854
AZ
Detector(s) used
Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
A few days ago I tested a spot in an unclaimed area that had been on my radar and was confirmed to me to be a good spot (thanks Jeff). I took home about 10 gallons of material from an apparent hot spot for feed material since it had recently been dug extensively and there was a fresh pile of dry washer tailings near where I parked my truck. Just for fun and since dry washers are known to lose some gold I also took home about 2 gallons of the tailings. The irony is that I found about three times as much gold in the small sample of dry washer tailings as I found in 10 gallons of fresh bank material. I must have chosen the wrong spot to dig since there were several other sites of activity:BangHead:

Yeah, I think I will raid that tailings pile again next time I go out and take smaller samples from several different spots until I can find a relative hot spot. That or carry enough water to do some test panning and/or concentration near my truck.
 

Last edited:
Upvote 0

goldenIrishman

Silver Member
Feb 28, 2013
3,465
6,151
Golden Valley Arid-Zona
Detector(s) used
Fisher / Gold Bug AND the MK-VII eyeballs
Primary Interest:
Other
Glad that worked out for ya! It's a good area that several others also know about.

When I was out at Kentucky Wash with Chris from Houston, Clay had asked us to take another guy (Texan) new to the area under our wing and show him where to dig. Problem was he and his partner didn't want to work for the gold or to listen to those that already knew the area. They were TRYING to use a gold cube and they weren't breaking up the clay balls at all. They contacted Chris later and stated that there was no gold in that area. I went back a couple of weeks later and ran their classifier tailing pile and walked away with about 1/8 of a gram out of it. I was nice and thanked them for digging all that gold up for me.

Jan and I have run tailings from the drywashers on the club claim a couple of times. You can pretty much tell how well someone knows how to set up their box by the amount of gold you find in them. Some piles were loaded with gold and others were bare.
 

Top Member Reactions

Users who are viewing this thread

Top