Panning in NW Wisconsin

[dogbeak]

Hello
I have never panned for gold.
Would like to try it sometime.
I have an area nearby that has a very large rock formation that runs for miles and miles in a straight line.
When a stream encounters it it turns and runs along it for a while then will jump a gap and continue on it's way.
My question is, could this be considered bedrock?
The rocks can be followed through the woods very easeally.
They average about 40 feet wide and stickup 15 feet above grade.
I also encountered some as big as a small house.
Thank you for listening.
I'm not trying to profit from this but would like to find just a little bit, just to say I did it.
Bill

 

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[sniffer]

you also need to look for black sand too

 

[Shortstack]

Hello
I have never panned for gold.
Would like to try it sometime.
I have an area nearby that has a very large rock formation that runs for miles and miles in a straight line.
When a stream encounters it it turns and runs along it for a while then will jump a gap and continue on it's way.
My question is, could this be considered bedrock?
The rocks can be followed through the woods very easeally.
They average about 40 feet wide and stickup 15 feet above grade.
I also encountered some as big as a small house.
Thank you for listening.
I'm not trying to profit from this but would like to find just a little bit, just to say I did it.
Bill

Heck, why not make a profit? At $1000 an ounce, a little bit would go a long way.

If that stream has any flooding history, check for cracks and holes in that rock that gets submerged and clean them out for panning material, too.

If you're digging around gravel banks in the stream, keep your eyes opened for any gemstone materials, also; such as diamonds.

 

[dogbeak]

Wow
Maybe I should give it a try.
Sounds like fun.
This is public land.
Now I just have to order a pan and grab a shovel.
I have watched GOLD FEVER on TV and have a basic idea on how to pan.
I will be up in that area next week and maybe scope it out.
geez.. anouther thing to keep me busy.
I'll post what i find along the streams.
It's a long walk to the areas i know, but the creeks are close to the road in some places.
It's in washburn co.
Lets try this spring.
I never thought I might find gold in my part of the country.
It would be neat.
Bill

 

[Shortstack]

dogbreak, a very good way to practice panning is to go to a hardward store or Wally World and get a pack of BB's. Use a known number of BB's (such as 5 or 10) and put them into your pan full of gravel, then start your panning. When you can recover all of your BBs after washing out the trash and gravel, you'll be ready to find any gold. The gem stones you'll have to depend on your eyes only. For gem stone hunting, use the technique used at the commercial mines in the Carolinas and at Murfreesbough, Ark. Make a screening sieve with 1/8 inch or 1/4 inch mesh and screen gravel so the dirt can be washed off of the material, leaving JUST gravel. Clean gravel is a lot easier to scan for gems.

Try to find color photos of different gem stones in books at your local library and online so you'll have a good idea of WHAT you're looking for. Don't expect fist sized stones. Usually, they'll be pea sized. If you DO find a fist sized gemstone, be cool and don't faint.

Goodluck and good hunting.

 

[dogbeak]

Thanks for the reply shortstack
Is there any chance of finding anything of value in this area?
This spot has a history of copper in the past as I understand.
Anything I could find would be nice.
But a trace of gold would be my goal.
Thanks for the heads up on gem stones I might find.
I am willing to share this area with anyone that I could learn from.
The bride said I should bring home a bucket of dirt to sift through.
Will be checking maps to recall the areas i have been to before.
Again, do you think the rock formation is considered bedrock?
Anybody with info on this part of the country for gems and gold posssibilities are welcome.
Best site on the web
great people
thanks
happy hunting
Bill

 

[Shortstack]

For finding info about what gemstones, etc. that can be found in your state, check local library's reference section. Also, check your state's Webpage for info about the geology of the state. Just think. Diamonds have been found in Northern Canada (north of Yellow Knife) down into southern Illinois. You say copper is found in Wisconsin, well, copper and gold are very often found together. The large open-pit copper mine in the Globe-Miami Arizona area was the largest producer of gold in the US and that was as a byproduct to their copper operation. I've read that where you find copper, you'll find gold, but not necessarily the other way around.
Sniffer suggested looking for black sand. If you find a lot of black sand while panning, please save some of it to check for flower gold at home. The technique for that is more involved than I want to write up here. You probably can find some articles in GOLD magazine or in one of the prospector mags. Look for info on micro-sluicing. You can make your own with a piece of gutter like goes on a house along with a piece of ribbed rubber matting. Don't spend the big bucks for a store-bought one. You can make your own using a 4 foot piece of plastic gutter, one end cap, a piece of 1/2 inch PVC pipe for making the water jet, a 1/2" adapter for hooking a garden hose up to that piece of pipe, some PVC cement, a small tube of caulking, and a strip of ribbed rubber matting. The matting is cut so that the ribbing goes across the gutter to act as the riffles for catching the fine gold and enough to cover the inside length of the gutter. You'll need to find that micro-sluicing info for guidance in adjusting the slant of the sluice and the amount of water flow for the best recovery.

 

[dogbeak]

Interesting info
I will probably try to bring some material home from there after the hunting season.
And try to rig up something to clean it.
Thank you for responding.
I'LL be gone till after thanxgiving.
I have no pan yet, so I'll have to figure something out.
I'll try to take some pics of the area when I get there next week.
Bill

 

[lperry3]

Hey Bill,

Here's a good site to check out if you haven't already done so.

http://www.wisconsinprospectors.com/

 

[dogbeak]

Thank you

 

[Eric Willoughby]

Hi there Dogbeak, I am into gold dredging and prospecting myself.

Here is a website that lists known gold locations in your state. As with any website, the information provided is not limited to what is published. If the website doesn't list your county, it doesn't mean there is no gold to be found. Recently in Atlanta, Georgia there was a nice exposed vein of gold found in the southern end of the city, despite it being common knowledge that the gold belt does not travel that far south, but yet, there it was, all bright and shiny and unnoticed throughout the entire history of Atlanta until recently. So there is high probably that there is gold in the area you are talking about. The gold in the cheese state is very fine, but that just means there is a lot more of that type of gold than most other areas. The second piece of good news is that the finer gold does not settle as deep in the stream bed material, therefore, you don't have to dig as deep to get to it. Although, it takes a lot of work to move alot of material to see just a little bit of gold in the pan. The trick to getting a nice size-able amount is to move a lot of material efficiently. Be forewarned, once you find gold in your pan...... YOU WILL BECOME ADDICTED to it. It's gold fever, and the only way to alleviate the symptoms is to go out and find more gold. No one who has ever picked up a gold pan and found color has ever been able to walk away content. All of us gold hunters all went into this thinking, "eh, it will be fun, I think this will be a nice way to spend a day or two". Then the flash of gold shows up in the pan for the first time, and that's when you contract the fever, and it is incurable.



http://www.uwex.edu/wgnhs/Mineral Index/Minerals/gold.htm



Now, along with gold fever and the quest for gold comes the "must" have mentality. This means in order to make your quest for gold easier, you'll have this twisted-arm feeling of having to go get better equipment, because hunting with nothing but a shovel and a pan gets old, really quick, it's too back-breaking and slow for most. So allow me to save you a lot of money and suggest some really good and inexpensive equipment that I did not know about until after I spent a ton of cash on inferior items that cost me 3 times more to buy.....

The area layout you are describing is perfect for a "Gold-N-Sand" hand dredge, which is nothing more than a PVC pipe sniping tube, but with an elbow attached with an 8 foot hose running to a bucket which makes for gathering up the material very quick and with a lot less effort than using a shovel. This tool will also get you in some very tight and unseen areas that will have a lot of trapped gold that the average person is not able to get to. These hand dredges are nearly effortless and easy to use and man, you can get in some very tight places with these things, they also have interchangeable tips for getting into different types of areas. This tool is also great for those pesky national forest places that have the ever-so-stupid "you can pan, but no digging allowed" areas. The hand dredge currently has no law anywhere against it because it is not motorized, and it is impossible to do any erosion damage with it, so this thing will get you in anywhere and be legal at the same time. I own one and I love the fact that I can sample and pan anywhere and to be able to legally thumb my nose at any person or authority that may not like the idea of me pulling precious metal out of the river, they just simply cannot use any environmental "concerns" against it, it's like saying that I may redirect an entire river using a teaspoon...... an utterly ridiculous argument!



http://gold-n-sand.com/#/sniper-pump/4536593371



The second thing you will need is a sluice, and this is where I spent a lot of money buying and trying different sluices, and the one that works the absolutely best is the one I spent the least amount of money on.... go figure!

The best sluice by far is the Le' Trap Sluice, technically called the Le' Trap Bank Robber. These sluices don't use riffles to capture the gold, the use deep slanted grooves that make a slight incline along the sluice which in turn, makes the heaviest material run out of momentum and it falls out of the current and gets stuck in the groves. What is neat about this sluice is that it will remove 98% of the blond sand and lighter black sand right out of your material and it leaves just the heaviest black sands and your gold. So, this will completely eliminate most of the panning that you have to do to get to the gold, all you need to do from there, is to now take your black sand concentrate and drop one table spoon of the sand into your pan, swirl it and shake it around to get the gold to settle, and start slowly swirling the sands away from the pile that is in the pan to uncover the gold. With this neat sluice, you no longer have to do anymore of the swishing and washing of material out of the pan to get to the good stuff, it has already been done for you. It has turned a 5 gallon bucket of concentrates and turned them into less than a quart of material to pan through, it usually takes me about an hour to go through all the sand and remove the gold. Another neat thing is that you will actually see your gold show up in the sluice immediately after you drop the sand in it, the gold just sits in the grooves and does a little dance for you. Lastly, this sluice will not lose any gold, I use the Le' Trap inside the sluice of my dredge at the end of the day to process my concentrates. I just lift up the riffles, remove my carpet, and set the Le' Trap inside and weigh it down with a rock, I then set my dredge on idle and let the water flow through it, then I just start dropping the sand into it. I can process 5 gallon buckets in less than 10 minutes and that's taking my sweet time while I talk to other dredgers and smoke a cigarette. Most other sluices are finicky about the amount of angle/water flow that they will take to process efficiently, but not the Le' Trap, it likes a lot of water and it will work perfectly if it sits dead even or if you have it on a steeper than usual angle. This sluice is very versatile and forgiving, so you are not so pressured into having to find that "perfect spot" that will allow you to operate your sluice. Trust me, I have wasted countless hours trying to adjust sluice pitch and water flow using rocks around it and underneath it, and trying to do so in both very shallow water, and at times having no other place but to try and set it up in an area that is 1 or two feet deep (NOT FUN!)

So far, I have yet to lose any gold using this sluice, I have caught and panned out my own tailings that have ran out of this sluice and I have yet to recover even a speck of gold dust that may have escaped from it. This sluice is as efficient as you can get and it's made out of high impact ABS plastic, it's very rugged, tough, durable and easy to fix it yourself should it ever get cracked (very hard to do in the first place). The total cost is 89.95!



http://gotnuggets.com/letrapsluice.html


As mentioned by another poster, black sands is a very good sign that you are looking for because gold and black sand erode out of the rocks and settle with each other in the river, however, not all rivers with black sand have gold, and not all gold bearing rivers have black sand, it is merely a guide when looking for gold, not a promise that gold is there. I have a friend who owns a "gem grubbing" mine/shop here in North Carolina where people go to sift through dirt in the water to recover rubies and sapphires, his creek has no black sands in it at all, but he has recently found gold showing up in his water trough from the sands people are washing away to get to the gems. As the old saying goes, "gold is where you find it" and it will show up in the oddest of places that you would never think of gold being. Gold could very well be in that 2 foot wide babbling brook in your own back yard!



Feel free to ask any other questions, I will be more than happy to get you on the right track and quickly. You're going to have a blast with it.

 

[dogbeak]

Thank you Cap'n
I'll check out the site next week, just have to break away from my hunting buddies for a while.
(they think I'm crazy,maybe I am)
It's the thrill of the hunt for me.
Thanks again, and I'll post back after thanksgiving with my findings (not gold, but what the site looks like)
Bill

 

[Eric Willoughby]

Thanks and I look forward to it!

 

[Astrobouncer]

Welcome to the hobby man! Finding gold is kinda like gambling, you never know what your gonna get. For me its the thrill of finding stuff, there is nothing quite like test panning a new place and coming up with a bit of shine or some mineral that is interesting/rare. Good luck on your hunting!

 

[Eric Willoughby]

Welcome to the hobby man! Finding gold is kinda like gambling, you never know what your gonna get.

That's true, only you don't wake up in a sleazy motel and finding your bank account completely wiped out.

 

[slowreaper]

Hey Dogbeak,
Years ago I found a pea sized piece of gold in Sarona WI. So, it is there.
And I heard rumors that when they were doing some work on a bridge in Webster (i know not in washburn co, but it is close) They hit a small pocket of accumilated gold around one of the pilings.
Good luck
Brad

 

[dogbeak]

Slowreaper
I drive through sarona most every weekend.
I live just south of there.
I did not get to hunt for any gold this fall, but am looking forward to springtime.
I have a camper stashed in the woods near the target area.
Hope winter goes by quickly.
HH
Bill

 

[EggyOG]

Bill, there are 3 gold prospecting clubs you could check out. Tomah, Wausau, and Greenbush all have clubs. There is also a gold show in Sheboygan Falls in March. It is a perfect place to learn about equipment and panning and pick up what you need.

 

[marinedad]

dogbeak, a few years back i read about an old mine in or near rice lake wanting to reopen. locals were fighting it because of the possible use of cyanide used in extracting the gold. dont know what the outcome was, must be some of the yellow stuff around there.

 

[EggyOG]

There is gold buried under 300 feet of glacial till, but we'll never see that. The stuff we go after in Wisconsin is gold from Upper Michigan and Ontario that is mixed in the glacial till. You can find it in virtually every river in WI but it is usually-60 mesh. The bigger gold is almost all down in Indiana as a result of the glaciers.
No metallic mining is allowed in Wisconsin. The irony is that we have a miner on our state flag and the Wisconsin badger is derogatory term for the lead miners that settled the southwest part of the state. They slept in their holes just like a badger. You would be pretty hard pressed to find an actual badger in WI, but there are a few.
So, in a nut shell, you could find pretty much any gemstone or mineral in our soil and in our creeks that has been discovered anywhere north of us. Check for diamonds at night in the gravel pits, suck out cracks in bedrock on rivers for gold, and hope to get lucky with everything else.