Woodchucks and ground squirrels gold in NC

[Sluicedog]

Has anyone checked out the digging piles of woodchucks and ground squirrel for gold in NC. The dig plies might be a good spot to MD or pan out. The animals do all the digging in gold country..maybe they don't like nuggets in their burrows! They may give an indication of valuable metals below.

[boogeyman]

Worth a try!

But kinda sounds like one of the old writers that pulled an Aprils Fool joke about panning gold out of ant mounds Although anythings possible!

Ya never know till ya dig!

I should put that on a plaque

[Sluicedog]

Those animals do all the digging in gold country, I was hoping someone would have MD'd an animal digging pile. The digging piles might be a great prospecting tool to assay various areas. The soil could also be panned and carefully classified to verify if it had any gold.

[Seden]

There has been an article in the California Mining Journal about the value of using the dirt from ant hills as a good indication of gold at depth. Ant hills are built over cracks in the bedrock as it allows them access to water. So in the process of digging down they bring up whatever minerals are buried. Retired mining Engineer Dr. Ralph Pray in Los Angeles was the author by the way.

Randy

[idigdirt]

How about packrats? I did some interesting research on packrats a good many years ago. One interesting story was about the gold miner who upon emptying his pockets overnight on his stand in his shack out west was surprised to find that something had taken a bolt that he had on the stand. In it's place was a small gold nugget. The same thing repeated itself the following night. He went to his small coffee can, pulled the plastic lid off and started leaving either nuts, bolts or washers on his stand before he went to bed. For a good many nights he was rewarded with gold in place of nuts, bolts or washers. I'm sure the packrat either ran out of gold nuggets or got tired of nuts, bolts and washers. It was a very interesting article. They like pretty shiny things. Just one more way of utilizing treasure hunting skills. Find a packrats nest and you might be surprised whats been accumulated!

[DavyJonesLocker]

Thats a cool idea run your MD over the burrow mound you never know what they might have dug out making their burrow.