I fourth, fifth and sixth the previous comments! That is a expensive and very nice rig. Sure hope that it is recovered and the thieves brought to justice!
one stolen on the south umpqua 6 inche Gold Dredge Stolen Reward
and 3 stolen on cow creek just in the last week.
one claim owner on cow creek thought he saw someone around his dredge in the middle of the night
shot off a few rounds they checked downstream the next morning for a body but didn't find one.
I chain my dredge to a tree and hide game cameras all over.
If I cant prevent the theft at least I will find who did it...then their life forever changes.
Everyone should photograph their gear and the serial numbers
If the theft occurred on a Claim on BLM or NFS lands and considering that a tree was cut down to remove the dredge, I believe I would be looking hard at the BLM and/or NFS folks for this theft, considering their antics of the past several years.
All this talk of shooting someone over a dredge theft had me thinking, would you really shot someone that was trying to steal your degree? Even on a claim wouldn't this be considered manslaughter or murder especially if the person was un armed? Don't get me wrong I'm all for protecting your stuff and think it's quite a shame that these scum would do this but watch out for yourself as well, it's not worth the conviction going that route imo. They make a cheap , a little black box that uses gps and a SIM card you can hide somewhere on the dredge that will give you the ability to track is location if ever stolen, this might be an option.
So it sucks that it is gone, any chance it floated down river? Was it in the water or on a trailer? Did you see people running off with it? Maybe it just broke free from the ties and is a few miles down the stream snagged? Who knows, I would look just incase. That doesn't look like something easy to pull out of the water.