Metal Detecting Tailings

[starsplitter]

Greetings all. How many of you have metal detected old gold mining tailing piles? How successful is the approach? Any tips/suggestions on how to find and identify tailing piles (in particular older more grown over piles... assuming that the older ones have more lost metal since recovery technology was more primitive at that time)? Thanks.

 

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[Clay Diggins]

I think you meant to say mine waste rock? Tailings are the fine ground waste from milling operations. There is no detectable gold in tailings.

Mine waste rock sometimes contains free gold that can be detected. For the best chance of finding gold in waste piles:

1. Work the site of a formerly producing gold mine. Most mines weren't dug for gold so do your research.
2. Work older hand driven mines in arid areas. With little to no water often the gold was picked by hand from the ore to be transported and processed later. If the original miners didn't actually see gold in a piece of ore it was often tossed to the side.
3. Smaller waste piles are easier to rake down and detect. The little piles from old drywashing operations can be particularly productive.

I'm sure more experienced detectorists can add more info.

Don't count on older mining operations being less efficient. People have been mining as a profession for thousands of years and the only real new technology in the last 120 years is the cyanide process. The vast majority of professionally run productive mines from history will leave little to no detectable gold. It's one of the oldest sciences. There are exceptions to that rule, the arid region small gold mine, the many productive gold deposits abandoned in California after the Sawyer decision in 1884, there are others.

 

[1637]

i always love see to the old bucket dredges spit out anything over 1/2 or 3/4 into tailing.it would take a lot of digging but,wow. i know allot of people that doing allot of detecting of peoples drywasher tailings and waste rocks and find allot. just start digging.just dont do the chinese ones they were every good. good luck keep us posted.

 

[leadnugget]

starsplitter, do you mean hard rock mine dumps.
be aware of old blasting caps.
most of the dumps i have tried were very trashy.
i remember there was a guy, cant remember who it was
that instead of detecting the dump he would sit down and
pass likely looking rocks over his gold bug2 coil and kept the ones that beeped.
he would crush them later.

would recommend a very sensitive detector for doing that.

if you mean drywash tailings there are 2 kinds. the fine pile that have
gone through the grizzly screen, you might find some small flakes
and the coarse header pile, larger rocks that didn't make it through the grizzly.
that's where you can find bigger nuggets.
i found this one early this year. it was in some odd crunchy red gravel.
likely rolled off the grizzly of a drywasher.
6.6 grams

clay you are right calling it waste rock.
i have never heard anyone say drywasher waste rock.
only drywasher tailings.
what do you call the piles?

 

[Clay Diggins]

Nice nugget! It looks like it came from the Hill. East side?

what do you call the piles?

If you are asking about the drywasher piles I think I already covered that in my post above?

The little piles from old drywashing operations can be particularly productive.

As opposed to the big piles of waste rock from a mine or a dredging operation. Those I call big piles.

Yeah the fine piles from the processed end of a drywasher tend to be pretty barren except in areas with heavy clay. The waste rock off the drywasher grizzly can have bigger gold and is usually pretty easy to rake down to detect.

Heavy Pans

 

[leadnugget]

no. last time i was out at rich hill was about 4 or 5 years back, not mining but a pig hunt.
just before sun up. 4 of us stopped not far from decision corner. one of the local trailer trash miners thought
it would be fun i guess to unload a 9mm, god know where his bullets were going.
maybe trying to scare us off?
what that guy did not know is we were armed to the max. 4 rifles 308, 6.5, m4 one with slide fire and 8 pistols.
i had thoughts on what to do but cooler heads prevailed.

there are other unspoken areas that have less traffic and fewer crazy's running around.
gold seems to bring out the kooks.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Yeah the Hill is full of crazies, I haven't been there in years. All your comments about crazies and gold hunting up there also apply to pig hunting there as you found out. There are always better places for both.

I grew up hunting and eating Javelina. It's an acquired taste. We hunted from horseback with rifles. Work them up a box canyon and take them when they climb the rock at the end.

Those big boars could be pretty dangerous when cornered, My Dad lost his horse and almost his life to a really cranky boar we cornered when we were hunting one day. I killed him (the boar - not my dad). We ate him the next day he was some tough nasty meat. My Uncles ranch and his rules - you kill it you eat it.

 

[leadnugget]

2017 archery, i think there might be some left in the freezer, let me know if you want some.

 

[nuggetshooter323]

Greetings all. How many of you have metal detected old gold mining tailing piles? How successful is the approach? Any tips/suggestions on how to find and identify tailing piles (in particular older more grown over piles... assuming that the older ones have more lost metal since recovery technology was more primitive at that time)? Thanks.

You want to look for mines where they visually sorted the material and chucked what they thought had no gold, into a waste rock pile. These are the best chance for hidden gold. Bring a loupe so you can check mineralized stringers for flour gold in rocks that may not beep.

Sometimes old mines had an ore storage area where they would stage dug ore before they shipped it to a processor. If they abruptly stopped operations for some reason there might be an eroded pile of virgin ore sitting somewhere on the site waiting for an enterprising detectorist. Or if you can identify where their pile used to be, dig down a little in case some of that ore still exists below the plane of the ground because I usually don't expect a VLF to detect deeper than 4" in mineralized ground.

 

[nuggetshooter323]

i always love see to the old bucket dredges spit out anything over 1/2 or 3/4 into tailing.it would take a lot of digging but,wow. i know allot of people that doing allot of detecting of peoples drywasher tailings and waste rocks and find allot. just start digging.just dont do the chinese ones they were every good. good luck keep us posted.

At Fairplay CO, there's a river that runs through the city that has huge bucket line dredge tailing piles for miles. The city charges $10 a day or $100 for a year permit to mine however you want without a motor. There are so many miles of cobbles that I just put on my hiking boots and a big coil and cover as much ground as possible.

 

[arizau]

At Fairplay CO, there's a river that runs through the city that has huge bucket line dredge tailing piles for miles. The city charges $10 a day or $100 for a year permit to mine however you want without a motor. There are so many miles of cobbles that I just put on my hiking boots and a big coil and cover as much ground as possible.

Any sucess with your nugget shooting?

By the way.....A bunch of years ago (30 or more?) I thought I spotted a dredge floating on a pond just off the highway north of town. The pond was surrounded by fairly tall trees so only glimpes as one drives by. Is the dredge, if it was one, still there and operating?

 

[nuggetshooter323]

Any sucess with your nugget shooting?

By the way.....A bunch of years ago (30 or more?) I thought I spotted a dredge floating on a pond just off the highway north of town. The pond was surrounded by fairly tall trees so only glimpes as one drives by. Is the dredge, if it was one, still there and operating?

I haven't seen that dredge, I'll have to go up there and poke around next I'm up there. The nuggets are small, few, and far between. But that's how it goes in Colorado. I could get more gold sluicing or dredging, but I love metal detecting more.