Once you understand the movement of gold it is much easier to locate areas that may be holding pay dirt. There are other types of placer deposits that are miles from any mountains or water such as the arid desert of Arizona and Nevada. Touching on the word elusive once again. Large pieces of lava that have veins of gold running through them have been found miles from mountain ranges in desert basins. There have been geodes (more commonly referred to as Thunder Eggs) that have been broken open revealing veins of gold mingled through crystal quartz. It would be hard to put a price on such a beautiful specimen. There are many desert areas holding large deposits of microscopic gold that haven't been worked because of the amount of earth that would have to be processed and the expense to do so. One such deposit is near Carlin Nevada. Modern technology has devised ways to extract this micro gold at a very large profit. The term free gold is just that. It has been discovered in many locations around the world and seems to turn up in both obvious and not so obvious locals
I don't want to let the word elusive get blown out of proportion. Yes gold is hard to find if it wasn't every body would have it and its value would diminish sharply. But you can become one of the elite that beat the odds at least to some extent. That being of course based on the amount of gold in your poke. As I said earlier I seldom come home empty handed. The key word for me is research this can sharply reduce things like blisters and aching backs from digging and dollars poured into gas tanks. While summer is when you will be doing the actual prospecting your downtime in the winter can be used for desk top research. Todays technologies offers the researcher unlimited access to all kinds of information. Google Earth will give you a birds eye view of the terrain your researching. You can read the actual letters from the 49ER prospectors. I'll give you an example. This is an exert written in 1851 by a gold miner working a dig near Placerville California-
Any diggings that were worked in 1849 will pay well for working over again. In fact, sometimes they even pay better the second time than the first. A great many of the ravines here have been worked over three or four times and the last time has paid good wages. I have been washing dirt today that has been washed once before and I made $31.00
Keeping in mind that gold was selling for about $18 an ounce in 1851 this miner recovered nearly two ounces of gold out of ground that had already been worked. He went on to say that his worst day had been $8.50 ( just under half an ounce). If you were working those same digs at today's gold prices you could very well be averaging $600.00 per day at the current gold prices. What this miner didn't mention was the winters that had passed from 1849 to 1851depositing more gold on the digs he was working. So it wasn't just gold that had been missed by past prospectors that he was finding but new free gold deposits as well. I'll say it again, each winter deposits new gold in the gold fields.
The internet is one of my most important tools for researching. I can bring up maps showing placer deposits, mine locations, etc. Also it can be helpful in finding locations that are not already staked by other miners. This is a problem for the obvious reason, Gold! A lot of Federal Government ground is open to hobby gold prospecting, the key word here is hobby. They don't allow large mining ventures the tree huggers just won't put up with it. This is why I keep my ventures to a simple technique called crevicing and panning. Its a lot of fun can be very lucrative and for the biggest part doesn't step on anyones toes. You know out of sight out of mind kind of thing. And really when you do find that stretch of river, stream, gully, or whatever that pays you back you'll want to keep it under your low key hat. Many is the time that I have been enjoying the fruits of my labor along what I thought was a fairly remote local only to be suddenly visited by an inquisitive passerby. If this happens whatever you do don't even consider showing them any color (gold) if you do they will be working your digs the next day. If you have to show them anything display one of your blisters from digging and feed them a sad sack story. If all else fails I keep a rattle from a rattle snake in my shirt pocket as a last ditch resort I can display that, give it a shake, and issue the warning " Watch where you step there's large rattlers in the area." I'll see you in part three.
Gold rings are different than gold nuggets because they are often alloyed with other styles of metal. They are normally close to the surface and sometimes cannot be tuned out or selected for having a notch filter even with the best metal detector. By far the right place to look for gold rings is at the beach. Specifically in the shallows of a dropping tide in a popular resort area. The reason is because many visitors don't recognize that the colder watercould make their fingers shrink and unsuspectingly lose their highly valuable ring jewelry.
