Arizona Gold Prospectors

Nail Spa?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:10:08 +0000

Was up in Prescott this AM on business, had no time to prospect or socialize but I did notice that the location of the now defunct Black Horse Mining and Russ Ford Prospecting is a Nail Spa. Strange to see that there.

Unknown crusher vid

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:20:16 +0000

http://video.mining....by_tractor.aspx

Chris Ralph's book

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:03:52 +0000

Chris was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book. It is a must have book for anyone interested in gold and covers just about everything and all the equipment you can think of. He does an excellent job of articulating complex concepts into words that anyone can easily understand with topics on mapping, geology and more. This book has something from everyone from the newbie to the veteran and all points in-between. He is still working some of the typos out and polishing it up here and there but when the day is done I agree with Montana, this will be the prospectors bible.

Nice little old channel nuggie

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:50:16 +0000

Yo All...Went back to the "round rock" hillside where the cobbles are shedding off of the red lava sheet that poured over a gold bearing creek about 40 million years ago, snagging round rocks and nuggets...Hit it pretty hard for only one target all day--Gold...Not big, only .75 gram, but that's still a $25 nugget at today's near $1,140 price...Down only about 6"...NF 14" DD on ol' Baboo...Beautiful day today...Mid-70's with no wind and no clouds...What prospecting in the Big AZ is all about...Here's Pix...Cheers, Unc

Odd Nugget

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:47:02 +0000

I found these little oddities out by stoneridge a couple of weeks ago. They are not as gold colored as the photo shows (bad lighting) but are a sort of grayish gold. What caught my eye while panning was the odd color and segmentation of the pieces.

The larger piece was about a 1/4" but has since broken apart into 5 segments due to rough handling. Most of the segments are round edged angular shapes but one has a cylindrical bump on it.

Any ideas on what they are? Doug

Found some

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:06:04 +0000

Recently myself and a couple friends were poking around the Northern Motherlode and came across a small gulch that was holding gold. We weren�t the first detectorists to find the place as there were some old VLF dig holes around. The dirt was red and hot which probably caused the VLF�s to be noisy and lose depth. For whatever reason they had left some nuggets behind for us. Three of my nuggets were found around 10� deep, the majority at less than 3�. Largest nugget is 6.3 grams. Two of the smallest don�t weigh 0.1 gram together as they are pounded paper thin. The 33 nuggets I found collectively total a little more than 1 oz. AU and were found with a GPX 4500 and 12x15 Commander mono. I had a great time, Northern California Fall weather and good gold is a tough combo to beat. The pics are my daily finds shown sequentially.
L8tr,
Merton

Rich Hill Gold Hunters Club

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:57:13 +0000

does anyone have any contact information for this club? thanks.

chris

InFo

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:03:42 +0000

http://www.geologynet.com/economiclinks.htm#equipment

Anyone want to sell me a Au nugget

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:18:39 +0000

Hi All,
Would any of you like to sell me a small gold placer nugget say about 1/5th ounce. I have a few but they are too small for what I want. My wife does jewelry and I need to help her on this. I'll pay via PayPal. I tried eBay but I wasn't sure I could trust them and a lot of them looks like they were made from bullion and they seems overpriced. Everyone on this forum seems to be honest and many of you are finding the nugs in the AZ creeks.

Thanks ahead of time.
GoldMagnet.

Just over an ounce

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:55:05 +0000

One thing is for sure, this hobby is never dull. Below is just over an ounce of nuggets I found and the story that goes with them, from the Twilight Zone

Submitted for your approval...

Recently I was able to get out and explore a new area and do some prospecting The first day I spent hiking and working my way up a large wash system hitting each trib methodically As I was looking for new ground I moved at a decent pace with the GP Extreme and 14 mono, cherry picking the best spots, lots of trash and zero gold trib after trib. After a full a day I hiked out and was determined to keep going the next day.

The second day was pretty much the same until the end of the day, almost near dark I got a nice nug in a long, narrow wash then it was time to hike out. By the time I reached the truck it was dark and I was excited to see what the next day would bring.
On my way back, the third day about 7AM, I passed 3 guys in a Jeep pulling a trailer and we did the friendly wave and nod thing I got back to the spot where I had found the nug and over the course of about 5 hours had a grand total of 5 nuggets from the wash and hillside, close to an ounce was my guess As I was digging out a target with my headphones slung around my neck I heard a "Hello!" from up on the nearby hillside. I stood up waived, smiled and gave a "Hey there!" back. A guy was standing with a shovel and some PVC pipe on the hill, hmmm he was not there a few minutes ago so I started walking up to him to see what was up. He immediately advised me I was on his new claim in a friendly manner. I was like "Really?" and explained I looked up the area prior to coming out and saw no markers yesterday or today. We chatted a bit and it turned out him and the two other guys in the Jeep were working this trib further upstream and just staked the claim officially about 1PM It was a family affair, father, son and grandpa. After a bit of talking the father and I met up with the son and grandpa. Once we were all talking both grandpa and I realized we had previously met and prospected together for a day with my old friends Dave and Dennis Jordan of the now defunct Mesa Gold Diggers back in about 2000. The father is a lurker on this forum and the others. He may be chiming in at some point.

I showed them what I had found in the wash prior to their claiming it and they got excited They had about � ounce of small pickers and some fines from crevicing and drywashing but had no idea larger nugs were in the trib let alone on the hillside, I just found that out too I showed them where I made the finds and they were grateful and permitted me to keep hunting till the end of the day Again, upon the hillside another nugget after about 45 minutes a nice heart shaped piece. They started talking about expanding the claim to be bigger and I mentioned that this "patch" or "hot spot" is most likely very small and well contained within their current boundaries. They had a Tesoro Super Traq and we talked about best strategies for using it there.

The good news is I've got some nice gold (1.02 ounces), and made some new friends. The bad news, my new spot is claimed up now Damn its been a while since I detected an ounce in a day They were kind enough to let me know I could return once they had a few months to work the area over The guys are pretty stoked so I'm not sure they will leave much. Guess I'll call this spot the Twilight Zone

My camera's L-Ion battery is toasted and I have a new one on the way in the mail so for now you can enjoy this IPhone pic, not the best but it works. It really does not show the character of the nugs very well. One thing this goes to prove again, is cooler heads always prevail Good luck on your new claim guys As promised, no clues to the actual location have been mentioned or shown (its not in Battle Flat we just had the book open). I'm also not mentioning any names as this would in turn give the location away as claim holder data is public info and these guys deserve a chance to get their goodies. As we have just learned in the Twilight Zone, timing is everything