Prospecting on a Club or Public Claim

Club and public claims are a great place to prospect for gold, especially if you don’t have the resources to locate and/or afford to buy a claim of your own. A lot of peope believe that the gold on these claims has been all found or the best areas worked. This is usually not the case as I have found some of my best finds on these type of claims. Before I head out to a club or public claim, I do several things to insure that my time there isn’t going to be wasted.

The first thing I do before heading out is to check the route for driving there. I want to know if there are single-lane county roads that stretch for miles with no pull-offs to let traffic from the opposite direction pass. I check to see where the nearest town is and what type of amenities they offer. It can also be a good idea to learn where the nearest hospital or emergeny clinic is in case of an accident or animal attack.

The next thing I want to do is to check the topo and satellite maps of the area. Many times I have identified hot spots from viewing these maps that other miners had overlooked because they didn’t take the time to check it out.

After checking the maps, I need to decide how long I might be staying there. Can I camp at the site? If not, where is the nearest camping area or motel that would be convenient to my mining plans.

OK. Now I have studied the roads so I know what to expect in getting there. I’ve looked at the maps, so I know where I want to dig. I’ve set up my accomodations. Now I need to get my equipment together.

The type of claim determines much of the equipment that I’ll be taking. Like if its a dry claim, I won’t be needing my sluice box or high-banker. I make a list of what I’ll be needing and get it all packed up in a large plastic tote with a lid. Putting all of my equipment in one location makes it much easier to be sure that I have everything that I need and much easier to find once I do get to the claim. The tote also can act as a panning tub, though I usually have a smaller one with my hand tools that I take for this purpose.

There are certain things I take no matter what claim I am going to:

• Metal detector
• Pin pointer
• Gold pan
• Shovel
• Plastic buckets with a handle
• Small miners pick
• Plastic gardening trowel
• Water (for drinking and processing in dry areas)
• Classifying screens
• Crevice tools
• Small bottles (for putting your gold in)
• Tweezers
• Snuffer bottle

Actually, most of these items stay in my truck year round. That way if I see something that intrigues me and there are no claim markers, I can jump out and grab a few samples.

I get all of my gear together the night before I am to leave so that all I have to do when I get up is to load the truck and head out to the claim.

When I get to the claim, I look around and see where others have been digging and also look for the place(s) that I have identified by studying maps. I take my metal detector and pin pointer out and check the holes where others have been digging. If I get a good signal, I’ll usually grab a couple of gallons of the material and do a couple of test pans to check it out. If the gold is plentiful, I may just let my map identified spot rest for a bit and just get some gold.

I always check out my map identified spots before I leave a claim. I start by doing a scan with my metal detector and see if I get any signal. If the gold is there and isn’t too deep, I should get a sign. Then I dig a hole. Once I have a hole of a couple of feet deep, I’ll take my pin pointer and try to zero in on the best paydirt. Sometimes the gold is deeper and you have to keep digging deeper. Ever how deep you may have to dig to find the gold, you want to use your pin pointer to identify the best material. Usually you will have definable layers that look different from each other. The pin pointer helps to identify which of the layers contain the best gold.

Any time you come in contact with caliche in a gold bearing area, it will usually contain good gold. What’s caliche? Its a layer of soil that is tightly packed with rocks, gravel, clay and dirt. It is usually lighter in color than the other layers around it. The lighter color comes from the high levels of calcium carbonate in the mix. Its sometimes so hard that its almost like cement. Having a good large pick is essential for getting at this material. It takes some work, but is usually worth the effort. Adding water to the material in your bucket will make it much easier to break up and classify. Don’t add water to your hole to loosen it up, you coud be washing gold down into the bottom of your pit.

After taking some test pans of several holes, I pick out the one that is giving me the most and spend my energy on working that hole. If the recovery starts to dwindle, I will usually do a test pan from another part of the same hole and see if its any better. If its  just petering out, I move on to my next best producing hole, based on my test panning.

Processing the gold will be determined on a number of factors like is there water nearby? Is it a moving stream that I can place a sluice box in? Are mechanized machines like high-bankers allowed? What type of gold is coming out of the hole? Is it coarse, or very fine? Hopefully you’ve covered most of this before you left and have the equipment you need to recover your gold.

Most of the time I will work my material down by classifying it and washing off the larger rocks. If I am in an area where I can use my high-banker, then the classifying and washing is all taken care of in one process. I process the material through the high-banker or sluice box and clean up periodicly. I check for pickers and nuggets and remove those to a small container and then put the remaining contents of the clean up in a bucket. I usually don’t process these all of the way down because that takes away from my digging time and I want to move as much material as possible while I’m at the claim. I can always do my final clean up back at the house when I have more time on my hands. I will take a small amount from each cleanup and pan it down to make sure that I am still getting good gold, but reserve the biggest amount for a later time.

Back at the house after my trip, I do the final cleanup. Classifying the material down to the smallest psossible size and running it through my spiral wheel. Don’t just throw those bigger gravels away, just yet. Be sure and take a look at them for nuggets and gemstones! Once the clean-up is done, I weigh my gold from the trip and determine my daily wage. If I did good, I’ll head back there again. If it was a sub-par performance, then I probably won’t go back… But, then again… I just might… After taking another look at the maps.

Happy trails and may your next trip to the claim be a prosperous one.