Big, beautiful North American Placer!! Freakin fantastic!!!

[Lanny in AB]

Big, beautiful North American Placer!! Freakin' fantastic!!!

Unbelievable video of big North American gold nuggets + new finds, pics, videos added: a live thread, so please post your gold shots.
I'll add other videos or stills of big nuggety North American gold as I find them.

This video starts slow, but it's shot underground, so give it a while and then watch out that you don't have a freakin' heart attack!!

I hope you love looking at this as much as I did--every placer miner's dream come true. If you're a rookie, you'll get the fever bad watching this one. (To avoid any confusion, this is not my video, nor is it my clean-up, nor was I involved in any way--I found it by mistake after typing in a search word incorrectly [that's why I'd never found it before], but I sure do love it!!)



Almost 3,800 ounces in the last shot--fines are in the large plastic bags. 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle!

All the best,

Lanny

P.S. I posted it with my beginner's thread as well, but it's so great it deserves it's own place too.

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http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries.html

 

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[Lanny in AB]

did almost that good at Lytle Creek last week. Yeah right unbeliveable

It is quite unbelievable. I imagine I'd have a hard time believing it too!

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[Richard Laughing]

"Thanks for dropping in Richard.

Every State/Province/Territory/Region has their own specific rules as to income from mining or prospecting. So, do a search for your particular area and find out what the rules are. Every place is a little different, so know before you go.

Some people sell their gold on EBAY, others in online auctions on other similar sites, some to jewelers, others to varying groups that like to buy raw gold, etc., etc., it all depends. For larger volumes, gold buyers will frequent gold mining areas to buy direct volume on site from the mines, other miners ship to refineries, still others select out nuggets to sell as individual pieces so they don't get shipped to the refinery. Once again, it all depends.

All the best to you as you get started,

Lanny"

Thanks Lanny,
Those are some very helpful suggestions.
I'm a real greenhorn and have been reading your Bedrock and Gold site http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries-128.html and was also following Eagle's The Many Lost Treasures site (RIP Eagle).
Both sites have given me the desire and a bit of confidence to get my feet wet.

I'm overseas at the moment, and will be back in the US by the end of the year and I hope to do some gold finding soon after my return.
As I've been gathering so much information from you and Eagle, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to write about your gold prospecting experiences and sharing all that information with all of us readers.
You're a good man, Lanny
Richard

 

[Richard Laughing]

"Hi Richard and welcome to Tnet. The IRS wants their cut here in the US. You report it on your 1040, it can get complex since you can also deduct costs incurred I think. Small scale folks often sell to their local prospecting store but I know a LOT of people who never sell any.
PS add more info to your tnet profile so folks know where you are based...makes a lot of questions like this easier to answer."

Hello KevininColorado,
Thanks for your reply. It's helpful to know about the IRS as I'm a US citizen. I've been overseas for the past 14 months and will be returning next month if all goes to plan. I apologize for the incomplete tnet profile. Not having a true homebase yet and having done zero prospecting, I didn't think that I should confuse the spot. Still not sure what to put there.
At any rate thanks again for your reply.
Richard

 

[Lanny in AB]

"Thanks for dropping in Richard.

Every State/Province/Territory/Region has their own specific rules as to income from mining or prospecting. So, do a search for your particular area and find out what the rules are. Every place is a little different, so know before you go.

Some people sell their gold on EBAY, others in online auctions on other similar sites, some to jewelers, others to varying groups that like to buy raw gold, etc., etc., it all depends. For larger volumes, gold buyers will frequent gold mining areas to buy direct volume on site from the mines, other miners ship to refineries, still others select out nuggets to sell as individual pieces so they don't get shipped to the refinery. Once again, it all depends.

All the best to you as you get started,

Lanny"

Thanks Lanny,
Those are some very helpful suggestions.
I'm a real greenhorn and have been reading your Bedrock and Gold site http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries-128.html and was also following Eagle's The Many Lost Treasures site (RIP Eagle).
Both sites have given me the desire and a bit of confidence to get my feet wet.

I'm overseas at the moment, and will be back in the US by the end of the year and I hope to do some gold finding soon after my return.
As I've been gathering so much information from you and Eagle, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to write about your gold prospecting experiences and sharing all that information with all of us readers.
You're a good man, Lanny
Richard

Well, it's great to welcome you to the passionate craze of gold hunting!

I hope that when you get back you can have some genuine fun as you chase the gold. Moreover, as you get started, if you have questions, keep dropping back in to this forum to ask your questions.

There are lots of great, helpful people here that can answer you, and I'll help out when I can as well.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[NeoTokyo]

Holy crap! That's a Baking Potato right there.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Holy crap! That's a Baking Potato right there.

All it needs is a little sour cream, some bacon bits, butter, and it's on!!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Any new North American finds to post?

I love to see the gold, so if you've got some of that pretty yellow metal that you wish to showcase, post away please!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

I don't know if I've told this story here or not, but it's a nice story of a gorgeous nugget.

Back in the 90's (1990's, by the way; I'm not that old yet!), I was up in north-central British Columbia. It was one of the first areas I'd seriously prospected in where I knew there was a great chance to find nice nuggets. Moreover, the reason there are still nice nuggets there to this day is that it's a very remote location situated many rough miles and hours of travel from any paved road. Because of this, the scenery is pristine, and the wildlife is abundant: bears, blacks and grizzlies; fisher and martin; wolverine; trophy elk and deer; moose; wolverine; porcupine and skunk (The SS of the north: one stinks, the other stabs); eagles and hawks; many colors of humming birds; and the waters are filled with scrappy trout and char. However the bugs are infamous, and I haven't had the heart set myself up as a human blood-bank since!

The miners I was staying with were running a big placer operation. They were situated on a large glacial blow-out placer (a glacial dam had blown out and scattered the gold over a large area, so finding hot spots was the challenge). There was an old wash plant on the property, and I crawled under it and found a lot of nice gold where there had been a small leak in the main sluice! As well, there was a steel pan over the motor that ran the hopper feed, and it had collected a lot of coarse gold: fun times panning.

So, they'd set up in an area that had good drill results, and they were running a lot of dirt and working long, long days as it's twilight way up there before four in the morning and in the evenings, the twilight lasts until around 11. Therefore, lots and lots of good hours to mine.

Well, they hit a spot where they were getting continuos chunky gold (lots of nuggets in the 3-8 gram range), but the largest they'd found was an ounce and a quarter. Then one day, there was a surprise for them, one resting at the very front of the header box (it never made it anywhere close to a riffle) of the coarse sluice: it was a sassy nugget that had lost its back end. You see, there was a hole worn in the one-inch screen deck that had left a two-inch plus hole, and the aforementioned nugget had dropped into the hole, but the big rocks bouncing across the deck had whacked and smashed it around and there was a very clear freshly broken end on the nugget.

This had all gone on while I was nugget shooting, retrieving some nice nuggets from a terribly hot sheet of bedrock, so when I got back to camp that night, the foreman of the mine called me to the camp fire and asked me if I wanted to see a nugget. Well, you must know that I said yes, and he told me to open my hand, and he plopped this incredible nugget across my palm! That's right, across my palm; it was a beautiful six ounce nugget that was rod shaped and it rested across my palm like a slice off of King Midas' golden staff!!

I could see where a piece had been shorn off from the end, and that's when I heard the story of how it had been caught in the shaker deck screen, and the missing portion had been clipped off. Of course, they were never expecting anything that large, so they'd methodically hauled all of the coarse tailings off to dump them in a huge excavation they were reclaiming, and there the tale of the missing piece ends. It lies buried under a thick layer of watermelon-plus-sized rock.

Anyway, I wish I had a picture to show you, but since my last move, I haven't been able to find it as it's an photograph from ancient film technology, not a digital image.

But, that was the first big nugget I'd ever hefted, and it was a total shock as I was in no way prepared for such a gorgeous chunk of gold. Of course, it's an experience I never want to forget, nor will I ever be able to. Firsts like that stay with you forever.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[johnedoe]

OH Man .... That was just obscene......... What an amazing prospect.....

 

[meMiner]

There used to be a campground in the Cariboo, BC which had a machine operation at the back on one of the historic creeks. I dropped by their restaurant on the way to my claims for a burger and got talking to the owner. She told a story about seeing the largest nugget of her life - a retirement nugget (get one of those and you can retire).

If I recall correctly, the grizzly had 2 inch spacing (many operations in the area ran smaller). As she walked up to the wash plant, to bring the crew their lunch, she clearly saw a massive nugget (baseball size) slide out with the cobbles. She had been around placer operations for much of her life and knew what a nugget looked like. The excavator had just dumped a load of dirt into the plant and another was still working its way through. By the time they were able to shut down, the nugget was buried. They looked all over for it and had no idea where it had bounced before it disappeared. In fact, they took the top off the cobble pile and spread it out to see if they could find it - no joy. They did not have a metal detector and until then never thought they had a need for one. It broke her heart that she knew it was there somewhere and never found it.

 

[Skiddum]

Why can't I find something that nice

 

[Lanny in AB]

OH Man .... That was just obscene......... What an amazing prospect.....

Having never hefted one that big before, that's one thing that struck me, the massive density of that object in the palm of my hand.

It was a shock, but in a good way . . .

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

There used to be a campground in the Cariboo, BC which had a machine operation at the back on one of the historic creeks. I dropped by their restaurant on the way to my claims for a burger and got talking to the owner. She told a story about seeing the largest nugget of her life - a retirement nugget (get one of those and you can retire).

If I recall correctly, the grizzly had 2 inch spacing (many operations in the area ran smaller). As she walked up to the wash plant, to bring the crew their lunch, she clearly saw a massive nugget (baseball size) slide out with the cobbles. She had been around placer operations for much of her life and knew what a nugget looked like. The excavator had just dumped a load of dirt into the plant and another was still working its way through. By the time they were able to shut down, the nugget was buried. They looked all over for it and had no idea where it had bounced before it disappeared. In fact, they took the top off the cobble pile and spread it out to see if they could find it - no joy. They did not have a metal detector and until then never thought they had a need for one. It broke her heart that she knew it was there somewhere and never found it.

Taking the top off a cobble pile to look for that nugget was a desperate move, and I know how quickly gold drops when it's disturbed, so it's not surprising they couldn't find it, especially one that size!

That would be a heart stopper for sure.

Thanks for the little story, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Why can't I find something that nice

I'm with you all the way on that one!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Tree!]

Big, beautiful North American Placer!! Freakin' fantastic!!!

Any new North American finds to post?

I love to see the gold, so if you've got some of that pretty yellow metal that you wish to showcase, post away please!

All the best,

Lanny

Here you go Lanny



I spent 8 days alone in the desert wilderness, the closest a human came to me was at least a mile in the form of a helicopter. The closest person on land was 12 miles, at least, in the form of an ever advancing and receding tail of dust from someone cutting across the basin. There's too much to say about this one experience and there will be many more like it to come. No worries though, I journal while I'm roughing it and I'll get around to expanding after some time. The washes and hills have more gold to give me (though the earth only gives you what gold it wants you to have) and it feels amazing and at times euphoric to know you're following right behind the old miners and thinking how they think, sometimes that can be spooky too. Anyways, thanks for the patience and appreciation.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Here you go Lanny

View attachment 1138098View attachment 1138099View attachment 1138100

I spent 8 days alone in the desert wilderness, the closest a human came to me was at least a mile in the form of a helicopter. The closest person on land was 12 miles, at least, in the form of an ever advancing and receding tail of dust from someone cutting across the basin. There's too much to say about this one experience and there will be many more like it to come. No worries though, I journal while I'm roughing it and I'll get around to expanding after some time. The washes and hills have more gold to give me (though the earth only gives you what gold it wants you to have) and it feels amazing and at times euphoric to know you're following right behind the old miners and thinking how they think, sometimes that can be spooky too. Anyways, thanks for the patience and appreciation.

Now that is freakin' fantastic!! I don't know why I didn't get notification of this post, but that's gorgeous gold.

Nicely done.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Meanwhile, here's a photo a nugget shooting acquaintance of mine sent me. He found this beauty on Father's Day.

At 131 grams (well over four ounces), it sure would make anyone's Father's Day very exciting indeed.

I hope you enjoy it.

That's a Canadian two-dollar coin beside it, and that's not a small coin!



All the best,

Lanny

 

[russau]

Well that nugget would make anyones Fathers Day a great one!

 

[Lanny in AB]

Well that nugget would make anyones Fathers Day a great one!

I'll sure have to agree with you on that one. It would be a Father's day I'd always remember, I know that.

All the best, and thanks for dropping in,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Here you go Lanny

View attachment 1138098View attachment 1138099View attachment 1138100

I spent 8 days alone in the desert wilderness, the closest a human came to me was at least a mile in the form of a helicopter. The closest person on land was 12 miles, at least, in the form of an ever advancing and receding tail of dust from someone cutting across the basin. There's too much to say about this one experience and there will be many more like it to come. No worries though, I journal while I'm roughing it and I'll get around to expanding after some time. The washes and hills have more gold to give me (though the earth only gives you what gold it wants you to have) and it feels amazing and at times euphoric to know you're following right behind the old miners and thinking how they think, sometimes that can be spooky too. Anyways, thanks for the patience and appreciation.

Now that I have a bit more time to respond (I'm heading back soon to chase the gold some more), I'd like to thank you for posting pictures of that beautiful gold.

What intrigues me is the remoteness of where you're chasing the gold. I've spent a lot of time tracking the gold in out of the way places too, and there's just something about being away from everything and everyone that really adds to the experience.

I would love to hear some of your stories and see some more pictures if you get a chance to post some more about your adventures.

I appreciate you taking the time to share your pictures and a bit about your gold expeditions, and thanks for adding to this thread. That's what gives it life.

All the best,

Lanny