Gold Prospecting Research Tips

Gold Prospecting Research Tips

Gold Prospecting hardest and profitable as gold prospecting  is one of the rarest elements on the planet. Only a tiny percentage of ground has any significant quantity of gold. I suppose that is the reason it is currently valued around $1500 per ounce!

If you like to gold prospecting like I generally do, then we are talking about an even smaller percentage of areas that are going to be productive. Places where you could potentially swing a metal detector and gold prospecting is way less than 1% of the landscape (In truth, it’s probably closer to .01%.).

If you are new to gold prospecting and you want to have a fighting chance of actually gold prospecting, then you are going to need to find a place where there is some gold to be found. If you just wander out into the hills aimlessly and think you are going to get lucky, I can assure you that you’d have a better chance of finding a needle in a haystack. You need a plan.

Research Process

The research process starts at home, before you ever set foot in the field. You need to decide where you want to go. But how do you start?

You start your research by thinking broadly, then narrowing down to a specific area the further you get into the process. I’m going to show you exactly how I do that.

Odds are you are going to want to look for an area that is relatively close to where you live, so you first want to find some information on the occurrence of gold in your state.

The first step is to find some information on historic mining activity in your state. Fortunately there is a lot of good general information out there. Any state that has a history of mining will have at least a book or two written about it. Assuming that you live in a state with gold, a quick search on Amazon should result in at least a couple books about mining in your state. This will get us started with some good general info.

Any general book that covers the entire state is great because you can identify regions that are worthy of further attention. A decent book like this will mention specific mines, rivers, and creeks where mining activity has taken place. Remember that anywhere that gold has been mined in the past still has great potential for the modern day prospector.

Narrowing Down a General Area

Ok, so now it’s time to find a general area that we want to prospect. If we were looking for a place to find gold in , we would soon realize that most of the gold has generally come from two distinct regions. One area is in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon, and the other is the Southwest corner of Oregon, just above the California border. So those are the places to focus.

Don’t waste time on areas that have no historical gold production. If there isn’t a much gold near where you live, then plan on traveling to a location that does. I wouldn’t go grizzly bear hunting in Kansas or shark fishing in Montana. Don’t waste your time gold prospecting in places that don’t have any! You’ll come home empty handed and you will lose interest quickly.

Minelab Gold Monster 1000 Gold Detector

Minelab Gold Monster 1000 Gold Detector. Minelab is one of the big names in the metal detector industry. You can’t go wrong with a Minelab VLF detector.

Some of its features:

• It has an operating frequency of 45kHz.
• Fortunately, or unfortunately, it has an automatic ground balance. It depends on your preference as a user.
• Experts recommend this VLF detector for novices.
• It has a high sensitivity giving you the ability to find smaller gold nuggets.

Garrett AT Gold

Garrett AT Gold makes the lineup The AT Gold has manual and automatic ground balancing allows this machine to adjust on the go for varying ground conditions. The Garrett Metal Detector have excelled at fine tuning the discrimination. Iron and other undesirable targets are sensed with unique sounds.

Features of the Garrett AT Gold:

• Fully submersible to 10 feet.
• Target identification from 0 to 99 helping discriminate at high accuracy.
• Built in pinpointing for precise locating.
• Ground balance window, allows the ground balancing to be taken over a range of terrain.

Nokta Makro Gold Finder 2000

Nokta Gold 2000. This VLF detector utilizes a 61 kHz frequency which is higher than most gold machines. The Nokta brand is relatively new in the US, but the company has been around for 17 years and has grown through the smart and cost effective use of technology.

The Makro Gold 2000 features:

It comes with an operating frequency of 61 kHz for great depth penetration.
The Gold 2000 has a rain resistant control box and super simple display.
Experts praise this VLF detector for its ease of use and impeccable design.

These are but the top VLF for gold prospecting. The market has numerous other options for you to look into during your buying phase. Don’t hesitate to keep reading for tips and tricks for metal detecting (especially with VLF machines).

Garrett ACE 400i

Garrett ACE 400i is a simple easy to use metal detector that offer best entry for hobbyists and beginner prospectors into metal detection and gold prospecting world.

Garrett ACE 400i gold detector is the ideal device for all those looking to find ancient coins, ancient metal burials and small gold jewelry pieces at shallow depths on beaches, rivers and in various natural terrains.

Thanks to that is due to advanced features that the device contains such as frequency control and A digital ID for the targets and acoustic discrimination of iron, which enables the user to explore more valuable treasures and ignore scrap and metal waste.

Features of the Garrett AT Gold:

• Detection of small coins made of gold, silver, copper, and bronze
• Find small metal objects, such as ornaments, like rings – bracelets – collars
• Find jewelry and artifacts made of gold or silver or other metal
• Detection of ferrous and non-ferrous metal minerals.

Setup Tips to Improve Your Detecting

Gold prospecting is scarce. You can spend an entire day in an area known for having gold, without any gold to report at the end of the day. Experts recommend carrying a strong magnet. If you end up finding other minerals, you can use the strong magnet to check whether it’s gold. How? The magnet will not attract gold, whereas the magnet will attract other minerals like iron, magnetite hot rocks, negative hot rocks, positive hot rocks, and meteorites.

Another tip is that your VFL detector may not be lying to you, and it’s not broken. You can gold prospecting on top of hot rocks. If you find something, use the magnet to draw out the hot rocks and check for any gold on the hot rock.
Ensure that you move the search coil slowly and carefully over the surface. It should also be at a specific height that you can capture stronger signals.

If you hear ground noise while searching for gold nuggets, conduct the ground balancing procedure one more time. Ensure that you note the ground changes as you move and keep tabs on the ground balance.
In the case of gold prospecting, experts do not recommend multiple simultaneous frequencies.