Reading Worked Ground and Techniques That Lead to Success

Reading worked Ground and Techniques that lead to success

Most prospectors and I myself included spend time working old ground or country that has been mined historically. There is nothing wrong in doing this, in fact placing yourself onto ground where gold has been found before is smart. The big exploration and mining companies do the same thing. Where gold has been found, there can always be more! The quantity of gold and where the gold might be is the big question. The early miners did a pretty good job of picking the eyes out of many surface and near surface deposits and it never ceases to amaze me how often I find myself in an isolated area and find old workings, shafts, costeans or scrapes from the early miners, they simply didn’t miss much. The beauty of this’ is that it provides the modern prospector some clues as to their success and where they obtained positive hits for gold. One to two test scrapes typically suggests they didn’t find much, however more than this, including shallow or deeper workings, surfacing, dry blowings, costeaning etc means they were onto something, so a great location to knuckle down and focus on. Their previous work helps to provide targets for us to explore and develop and cuts down our time looking in barren ground. The richer well known patches have been hammered by modern day prospectors and to find gold in these thrashed areas you need to think and work smart.

I will only touch on a few techniques in this introduction, but I will aim to provide a taste of what can be done and how to find more gold. Based on metal detecting I think one of the most valuable pieces of advice I can provide is - don’t do what others have done! What does that mean? There are a number of techniques I use to ensure I do things differently. Firstly do the hard work when detecting, don’t take the easiest path, because the majority already have! Most prospectors physically work or find themselves moving around an area in a similar pattern. This is usually due to the topographic features and surfaces that exist naturally as well as moving over and around old workings. Take time to absorb your surroundings, so I mean stop, take 5 and look across the ground, work over it think about how the soil and surface material has moved, where rocks and hills may have once been. Start thinking like a Geologist!