Has anyone here done any gold panning?

[Minstrel]

Well, the creek started flowing again at the end of December and has been flowing ever since. With the melt going on, the creek is open, and I started back to running the sluice. 

The drought last season had the creek dry up in June rather than in August, but I made some improvements to my prospecting camp and had the sluice ready as soon as the water flowed again.

I dug up and screened 1/2 a 5-gallon bucket worth of creek sand the other day, might have spent half an hour. Now, today, I messed around tweaking the sluice to try to slow the flow and then ran the half bucket through the sluice. That might have been another hour. When I got down to the last scoop of sand, I decided to pan it up and found a nice-sized flake right off the bat.

A think this is a good sign for the season ahead. I intend to stray off the reservation and prospect some federal land here abouts this year. Because of flooding in the spring, I will try the smaller creeks like mine first, then work up to some streams by fall.

Anyway, my vial of flakes is starting to look like something. Maybe I can make it look really good by next November.

Congrats on your first half-a-bucket and vial.
Have wanted to do this for decades.
Is your sluice portable? -Or- What method/s will you employ to prospect smaller, off-reservation, creeks?

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Well, the creek started flowing again at the end of December and has been flowing ever since. With the melt going on, the creek is open, and I started back to running the sluice. 

The drought last season had the creek dry up in June rather than in August, but I made some improvements to my prospecting camp and had the sluice ready as soon as the water flowed again.

I dug up and screened 1/2 a 5-gallon bucket worth of creek sand the other day, might have spent half an hour. Now, today, I messed around tweaking the sluice to try to slow the flow and then ran the half bucket through the sluice. That might have been another hour. When I got down to the last scoop of sand, I decided to pan it up and found a nice-sized flake right off the bat.

A think this is a good sign for the season ahead. I intend to stray off the reservation and prospect some federal land here abouts this year. Because of flooding in the spring, I will try the smaller creeks like mine first, then work up to some streams by fall.

Anyway, my vial of flakes is starting to look like something. Maybe I can make it look really good by next November.

Congrats on your first half-a-bucket and vial.
Have wanted to do this for decades.
Is your sluice portable? -Or- What method/s will you employ to prospect smaller, off-reservation, creeks?

The sluice I am using on the creek here on my property is one I made myself out of wood with two-by-fours and solid boards. It is about a foot wide and five feet long. That one is a bitch to pull out of the creek and bring back to the house to clean it up to get the gold-bearing sand out of it. But for something I put together from scrap wood and carpeting, it works pretty well.



I have one I bought from Amazon for around $60 that is portable and much smaller, but it does just as good a job for its size. It is just like this one, apparently, Walmart sells it.



You place it in the stream bed and have the water flow through it. You screen out the river sand with these round screens that fit right over the opening of a 5-gallon bucket. The kit below is very similar to the one I got to work with. I've added things to it as I go along.



I select the areas on federal land that have gravel moraines, glacial till, or glacial outwash where gold has built up. Here in Michigan, all we have are placer gold deposits from the ice age glaciers, and no source loads upstream. I imagine that what lies near the bedrock, some 100 feet down, is better than the flakes and flecks I find at the surface. I suggest public federal land, as the US government has the mineral rights, and you can stake a claim if you find the motherload. Public state land is OK if the state owns the mineral rights, just as it is OK on private land with mineral rights. Because I own the mineral rights on my property, I can make a prospecting camp set up on my creek that wouldn't be allowed on public land, where you have to basically leave no traces of your prospecting.

You dig down into the stream bed in areas on the inside curves at the bars, or in the holes, or around and under boulders. I go down about 3 feet using a post hold digger and a spade to dig with. You can expect from 8 to 12 flakes per full 5-gallon bucket without hitting a "pay streak," aka a pocket with a large deposit of gold flakes. A nugget would be very rare in Michigan, but I've found small pieces of gold-bearing quartz in my creek.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Here are my prize vials, click for a larger view.

   

The flakes are absolutely gold. They are like a golden constellation. 

   

The quartz seems like it has real gold, but I'm not certain. 

   

I save the "fool's gold" samples I find for comparison. That is mostly pyrite and gold colored mica in different types of stone.

ETA: I have collected much larger examples than what is in these vials. Gravel pits and other sources are really good. I'm just not into hard rock mining where you have to crush the rocks to break loose the gold veins and then concentrate it. Not that I found larger samples with anything more than pyrite, I'd just rather sluice and pan than break rocks.