Is There Such A Thing As A Nose For Gold?

Just the other day, I was visiting a rock shop when I spotted a man examining a used Gold Bug. Knowing the history of the detector in question - it was a seldom used unit that was part of a divorce settlement - I suggested it might be a good detector to buy. The man explained he had bought a White's Goldmaster IV - a top of the line unit - just three weeks earlier. "Have you found any nuggets?" I asked, half in jest, certain that he hadn't. "Yeah, I found three good-sized ones my first time out!" the man replied, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the nuggets he had found.

It turns out the man and his wife were retirees who had traveled from Wyoming to Arizona to spend the winter in the desert southwest, stopping along the way at a few of the old placer fields he had found listed in Johnson's "Gold Digger's Atlas." It was about then that Dale Schutte, the shop's owner, walked up and overheard the man's statement about finding gold on his first time out.

"Sounds to me like ya got a real nose for finding gold!" Dale said, chuckling.

I first heard about the phrase a nose for gold from well-known nugget-shooter Chet Long who has been featured in numerous magazine articles and a video on finding nuggets with a metal detector. Chet told me, "Some folks seem to have a nose for finding gold, and some don't. I guess you could say I have a nose for gold!" Curious, I asked Chet if it's possible to develop a nose for gold.

"Yep, it's possible to develop a nose for gold," Chet said. "But one thing you should keep in mind is, don't give up too soon just because you don't start finding nuggets right off the bat. You may hunt for a month or longer in a well known gold-producing area without finding a single nugget; then, all of a sudden, you'll hit a nugget patch! It's happened to me more than once. Remember, to find nuggets with a metal detector you have to be persistent and confine your search for nuggets where gold was found in the past."

Can you develop a nose for finding gold or is it a talent you're born with, like musical or artistic ability? It may be an acquired talent, according to experts like Pieter Heydelaar, in that you can learn how and where to find nuggets from experienced nugget-shooters.

A case in point, Dale Schutte, the owner of Kinney's Rocks & Gems in Palo Verde, California, bought a gold detector to hunt for nuggets in his spare time, but his efforts were mostly in vain. Then one day his luck changed. Pieter Heydelaar, the author of several how to books on gold prospecting, as well as being a full-time professional nugget-shooter, visited Dale's shop to see if he was interested in buying nuggets to sell in his shop.

Simply put, Pieter's golf ball-sized nuggets fascinated Dale. He soon learned the nuggets Pieter found were located using a Fisher Gold Bug just like the one he owned. Dale got to thinking about how to win Pieter's confidence so he would take him into the field and teach him the ropes.

Dale managed to win Pieter's friendship and it was Pieter who showed Dale how and where to find nuggets with a gold detector. At first the going was slow; however, when Dale found a nugget patch containing several large nuggets in the gold fields southwest of Quartzsite, Arizona, he was hooked. By the end of 1998, Dale had found dozens of nuggets, both large and small, using his Fisher Gold Bug. Then, when Pieter bought a Minelab SD-2100 gold detector and began finding far more nuggets in the same places where Dale had searched, Dale became convinced he had to have one.

In February of 1999, Dale bought a Minelab SD-2100 gold detector. In a single day's outing he found enough gold to pay for his new detector.

By the end of 1999, Dale had found several pounds of gold nuggets. He spends three full days each week searching for nuggets in California's Imperial and Riverside Counties and in Arizona's Yuma, La Paz and Mohave Counties. Over a period of time, and with a lot of experience under his belt, Dale has developed what some call a nose for gold. How did he do it and what's his secret to finding nuggets?

"I've been on several gold hunting trips with Dale and his buddies, Red Bottle Ray and Desert Dave, and all of them have something in common; they learned where and how to find gold with the help of an experienced nugget-shooter."

If we were to look in on Dale as he plans a gold prospecting trip, we would see him researching placer gold locations in Arizona; places where the old-timers first found and mined for placer gold 140 years ago. He pours over topographic maps (both old and new), State of Arizona Bureau of Mines' reports, back issues of "Desert" magazine (he owns the entire collection) and books on where to find gold in Arizona.

If we were to give Dale a nickname like his buddies, it might be "Dry Wash Dale." Let's follow Dale on an imaginary search for nuggets. The first thing he does when he arrives at a placer field is to put on his rig, as he calls it, which consists of a backpack containing the re-chargeable battery for his Minelab gold detector, a floppy hat with holes poked through it for his headphones, a canteen and a pair of sunglasses. He grabs his prospector's pick, adjusts the ground balance on his detector and heads out for the nearest dry wash.

Dale hikes up the largest dry wash in the area, one that leads to some distant mountains where lode gold was mined in the past, according to an Arizona Bureau of Mines report he studied earlier, and uses his detector to scan along the bottom of the wash. He gets a false signal which turns out to be a tin can; then he spots a section of the wash where some bedrock is exposed. He uses his gold detector to scan the area around the bedrock and across the bedrock itself. He stops, lays his detector down and begins to dig. Has he found a nugget? No! It was a shell casing left behind from the days when General Patton trained troops in the area.

Dale continues to scan the exposed bedrock until he gets a strong signal coming from a crevice in the bedrock. He figures its only a piece of metal or a lead slug from a rifle, but he decides to dig anyway. Luck is with him this time! Using his pocket knife, Dale digs out a small nugget about the size of a match head. "There's gold in this wash," he says to himself, grinning from ear to ear. "No doubt about it!"

After conducting a thorough search of the bedrock and the area surrounding it without finding any more gold, Dale decides to explore along the benches above the dry wash. These are the relatively flat surfaces where water overflows from the wash itself during times of flash flooding. Dale knew from past experience that gold is often deposited on benches during flash floods as small nuggets are carried out of the wash by rapidly rising and very fast waters; then too, nuggets from the slopes above a dry wash can be washed down onto the benches. By now, Dale is in "full search mode," scanning the wash itself, the benches and the hillsides above the benches. In the distance he spots another section of exposed bedrock in the same dry wash located below an incline where, in the past, raging flood waters had cut into the hillside causing a landslide.

Dale leaves the spot where he has been searching and moves up the dry wash to the area of the landslide. The bedrock is composed of iron-stained quartz rock, which is exactly what Dale was hoping to find. Right off the bat he gets a strong signal he hopes is gold. It is! From a crevice in the bedrock, he fishes out a tiny, half-inch long, cigar-shaped piece of quartz rock wrapped with gold! He decides to try scanning the hillside above the wash, but it's tough going. He claws his way toward the top where the ground is stable.

Dale's luck holds; he finds a small nugget patch containing a half-dozen nuggets about the size of small currents like those used in muffins. Chuckling to himself, he names this spot the Muffin Patch. An hour later, he decides to hike around eastside of the hill where he spots what looks like a prospect hole; perhaps it was dug by an old-timer who used a dry washer. He starts scanning the throw-out piles where he knows that he stands a good chance of finding some nuggets. Throw-out piles are heaps of large-sized rocks that fail to pass through the grizzly, or course screen, on a dry washer. What he finds is the prize of the day! It's a piece of quartz rock laced with gold in such a fashion as to disguise it from whoever had dug here and worked a dry washer. He recalls that, back in 1993, Tom Barton found a 26- ounce nugget in a throw out pile at a nearby location using a Fisher Gold Bug gold detector. To this day, Dale remains hopeful that he, too, will find a two or three pound nugget with his gold detector!

Sources:

Heydelarr, Pieter, "Successful Nugget Hunting, Volume One," self-published by its author in 1991.

Interviews with: Dave Hudson , a.k.a. Desert Dave, Ray Whitehead, a.k.a. Red Bottle Ray, Dale Schutte and Chet Long.

Johnson, Robert, "Gold Digger's Atlas," Cy Johnson & Son, Susanville, Calif., 1992.