I found GOLD in an ILLEGAL ground sluice!

[Music] well hello everyone dan heard with downer prospecting here welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome i hope to earn your subscription today i'm back here on my dream claim if you didn't watch my last video where i was here on the dream claim where i found all those nuggets and one massive one record day record nuggets record day it was awesome you should go back and watch it but in that video i discovered something exciting on the river today we're going to explore of that exciting thing a ground sluice left over from miners way way way back in place been running in the river for who knows how many decades and i'm hoping it's caught some gold but i gotta get at it first that's the plan for today so wish me luck and i hope you enjoy [Music] now the gravel bars on this river move around and displace every year during flood sometimes they're big in one spot next year they're gone in that spot they're always they're dynamic they move this year this channel here has washed itself almost completely clear i don't remember a channel being here i think it was full of rocks before and one thing i noticed when i walked up this channel is in the bottom in the very bottom concreted in place rusty from you know i don't know how long it's been here there is a ground sluice now this is something that has been built right into the ground concreted in place so it won't move riffles weld it up that fit right in the concrete channel it's bolted down obviously that bolt is way too old to actually undo i'm sure i have to find some other way to get into this and check out what it has caught and it seems to be underneath boulders if it's only four feet long i can get at it easy if it's eight feet long well that's a lot of gravel to move if it's 12 feet long i can't get at it my goal today is to see how big it is see if i can get at least one section out and see if it has caught any gold over the years i'm excited now my first job here is i'm going to take my metal detector the gold monster 1000 thanks to the guys at kelly cope if you want your own metal detector check out the link below in the description kellyco is awesome unfortunately us only well anyhow take my metal detector and obviously it detects it from like a foot away obviously it's underneath that big rock [Music] uh-oh it's underneath all those rocks oh no okay it seems to go to right there unfortunately that's a really big rock that's on i have a lot of work to do if i want to get this whole thing out so it seems to be ten feet long and unfortunately only three or four feet of it is exposed i guess that means more potential for gold but a lot more work i do have people ask me all the time in my comments my videos can i just build a sluice right in the bottom of the river and leave it there the answer here is here in bc no you can't it is against the law to modify the creek bed and this would be considered modifying the creek bed now i didn't do this and when i'm done if i can get the metal grating out of here i'm going to leave it out because i don't want to get in trouble for something that's on my claim even though it's obvious something i didn't do and you know i know the inspectors are friendly neighborhood mines inspectors hi craig i know they watch my videos i can't actually do this i can't do this myself obviously this is here i don't know decades or more so not my fault but anyhow i'm gonna see what's in it [Music] [Music] [Music] so i was really hoping that this run wasn't all one piece for 10 feet on the way up i've now cleared about five but there's about five feet left to go and it gets into some big big boulders so i've been watching the edge to see if possibly there's a break and i was actually watching up here where i was digging and then i looked down and noticed there's a break underneath this pull down right here so i can get the bottom two feet out easily i may have to grind that off luckily i have the grinder here for other reasons but i have the grinder so i can grind that off pull that off i should be able to get the bottom two feet out and you know get an idea of course with sluice boxes they usually catch 90 of their gold at the top end it really depends on how long this has been here and what's come off the hillside down into it but the bottom two feet is never a good test of a sluice box however that's what i can do easily right now and then hopefully the next you know two or three or four feet or one piece as well and it can come out it's a lot of moving a rock so far well let's see if the bottom two feet pries out not easily not easily at all woohoo well let's clean a two-foot section and see if there's anything well there's one pan from underneath the first the bottom two feet i didn't grab all the rusted stuff that was in the you know in the grate itself thinking that any gold would have settled to the bottom and that's pretty nasty stuff to deal with but we'll see if there's good gold there i will check out there and then move forward [Music] [Music] now there was a miner's moss there was carpet indoor outdoor carpet underneath the whole sluice but it looks like someone in the past that pulled the bottom two feet out except for the little strip down one side so i'm not the first person to discover this maybe the first person to actually start taking it apart though it looks like they just pulled out the matting where they could from the bottom so let's get classifying and cleaning that one-handed not easy one picker and that's pretty much it one picker let's get a close-up camera one nice picker from the bottom two feet of the ground sluice i was hoping for a lot more but now well let's keep trying [Music] [Music] now i don't have a wrench with me today to take that bolt off and you know i don't think i could it's been rusted on there for decades but i do have the little portable grinder let's go grind it off [Applause] someone's probably yelling at me right now no you can't put it back together dan well i'm not allowed to have this here so i don't plan to be putting it back together okay let's see how big the next section is and whether or not i'll come off with what i've got dug i think i see it pivoting over the next two feet well i think i'll clear the carpet first i'm hoping that carpet's a separate piece otherwise let's go find a knife somewhere so i can cut it this is more work than i expected it to be now there's a lot of stuff stuck in there because of the rust and just concreting in and unfortunately the way that gold actually works when it's in this loose box it usually tucks up right tight against the riffles and that's where it's all rusted solid so i might have to go and bash the heck out of this thing and knock everything off in case there's any gold stuck in there but first let's go see what's in the matting because that might tell me if there's nothing in the matting there might not be anything in there i discovered i don't have to cut it i can rip it that aside we'll pan this other one out first oh i just slipped on a rock on a wet rock and fell in the river landed on my keister really hard on the rock too oh my poor back i managed to save the pan it didn't go in but my camera fell in the water i'm hoping the microphone is okay [Applause] so this is the larger stuff that was sitting on top of the carpeting i just scooped it off with a shovel and we'll wash out the carpeting in a second see what's in here first i see a piece of gold washing out just a little guy there's at least one piece of gold in here wet button sore butt ah stupid wet rocks oh yeah two pickers one good chipper one good slate nice pickers oh and that's only in the bigger stuff i should pan out the classifier as well just to make sure let's get some shots first well that's not bad i like the looks of that there'll be three pickers and a couple of small flakes now let's see what's in that carpet handing out the oversized stuff the stuff that was left in the classifier just to see if by a chance there was a nugget i didn't see go by or something like lots of that of iron in there no nuggets to be a little hard all i have is my can to wash into do my best to wash the carpet down into the pan well let's see what's in here well let's see one small piece of gold i think that's another yeah two small pieces of old check out what that is that might be a piece of gold in rock and just suck it up all the same just in case i'm not positive if all that is gold i will have to have a look under the microscope or a magnifying glass or a loop or something when i get a chance because that doesn't look like gold but it could be a piece of gold in rock that's definitely gold and that looks like a piece of like really crystalline like straight out of the rock type gold so both of those may have been weathered out of one rock that was just sitting there in the sluice or maybe they're just yellow rocks my old eyes can't quite tell okay the wire brushings off the bottom of the you know the second two feet i may have seen a flake go in it may have just been a yellow rock i can't quite tell with a sleeping glint as it went in old square nail no glints of gold here's a little nail i like it the old square hand forged nail but no gold in the scraping from the bottom it was all caught by the mat [Music] [Music] this loose really makes me wonder if back in the day before there was lots of regulations and inspectors and all that if they didn't build this right into the bottom of the river and then up from above here just dump dirt over so it ran through this sluice i can see dumping just loader after loader of dirt from wherever over the edge during runoff letting it hit here and letting this ground sluice just do its job who knows how much gold this thing found in the past you know i was really hoping to do a video where i could you know title it i found an ounce of gold in an illegal ground sluice but it's not looking like that's the case i do want to continue up because it seems to be getting better as i go up maybe there's still an ounce of gold up there unfortunately i'm getting into some pretty big rocks i have to move now let's see what i can do another old rusty bolt to grind off before i can get the next two feet out there we be it's all ground off but i still have two big boulders to move damn i'm getting too old for this so again first i'll pan out the scrapings from on top of the mat then i'll wash the mat and then i'll i don't know scoop out from underneath or something i found a washer big nugget of iron okay i have nuggets but just like in that last um section they're covered in something white but i have two good sized nuggets in here interesting i have to investigate these a whole lot more i don't know why these nuggets would be covered in that sort of white powdery they look funny there's actually another one down here too they look different i don't have my loop with me right now so i can't have a close-up to see if that's like clay on the surface just rock on the surface but there's two nuggets i like this as i go up up up up up up i seem to be getting more and more and more and more more and bigger bigger bigger bigger that's two freaking nuggets [Music] something looks weird about them i don't know what it is i'm gonna have to look closely when i get home okay the mats from this section i cut down into thinner strips so i could clean them in my pan easier that's the third of the strips let's see what the mats hold so the maps held a bunch of small stuff nothing to write home about no nuggets but that's because i scraped them all off the surface already let's go see what fell in the bottom okay here's all the scrapings out of the bottom including the upper set of rifles i bashed them out into the bottom i scraped everything out this is actually the third pan worth of material and what i've been doing is i've just been classifying it down checking for nuggets and then panning it down to about a quarter pan and then refilling it so everything that's been found in those upper riffles and the bottom that made it sort of through the mats or around the corners or anything that i dropped into the bottom of this loose is in here now this is the third set of rifles so that would be you know six feet up type thing from the bottom still not at the top so in the scrapings in the bottom one more piece of gold and oh it is coarse and rough and jagged and one big chunk of iron pyrite fool's gold but not much more not much small stuff little little specks but yeah basically one more little picker or small nugget and one big chunk of iron pyrite well three sections removed and the gold keeps getting better and better at the bottom there was one big flake or small picker the next two sec two foot section had two big pickers plus a bunch of you know other gold and the next section had uh two nuggets a couple pickers and you know a bunch of fine stuff a little bit a little bit more a whole lot more i'm thinking it goes even bigger and bigger and bigger unfortunately i don't have it in me to move those next two rocks open heart surgery kind of took out took it out of me i just don't have what i used to have a couple years ago i could have moved those at least that one no problem but i think what i need to do is enlist the help of some friends that have muscles and uh get those rocks out of there keep moving up and see if it goes bigger and bigger and bigger nuggets as we move up i will do that before i release this video otherwise those damn claim jumpers will be back now as for the greats i think what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring a towel or a tarp or a blanket or something put down in the bottom here put the grates on top of it and bash out all the material and then you know pan it out and see if any of the little nuggets got caught up in the material that's caught in the grates but i want something that is going to catch all the material that knocks out nice and easily so i'll do that next trip as well now this stuff here i'm going to take home and have a good good look at under the microscope to figure out what i actually have because i'm fairly certain that's all gold well no i'm fairly certain most of that there is gold there's some rocks but i don't understand why the surface looks like it does on some of those i'm not sure if that's mercury that has mostly baked off or gone away i'm not sure if that's maybe concrete on the surface if those are raw nuggets straight from a rock i'm not quite sure what i have here well i know where i have to go from here i got to bring some friends out to move those rocks to finish off that grounds loose i'm going to take those mats all home and burn them and see what comes out when i burn the mat see what gold is trapped in there and i've got to investigate this claim a little bit more see what else the old-time miners have left for me and what modern claim jumpers have hidden around the place i hope you all enjoyed this impromptu video i wasn't planning to do this one until i found that ground slus yesterday and i had fun cleaning it out today hope you enjoyed the video if you did please give me that thumbs up if you haven't subscribed my channel already i hope i've earned your subscription and a big thanks to everyone for watching especially my patrons because the support of my patrons i get to make these weekly episodes of damn heard frost kind of thing for everyone to watch hope you all have an amazing day and until the next video everyone bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Dan Hurd

Views: 1,896,331

Rating: 4.9149523 out of 5

Keywords: gold nugget, gold, nugget, sluice, illegal, mining, ground sluice, prospecting, placer, claim, gold mine, gold rush, video, bc, british columbia, gold panning, panning for gold, finding gold, gold prospecting, sluicing for gold, sluice box, gold pan

Id: s7quOeiExX4

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021