Visual Gold Prospecting

Tracking searches can be done in several different ways. The one that is generally used the most and the most obvious one used during any prospect is the visual inspection of the surface that you will probably automatically be doing anyway, however it should be done at all times. You will need to look for rocks that look like float or pieces of rock that could have gold in its native state.

The ground and the coloring of the ground are also signals of content of mineral. In most cases, any discoloration of the soil is caused mainly because of bigger rocks close to or right under the surface. If you see any sort of radical changes in color these are always a good idea looking into. These color changes in many cases follow the identifying features that go along with minerals. If you find the color red it is usually related to mercury, blue and green are related to copper, and yellow and brown to iron. When you are looking for rocks or soils for changes of colors, be sure not to be tricked by organic material and growth like lichens that can often times look like mineral discoloration’s. 

One other area to be on the look out for is rapid or sudden changes in vegetation. There are some areas where vegetation grows in a very thick way along a certain type of geological formation and it may not be on another one at all. This type of sudden change in the fauna could suggest a contact area in between two geological formations and these are a good place for ores to be discovered in, in some cases.

Something that is very important to keep in mind and that is also true when searching for a buried outcrop, it to watch out for the holes of burrowing animals. There are many burrowing animals such as gophers, badgers, prairie dogs, woodchucks, ants etc that will on many occasions burrow out samples of the earth from several feet under, therefore when you are doing a tracking or lode search you should always pan the material the burrowing animal has brought up to the surface as it may contain precious metals in it.

Something that should always be taken into serious consideration when doing the visual search is finding old diggings that have previously been done. Old diggings might be well defined such as in the case of mines that are only a hundred years of age and that still have a good amount of visual evidence of their existence. On the other hand you may have to be somewhat of a genius to identify the places where the early pioneers or natives scratched out valuable surface deposits. In many cases the Indians used to scoop out only the enriched areas since they did not have any facilities for finding out how the ores occurred. As soon as they got to the vein they would just stop the digging or scratching. These holes cannot always be seen now and you may have to make a lucky guess to show that a rich outcrop was once in this certain place.