Time to go and try for a caribou, moose and black bear

[mdeland]

I didn't hear that but it could be true. I related what I had heard about it being cleaned up by the state. There is another abandoned dredge just below Chicken on the Mosquito fork that you may be thinking of. I was talking about the one along side the road just before Jack Wade junction that heads off to Eagle on the Taylor Hwy.

[bobw]

What does a bull caribou like that yield in meat weight +HEAD AND HIDE wt for the float out? Bobw

[Kurt]

Yes the wade dredge was what I was talking about. I stopped in the camp ground there several times. Good gold in that crick

[mdeland]

A big caribou bull will go about 400 lbs or a bit more on the hoof so if one keeps the hide and all salvageable meat, hide and antlers I'd guess what goes into the raft would be around 225-250 lbs.

[mdeland]

Yeah, you can pan gold in most any creek in the entire state but getting enough to make it pay is the trick. I did hear a neat story about a tourist up by Chena Hot Springs some years back who got out of her car to take a pee in the brush long side the road and found a nugget about the size of her head in the ditch , the road bed being made from old dredge tailings . It was to big of a nugget to go through the screens so was kicked out as a tailing.
She wouldn't have been able to lift it if it was really that big. It was said to be almost totally gold.
Nuggets that big command a huge premium over the price of gold value.

[Glen Ring]

very cool...Thank you for posting those pics. you are a very fortunate man to be able to do that.

[mdeland]

Yeah Glenn, as the years roll by and I get closer to the last hunt I appreciate each one more and with the grand kids now participating it makes it even more fun. Near as I can tell this is my 13th trip over this stretch of river so am learning pretty well where the bou like to hang out and cross. Found a new one this year with five bou crossing just behind us as we passed.

[Kurt]

That's called prospecting

I work a claim up by Central and I like running a metal detecter over the tailings that are all around there from the worked out commercial mining. If a nugget is too large to drop through the screens in the trammel and and misses the nugget trap heading down to the sluice it ends up in the tailings. Carolyn has a nice tear shaped nugget I found that is better then a 1/2 oz that I put on a chain around her neck.
I use a 4" dredge and a high banker and some times they put a big smile on our face when we clean up.

The place to metal detect is on the bare bedrock where the dozer pushed the pay dirt off but there is a lot of good stuff deep down in the cracks I dig out with a screwdriver or start a shop vac running off a inverter using the 4 wheeler battery.
Man I have to get back up there........

[mdeland]

Come next July 21 I will have lived here 50 years! As a dairy farm boy from Michigan I could not have dreamed this would happen to me then. God is Good and has continually blessed all of us who post here if we really take an honest look !