GPAA

I got into gold hunting when I first started working for a company that caters to people who pan for gold. The name of the company is the Gold Prospectors Association of America or GPAA for short, and they really just focus in on recreational gold prospecting. It’s nothing major, nothing big like you see on Nat Geo where they’re going up to Alaska with these million-dollar budgets with these big old trommels, it’s really small scale where you’re going into a dried riverbed and digging down to bedrock, it’s really just for hobby. Payable hobby because what you find you don’t pay taxes on. I’ve been looking for gold for about two years. I got into it by getting hired with this firm. I didn’t know people still gold prospected recreationally, I was working with the temp agency and this office job opened up and I interviewed for it and they told me what was and I was surprised that people still did it. The company has been around since around 1960. We actually have currently about 36,000 active members per year, it’s a huge following. I was customer service; I took all of the incoming calls and dealt with the members who needed anything. I input checks because there was annual dues for specific memberships. I was in the office but I got to talk to members who were out in the field. All the members were just trying to ask questions about gold prospecting and different types of equipment. I answered their questions. At some point once I was with the company for about eight months they allowed me to pan samples. Our members get two sample pans. They send in the material that they have found just in the field. Say they go to a riverbed and they want to know if there’s gold in there. Because they’re not confident enough with their own panning skills, and they feel like they are losing the gold, they send it to us and we pan it very specifically to find out if there is gold in there. Then we write up a report and tell them if there’s any gold in their or any other minerals but we don’t send it back because it’s only a very small amount of sample. My job was to pan the gold, pan the samples and write the report sending it back to the member telling them that there was gold in their sample. And then I just got into it myself because being around it at my work, even my coworkers knew how to do it well. You can buy gold equipment in a variety of gold prospecting stores. There is one in Temecula, is called American Prospector. That’s where I bought all of my equipment. You can buy a metal detectors, sluice boxing, dry washing (gold prospecting without water).
Of course there are the huge outfits that file large claims on BLM land, there are two types of claims, there is a load claim and then there is a plaster claim. With plaster, you’re only allowed to scoop up the dirt down to the bedrock but you’re not allowed to do any kind of drilling into the rock or use any explosives. You’re not allowed to dig into and create a mine in whatever kind of rock formation that you’re in. Typically load mining is following the quartz vein with golden in it. GPAA owns mining claims throughout Western North America that their membership can use for plaster gold mining. When you go gold hunting, you have to always make sure you have the legal right to be on that property. And that’s it. A little equipment, some place to pan (water or not) and you’ve got a great way to spend your time outside and with any luck make a little money on the side!