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Hello All,

   We all know that it only takes one nice, big nugget to start a small modern day metal detecting gold rush.  I'm sure the prospectors in Arizona remember the famous Stanton, Arizona "Tongue Nugget."  This piece was around 28 ounces, not by far the biggest found, but sure started a gold rush down South of Stanton, Arizona. 

tonguenugg.jpg.1ed837a129100c6272a130e63a018d5d.jpg

Other nuggets like the recent California "Butte Nugget" have re-sparked interest in metal detecting the California placers. 

There still are a lot of big nuggets being found, some being shown, others kept secret. 

Another place up at Rich Hill was the 24 Karat Gold club. This club would perform pushes with a large dozer in known gold patches.  Hundreds of nuggets would be found after each push, and nuggets continued to be found in old pushes for years after as detector technology got better. Here are some of the nuggets I have recovered from some of the 24K pushes years ago -

24kgold.jpg.d2414cb1a0dc92c66f87119632c67a9f.jpg

Pictured above is appox. 6 ounces of nice placer gold found by the webmaster using various Minelab metal detectors. 

It's still out there ....

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Why don't clubs do pushes any longer? I'd gladly pay for the opportunity to do a hunt on a push of decent quality.. what a blast that would be... sadly you never hear of anyone, club or private claim owner who's offered to do a push for fee arrangement.

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4 hours ago, jjbond said:

Why don't clubs do pushes any longer? I'd gladly pay for the opportunity to do a hunt on a push of decent quality.. what a blast that would be... sadly you never hear of anyone, club or private claim owner who's offered to do a push for fee arrangement.

The 24K Club pushes at Rich Hill wore out the dozers. The WSPA did at least one push in NV. Maybe one of the members can tell us how that worked out. 

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Hey Jen,

   I think the rate of return for the clubs.  Even though the pushes could be pushes, re-pushed, the gold at some point starts to slow down.  Like Dakota also mentioned, the wear and tear to push boulders at Rich Hill, then the rental fee and fuel wasn't cheap.  All these clubs after a few years seems to disappear.   To be real successful pushing, you would almost have to own endless amounts of good placer gold to make it work for a club.  

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