Metal Detecting Guides & Reviews

An honest look at how much gold recreational prospectors find in a day, what controls the result, and how to sample a spot before investing more time and money.

A step-by-step guide to panning for gold: the gear you need, the shake-and-wash technique, where gold settles in a stream, and the rules for recreational panning on public land.

Gold leaves clues. Quartz veins, iron staining, black sand, bedrock traps and old workings all help narrow a search. Here is how to read them and how they guide where you pan, sluice or swing a detector.

Montana and Idaho were built on 1860s placer gold rushes, and their creeks still carry color. Here is where to look, how land status works and what permits apply to sluices and dredges in each state.