Never did any prospecting myself but I have a friend whose grandfather owned a claim. For most of the time he was collecting gold, you had to sell it to the government which pissed him off, so he never sold an ounce. He also rarely worked his own claim. He would go up and down all the streams in the area with a glass bottom bucket, looking for nuggets. He didn't care to much about the fact that much of the gold he was finding was on other people's claims, as long as they weren't standing there with a shotgun.
He was a catholic man with a family of 12 kids and a bazillion grandkids but before he died, he gave each kid and each grandkid a gold nugget as a keepsake. He had a necklace made for his wife that had 21 nuggets arraigned on a web of gold chain. (She hated him because he spent all his damn time up at his claim, instead of helping her out with the kids and the business they owned)
On his deathbed, back in the 80s, he told his grandson, my friend, that he still had hundreds of nuggets buried in several locations up at on claim but never told anyone exactly were. right after he died his wife sold the claim to someone else who didn't know about the stash and who knows how many times the claim has changed hands since. I know where the claim is and have always thought it would be fun to sneak up there with a metal detector and snoop around a bit.
