Two Story was getting old when he took me with him the first time and although I didn’t suspect it at the time, he just needed a “gofer” to help him pack in supplies and go for water. I was actually just a necessary evil and he tolerated my dumb questions in exchange for my help. I know now how lucky I was to serve my apprenticeship as a gold prospector under this cantankerous old master of the profession.

We struck a trail North from Sierra Blanca, Texas into New Mexico, across Southern Arizona and into the Eastern desert of California. Two Story preferred to prospect desert dry washes…”Any durn fool can prospect where there’s water…so there’s too many fighting over the gold!” He could read a desert dry wash like a history book and tell me what happened geologically millions of years back. Without formal education, he taught me more geology than any of the University professors I was to study under later in life. We spent a day or two in each of the “glory holes” he had located in his lifetime of wandering the desert. He told me “most prospectors look for a big strike so hard that they overlook the millions of small pockets of gold along the bends and curves of the countless dry creek beds. These pockets may catch only a few grains or maybe a few ounces of gold, but they refill yearly during the rainy season floods. Any prospector worth his salt and willing to work can make a good living in the desert.”

Two Story would patiently put the grains of placer gold into the quills from dead buzzards (no neat little glass vials were available to us locally and “too durn expensive” at the mining supply in Denver or Tucson. We had fifty or so quills of placer gold when he brought me back home in time to go back to school. We had sold some gold to a Chinese storekeeper in Washington Camp, Arizona. Two Story considered gold to be more stable than money and never sold more than was necessary to buy provisions. I went out with Two Story four more Summer vacations, following about the same path and gleaning a few ounces here, a few grains there and sometimes stumbling onto a bonanza of fifteen ounces or more. I learned new things every trip… to check culverts along the roads…to always check the washes leading down from mountains where known gold mines were….how to dry pan…how to dry wash…how to use a rocker box. But mainly, I learned that our American deserts will always offer a living to common sense prospectors because as Two Story put it…”God hydraulics the gold out of the mountains and hides it in pockets along the creeks so that smart prospectors can eat regular!”

Two Story always ate regular and lived his way in the desert sleeping under the stars in an old hand sewn canvas sleeping bag. That’s where they found him one cold day in February, 1946 along with several hundred thousand dollars worth of gold neatly packed in buzzard quills. Gold was worth only $35 an ounce in 1946 and by the time the human buzzards got through fighting over his gold, it was worth several Million dollars. Two Story never write a will and I was too far down the relation chart to be entitled to any inheritance anyhow. I wasn’t back from the South Pacific duty in World War II so I couldn’t even go to his funeral. But Two Story did okay by me… he made a pretty good prospector out of me and I still follow our path through the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona and California and occasionally stumble onto one of Two Story’s “glory holes”. It seems like ‘ol Two Story is there behind me, griping because I’m putting the gold in one of those extravigant glass vials when a buzzard quill would do just as well.

If you’re looking for something new to get gold we have found it. We first saw it at one of the GPAA gold shows being demonstrated by Angus Niccolls of Camel Mining Products.

Just a side note but I have always liked the name Angus and wanted to name one of my sons Angus but my wife didn’t care for the name and if your married you will understand why my wife won (don’t mess with the boss). We did end up naming him Andrew. Watching Angus operating the Mountain Goat Trommel I was fascinated at how well it worked and how good it was at removing the gold from the gravels. I knew that Camel Mining Products have been manufacturing gold recovering machines for a long time but I didn’t realized it had been 37 years until we got talking to Angus. You have to make good products to last in business that long. Camel Mining never has dropped a new product on the market before they had spent a lot of time testing and refining it. Angus said that he had worked with the Mountain Goat for over a year before he thought it was ready for the public to see.

Angus told me that in his younger days he had worked as a trommel operator for several large mining companies. Some of the trommels he worked with were as long as 40 feet. Working with them he knew that trommels were great gold recovering machines but with their size not really practical for the small miner and prospector. It has taken him a long time but he has at last developed a portable gold recovering trommel. The Mountain Goat is built on the same principals as the huge mining trommels used by the major mining companies except it is a lot smaller and is portable. They say they call it the Mountain Goat because it will eat anything and is light enough for you to carry it up the side of a mountain.

A trommel is a very efficient screw pump gold recovery operation as the turning spiral riffles inside the housing carry the heavy material up to the high end of the tube while and causing the lighter material to flow out the back as tailings. This type of pump is one the first placer gold mining pieces of equipment ever developed and goes back almost 2000 years. I guess that this proves there is nothing new under the sun and if it aint broke then don’t fix it. This type of placer gold mining system makes the Mountain Goat self cleaning and there is no break down and clean up needed as with a sluice box or dry washer with a riffle tray. The spiral riffles are 1/4 inch deep and about 3/4 inch wide. They recommended screening your material down to 1/4 inch before processing it but we found it could handle pea size gravels up to almost an inch with out a problem or loss of gold. The Mountain Goat has a nugget trap at the low end of the machine which will catch nuggets larger than 1/4 inch so you don’t have to worry abut one getting away from you.

The front legs are adjustable but we found that the factory setting is the best setting to get all of the fine gold. The factory setting has the front legs 1 inch longer than the back legs. This is different than most other gold recovery methods where gravity is a part of the gold separation process along with weight like in a sluice box. Since most of the gold your going to get is fine or flour gold it is important that you don’t lose anything and the Mountain Goat makes sure you don’t. It’s interesting that during the California gold rush the first miners found that the gravels were so rich that they were able to just get all the larger pieces and not worry about the fine stuff to do very well before moving on to the next hot spot. The Chinese miners who came along later and worked the 49ers tailings actually got more gold over all than the first miners. That’s why one of my rules of gold prospecting is to avoid any spots where the Chinese miners worked or just mine the bench deposits that they never got to. They were very efficient and did not leave anything behind them. When the rich deposits played out and the first miners came back and saw how much gold the Chinese were getting they ran them off and reworked their own tailings. We recommend using a wetting agent like Jet Dry to insure your fine gold doesn’t float on you like we recommend on a lot of gold recovery equipment.

Here are some facts about the Mountain Goat:
Length 32 inches
Width 16 inches
Height 24 inches
Weight 18 pounds
Barrel 4 inches
Power 12-volt battery
Pump 750GPH
Capacity 2000 LBS. per day
Water needed 5 gallons
Price $695.00 plus S&H

You can operate the Mountain Goat with a direct water supply or use a recirculating water supply. We like the Mountain Goat  using a concrete mixing tub to recirculate the water to operate the machine. Your water stays free that way of leaves and such that can plug the pump. They enclosed a sock to cover the pump to protect it from plugging up and it worked fine. You can also use any large watertight container to run the Mountain Goat. You can pick up some thing like a cement mixing tub at most home improvement stores. I think you would be happiest with the carrying case because the whole thing is self-contained then. The whole outfit is very sturdy and well made and designed to take a lot of abuse.

You can operate the Mountain Goat with their Desert Fox or any other spiral gold pan by getting a transfer spout and extended legs as accessories for an extra cost.

We enjoyed working the Mountain Goat and feel it is a good addition to our gold mining equipment. We were able to speed up our gold processing work and increase our recovery. I have never heard anyone complain about any Camel Mining product. So when Angus tells me he has sold 400 of them and never had a complaint I can believe him.

The Original Little Camel Automatic Panning Machine (NOW DESERT FOX)

As a working prospector, I have grubstaked myself for years by reaping the pockets of placer gold deposited by the semiannual monsoon floods. Our Western desert public lands contain millions of acres open to every American citizen for prospecting under the provisions of The United States Mining Laws. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to measure the millions of miles of dry-washes crisscrossing our deserts but there must be at least a million. Whenever I select any dry creek leading down from mineralized mountains I nearly always find a few pockets of placer gold dust. While these scattered pockets may not contain more than a few ounces of gold, they are often replenished during the annual floods.

To work these gold pockets efficiently, I needed equipment that would run quietly, require little water and be light weight enough to backpack into remote areas. The first prototype of the little camel worked so well, other prospectors begged me to build one like it for them after seeing it work! Since those days I have built a lot of Little Camels for prospectors all over the world. Many improvements have been added over the years but the older model camels still outperform the current higher priced competitive machines on the market today. A secondhand camel will bring almost as much as it’s original cost because you seldom see one for sale. Modern production methods have kept the price reasonable even though new features and different size models have been added.

Jim Klein is a well known and respected writer and lifelong gold prospector. This field test of the Desert Fox appeared in the March/April 2002 issue of Gold Prospector Magazine.

Thanks to Camel Mining all those buckets are cleaned out and the gold that was in them is safely put away. I owe them another thank you for the first piece of mining equipment that has gotten my wife interested in prospecting. This is after almost forty years of prospecting. She has always been happy to be my official photographer for all my books and articles on finding and mining gold. You see she has this thing about sleeping in beds and taking baths and eating hot meals on plates and things like that. Personally a peanut butter and honey sandwich is a very good breakfast, lunch and dinner out in the mountains.

First off, let me say that I was not a fan of spiral wheel panning equipment because years ago I tested them and was not happy with the results. Well CAMEL MINING’S DESERT FOX has changed my mind. I was amazed at the flour gold it recovers and you never lose even the smallest piece. Which reminds me of my wife’s reaction to my concern about the flour gold, “Why are you so darn worried about those little pieces?” Well I tried to explain that most of the time that is all you get and you’re dang glad to get that just so you won’t get blanked sometimes. Also I told her “that mighty oaks grow from little acorns”. She told me that if I said that one more time she would raise an acorn on my head.

The Desert Fox is a compact light weight unit that you can take anywhere. It weighs under 10 pounds and can be packed in the recycling tub. You can run 70 pounds of concentrates an hour through as easily as can be. It can be set up and running in minutes. The Desert Fox can be used as both a separator and a concentrator, but I liked concentrating my material before using it and just separating the gold from the concentrates.

The Desert Fox uses specific gravity differences between the gold and other materials, as most gold recovery devices, to separate the gold. The Desert Fox uses 7 leads as they have learned that this the best combination for speed and accuracy that can be achieved for any wheel under 18 inches in diameter. The seven spirals or leads pick up the gold seven times per revolution and all 7 dump the gold in the center hole in less than 2 revolutions. According to Camel Mining, this makes the Desert Fox the fastest panning machine in its class. The Action Packer case serves dual purposes. First it is a storage and traveling case and it is also a holding tank for your water supply and material if you want to recycle your water. The Desert Fox is designed to conserve water and will operate on just a few gallons of water. The only water lost is what you throw out with the tailings.

The Desert Fox is designed to be a fully self contained panning machine and will operate on any small battery capable of about 4 amps output at 12 volts. It will actually operate on any 12-volt automotive battery or even a 35 watt solar panel.

The water pump is connected by a plug-in jack on the back of the drive unit and is powered only when the drive motor is operating which helps conserve battery power.

We found that set up was quick and simple. First you take everything out of the case, then you just spread out the stand legs and place them back into the case, and secure them with wingnuts supplied with the unit. Then you drop the wheel into the slot and secure the spray bar to the front of the drive unit and tighten its wingnut and hang the collection cup in place. You’re now ready to go. Fill the case with enough water to at least cover the pump. I filled it to about two-thirds full and it worked fine. Hook up your battery cables to your power supply and turn it on and start getting that GOLD.

I can see why they call it the Desert Fox as it is perfect for cleaning your concentrates in places where water is a problem. When I do my next revision on my book How To Find Gold In The Desert I will recommend it as a good piece of equipment for the desert prospector. I know my wife will be happy to see me bring home a bottle of gold instead of another bucket of materials to store until I get around to washing them.

I was very pleased with the recovery of fine gold and it was great to know that if I did something like not hang up the gold recovery cup (which I did thanks to my three year old grandson Joey “helping me “) that I would not lose any gold. Just run your concentrates back through and there it is.

The owner’s manual is short and to the point and easy to understand. The video they provided was also a real help. But it is really such an easy to operate piece of equipment that it is hard not to be a pro on it in a very short time.