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.

Our field trip this month is in my back yard and storage shed. The shed is where I keep all the buckets of concentrates from my field trips and my wife is always asking when I am going to get around to cleaning it out.

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.

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