First post here, hello all.
LOL, big fingered blundered my user name signing in.
It was meant to be oldgoldminer, ohh well.
I was referred here from another forum.
Not long back, acquired a fine gold property.
By "fine", I mean the placer gold here will fall right through a 150 mesh screen.
(smallest screen I have)

This is a low "bar" on the snake river in Idaho USA
White line is a mile long, to give you an idea of the scale of it.
Surface has a thin skin of either wind blown dust, or silt about 5 inches deep.
Below that is sand & small pebbles.
No overburden, to speak off & just scrub grass scattered here & there.
There are some old workings on the site & shallow pits all over the place.
It appears they were done turn of the century & the depression era.
No course cobble show in any of the existing pits.
Everything showing is 3/4 minus or below.
Panning samples from the pits turned up so much micro-fine gold, the boys thought the site might have been "salted".
So they used a post hole digger, to do about 30 small shallow virgin holes spread over the site.
Once below the skin cover, they recovered ultra fine gold by panning in every hole the dug.
Some, better than others, but the gold is everywhere.
No idea of depth to depth to bedrock.
Come spring, plan is to use a truck mounted hollow core churn hole drill to grid pattern drill sample the site.
To get a better idea of depth, material size & what’s there.
From sketchy historical data the first folks that got here, could recover 4 to 8 ounces a day.
Using hand shovels, rocker box & mercury to amalgamate the dust.
Historical data indicates the richer deposits were formed like this, over thousands of years.

In this example the #5 is at the surface, the rest buried.
This jibes with where the biggest surface working are on this bar.
I have been around long enough to know panning can "fool" you.
As, careful panning can recover micro-fine gold that will shoot right out of a sluice box.
Again, historical data shows the old timers used burlap, or sail cloth to line their sluices with.
I'm thinking...if the drill testing shows promise……..trommel... to classify to 1/4 inch minus.
The run those fines over a sluice box with a series of 20 mesh screens in it.
Where those fines could drop into lateral sluices, lined with rough top conveyor belting.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Certainly, I realize until its drill tested, we are talking “smoke” here.
But, assuming the drill testing shows promise.
The trick would be how to recover enough gold, to make a profit.
Never worked such fine gold, so this is a new ball game to me.
Have run placers, where the gold ranged from fine (40 mesh) to ¼ inch.
But, never, all micro fine gold.
This one may be far bigger than I can chew.