Creek Hunting

[douglaslefler]

I like to hunt creeks and when I first started I would look at my topography map and choose creeks to hunt at random. After a while of doing this I started to realize that points don't travel very far down creek and that anything I found was usually not coming from very far away. After coming to this conclusion I started to be more picky about what creek I hunted and also what part of the creek that I would hunt. I was wondering how some of you other more experienced creek hunters pick creeks and also what parts of the creek do you hunt first?

[Indianasmith]

I think that the artifacts in our creeks move more than people think. I know a few years back, I found a very large mosasaur skeleton coming out very far up a small north Texas creek. He was a 50 footer whose individual vertebrae could weigh as much as 5 pounds each! Yet some of the bigger bone pieces traveled almost a mile downstream from the site where he was washing out, and the smaller bone fragments - closer in size and weight to Indian artifacts - traveled over a mile, and underneath a bridge, to wash up on gravel bars very far from the site. So when I hunt a creek, I hit all of it - although bigger gravel bars that catch lots of stuff will always merit special attention, especially if they are the first high gravel bar after a long straightaway or waterhole.

[OneOneNiner]

The mouth of where creeks dump into Rivers are hotspots for surface finds.
If you're sifting, sift gravel just ahead of where gravel bars become shallow.

[neralich]

90% of the time I just get a "feeling" it's a good creek.

80% of the time the creek is a dud.

I like to find ones that snake their way with good bends cutting into some prime time real estate.

I try and hit a new found creek at least every week.

Google earth is a good way to find creeks.

One thing I've learned is that sometimes it's completely unpredictable where you may find a good creek; Or where you may find a point in that creek. I have noticed patterns in certain creeks though, that certain gravel bars in my creeks seem to be much more productive. I've learned that the reason is because of site erosion. It sounds like this is what you have going on in the creek you mention. It's not that they wont travel very far, it's because they most probably just released themselves from a bank/site and your not giving the points a chance to "travel"

Am I making any sense? In other words, downstream from where your finding points (including a bigger creek or river that it dumps into) could be succesful areas to hit.
When I say river, I mean the closest exposed gravel bar downstream from where the creek eventually dumps out at.

I usually start a creek at mouth of river as close as possible and walk upstream from there, inspecting feeder creeks also.

Goodluck,

Jason

[douglaslefler]

Thanks everyone for your replies. Indiana, it was very insightful to hear about how far those bones were traveling down creek it makes me think about how much I have been missing by basing my hunts on the fact that I did not think stuff traveled that far. I think that I may have to take a "Longer" look at some of my creeks. Thanks again everyone for your replies all of them were very insightful.