How do you recover placer gold?

Answer 1

Placer gold is found in river beds. The gold is heavy and settles and is concentrated in the river gravel. You mine it by digging up this gravel, placing it on a sluice with a rough bottom surface (e.g. a sheep fleece) and washing it down the sluice with river water. The gold gets trapped in the fleece and when this is dried the gold can be shaken out.

You can also do the same thing (in smaller quantities) with a wooden or rusty metal miners pan (hence panning for gold).