We all have our pet peeves, Mikey addresses one of his in this question.

Q. Why don't you give out specific collecting sites? A: Many mineral locations in Arkansas and elsewhere cannot support extensive collecting. We know from experience that some collectors come in and do not collect responsibly, but instead remove everything, which results in a ruined site.     Too many times we have visited a site and hauled out trash bags full of beer cans and plastic and cardboard containers left behind by thoughtless collectors who trashed the area.     Many locations are on private land. What is "just collecting" to some people is "trespassing, theft, and destruction of property" to landowners. We will not give out locations that would cause the landowners to be inundated with requests to collect.     Some locations have mining claims filed on them. We don't encourage visiting these sites without permission from the claim or lease holder. But we DO TELL you about the commercial locations and give you links to the National Forest land where collecting is permitted.     Status of mines and sites, both fee-pay and for free, constantly changes. No one can be 100 % certain how good or productive a collecting site may be on any given day. There are some quartz mines that I have visited that I found little, but several people at different times have told me how great the collecting was during their visits.     Too much depends on luck and circumstance as to whether a site will yield anything of importance on a given trip. A first time collector may get his/her hopes built up by a glowing report, yet arrive at the site not knowing about what there is to collect and how to collect it. An example There is a commercial quartz mine that has lots of loose small single crystals that can be scratched out or surface hunted with little effort. The price per day is low. Little work is ever done by the owner at the site.     A collector who I do not know asks my recommendation concerning the mine mentioned above. I will not answer this type of question and here's why: What is the person looking for as a collecting experience? Museum specimens or a top-notch piece to put in his/her personal collection? Or, are they looking for a place to take a cub scout group or a bunch of kids who have never been to a quartz mine? For kids, finding abundant small crystal points is exciting and a great outdoors experience. It also does not break the bank account of the person funding this trip! Yet the advanced or experienced collector would find major fault with my recommendation of this location. You should recognize from the daily fee what to expect. As for the quality of the specimens found, the commercial mines are pretty much "you get what you pay for". Nobody has ever found the mother lode and told everybody about it before filing their claim! The best collecting places for many minerals have already been taken by claims. But it is interesting to note that there are no public collecting areas that yield as good a quality or the quantity of quartz crystal as any of the fee-pay locations. I am often asked questions about the relative merits of one site over another (Which one is the BEST?). I will not answer this question! Here's why: Every site, fee or free, has its merits and drawbacks. Some may seem too expensive and, for a one-day visit, may turn out to have too high an entry fee. Generally though, the higher the daily adult fee, the better the collecting for specimen material. Some mines bring material out of the actual mine for collectors to dig through. How good it is depends on how good the material is that the miners leave behind. Other mines allow you to dig on veins and may even work them daily or every few days to get the veins better exposed for collectors. Some allow you to dig on the veins, but only expose new material for larger groups. The question raises so many problems you can see my problem with trying to answer it.     Every site has its day in the sun! A location may consistently yield average specimens or may have sporatic specimen production. Some days lots of hard work and nothing to show but memories and blisters. Other days, walk up on the site and start picking up specimens by the buckets full. Certainly I somewhat exaggerate, but you know what I mean! The unpredictability of many collecting sites is what brings us back to them again and again. It gives us the excitement of the chase! We cannot always expect to find the goodies everytime we collect, but once in awhile, at a location we've visited many times -- Wow, we hit the motherlode!     EVERY SITE is scientifically important and for some collectors, particularly those of us who want specimens from every available Arkansas site, interesting to visit. We appreciate your indulgence by reading this message. Just remember, if you ask me about the quality of a given site, you will not receive an answer. If you ask me about the status or availability to visit a site, I will answer! Mikey's Soapbox: From the pedestal of truth, we proclaim the self-evident: the actions and greed of a few spoil the collecting enjoyment for the many. RANT!!! Think of it this way: The situation is like a big Easter Egg hunt. Everyone wants to find the golden egg, including us. I know where some of the eggs are, but not all! And I am still in the hunt, too! There are only so many eggs (sites) so only so many can be discovered. We will tell you about the types of minerals and you can do your homework to locate them yourself. RAVE!!! Concerning the discovery of new locations, everyone wants someone else to put forth the effort so everyone can go collect. But I say: Do it yourself! Here's how: Get a copy of AGC Bulletin 23, then examine the references in the back of the book about a mineral you are interested in collecting. Then, go to the AGC library and READ the reference material. Buy some topographic maps and plot some sites you locate from the literature. Learn how to read a topo map. Then go to the field and look for the sites. Discover the clues given to you on this web site!     You would be surprised how few rockhounds have visited some of the Arkansas locations! Collect your site and evaluate the situation yourself. Visit landowners and talk to them. There probably are sites which have not had any collecting in years because folks don't bother to talk to the property owners. In other words, do some work yourself.     We aren't in the business of giving location information away as we have had to go through the described process to find new sites. You can pay your dues like the rest of us! The fun of knowing you have found a site that few others know about makes all the work well worth it. OK. We are glad that's out of our system.   Rockhounding Arkansas revised July 1998 ©Rockhounding Arkansas 1998 http://rockhoundingAR.com