Discovery’s “Gold Rush” series has done a lot to show people the ins and outs of the mining industry, showing off the basic process from staking claims on a piece of land to mining it for gold before weighing out whatever the crew manages to get. However, like all TV shows, it is far from a perfect representation of reality. What the Discovery Channel shows is merely the condensed version of a very long and arduous process conducted by the mining crew, the film crew, and others. As a result, fans aren’t privy to 100% of the ordeal.
In fact, there’s a very crucial part of gold mining that fans rarely ever see on the series. Granted, this might not be a major issue since it certainly isn’t the most intense aspect of the activity, but that being said, it is odd that fans almost never see any of the crews drilling test holes.
Parker Schnabel reveals why they never show crews drilling test holes
Every “Gold Rush” fan is familiar with Parker Schnabel. The young up-and-comer of the series’ various miners, Schnabel has made up for his lack of experience with his prodigious talent, although after 11 seasons, he now has plenty of both. However, it doesn’t take a very experienced miner to know that test holes, a hole drilled into a specific area to determine the physical characteristics of the rock underneath (via Mindat.org), are an important part of the process. In an interview with Starcasm, Schnabel revealed why the series rarely shows off this crucial step.
“We still do that. We still do a lot of drilling. It’s a key part of mining,” Schnabel said. “If you watch Todd Hoffman gold mine, you’ll see why that [sic] you should probably do a lot of test drilling before you go mining. The reason that it doesn’t make it on the show is because usually it’s happening a lot of times when we’re not around. Early spring is the best time to drill — March and April. And we’re not always filming then, or we’re just starting up filming.”
Schnabel’s answer makes sense, at least from a logical perspective. As we said, drilling test holes probably isn’t as exciting as the actual mining and weighing phases of the operation, and without the show’s stars around, it makes sense why film crews wouldn’t bother capturing a lot of footage of test holes being drilled.