The method
One way to get some bonus gold bars is through completing and resetting the in game awards. you get 0.4 gold each time an award is reset, you will also get around 300 XP in total. Unfortunately not all awards can be reset, but with the ones that can, you are able to reset them a total of 10 times.
To view the awards, do the following;
- Press pause
- Scroll to 'Progress' and select it
- Select 'Awards'
- Look at any of the categories
- On the awards that are gold, hold
One particularly easy award is for killing 2 animals with one explosion 20 times. It can be found in the hunting category. Getting into this, you can do it at any time in the game, though it will require some dynamite, one stick costs $1 at the fence, or it can be looted from enemies. You can only hold 8 sticks of dynamite at any time.
Once you have the dynamite, head to the location shown in the image, there is a pond by a hut with a bunch of fish.
When you arrive, be sure to change your aim settings to 'Free Aim', as you will be gaining more XP. Now throw two sticks of dynamite in the pond and you'll gain a bit of XP and progress on the award. You can go ahead and jump into another session to have the fish spawn again, repeating the process.
After you run out of dynamite, go to the fence at Emerald Ranch.