jasong

Here is the direct ruling from Clipper v Eli (regarding prospecting for lode over placer claims). Draw your own conclusions... If there is a ruling similar to this relating to the overstaking of placers over lode or the inability to prospect for placer minerals on a lode claim (which was the original question posed in this thread), then could someone please post it? Few have time to read through entire court cases which may or may not be relevant. "Although a placer location is not a location of lodes and veins beneath the surface, but simply a claim of a tract of ground for the sake of loose deposits upon or near the surface, and the patent to a placer claim does not convey the title to a known vein or lode within its area unless specifically applied and paid for, the patentee takes title to any lode or vein not known to exist at the time of the patent and subsequently discovered. The owner of a valid mining location, whether lode or placer, has the right to the exclusive possession and enjoyment of all the surface included within the lines of the location. One going upon a valid placer location to prospect for unknown lodes and veins against the will of the placer owner is a trespasser, and cannot initiate a right maintainable in an action at law to the lode and vein claims within the placer limits which he may discover during such trespass. The owner of a placer location may maintain an adverse action against an applicant for a patent of a lode claim when the latter's application includes part of the placer grounds." But even here there is some room for debate because it both does and does not say placer claims get title to lodes. So I think nothing is clear cut as it may seem. But again, the confusion comes in when we stop talking about minerals and start talking about titles and patenting. A mineral claim is not a title. So I think when we talk about minerals only, which is all we can talk about today, a person can validly prospect for placer minerals over a lode claim but I'm willing to change my opinion if some precedent can be shown that says otherwise. The converse however, may or may not be true depending on circumstance. I think the topic is not resolved anyways and interesting to discuss.

Then how can it be said that both lode and placer claims grant all mineral rights as Gambler and Reno Chris stated above? Just to be clear here, I didn't assume this. I was posing logical questions. In fact for years I've been posting just the opposite on this subject here and on other forums (some of which regretably deleted my posts and account because they didn't like what I had to say on this and other matters). Most BLM employees I've talked to on this subject have ended up agreeing with me too, no matter what they believed at first. One of them is the lead geologist in Winnemucca, Ken Loda, after we spent a few hours going through his case law book. Mentioning him in particular since I know a lot of people on this forum prospect in that district and he's accesible to speak with and he keeps all the code and case law right on his desk for easy reference and discussion. The conclusion I draw is that lode and placer claims grant exclusive rights to lode and placer minerals respectively. Not all minerals. And a lot of case law regarding lode vs placer is in reference to patenting too, which muddies the water further since the rulings don't necessarily adjudicate on the overstaking of two different kinds of claims themselves but instead on the private ownership of the land where the two different claims had been being worked legally and the dispute came in when one attempted to patent. Clipper v. Eli is another one.

So then if lode and placer claims each individually grant all mineral rights by themselves, what purpose does it serve to locate a lode claim over a placer? An how can 2 different claims be valid if they both cover the same minerals? 1872 grants "exclusive rights" to the minerals, not joint ownership unless multiple parties are on the same claim. Consider one potential situation - most clubs file placer claims, and membership either implicitly or explicitly grants permission to prospect club claims, which means that according to what you are saying members now acquire rights to overstake a valid club claim with a lode claim. If that happens then which claim takes precedent, the lode or the placer? If they can both exist legally then that means both are granting legal rights, which means they must be granting rights to seperate minerals doesn't it? Thus lode is defined as "in-situ" deposits, and placer are defined as "placer" deposits, presumably to rectify this logical impossibility. Otherwise if you have two valid claims covering the exact same minerals, then you have joint ownership which is counter to 1872 and the inherent idea of a claim. And how would that work if the parties conflict? Since the lode claim is just as valid as the original placer claim then the lode claim owner could then kick all the other club members off "his" claim (and thus the club claim). Just as one example of conflict. When it comes to actual mining, imagine the other conflict...does the lode claimaint have to pay the placer claimaint half of everything mined since they both own the minerals equally? Do they each need permission from each other to start a mining operation? There is no code or rules governing this, maybe for a reason. Because it creates a logical impossibility when two different people have "exclusive" rights to something. If the answer is that the lode applies to the lode minerals and the placer applies to the placer minerals...then a person has to assume each claim has a seperate purpose and they are not in fact granting rights to all minerals but only the corresponding lode or placer minerals depending on the claim type. Having two valid legal instruments to grant exclusive and all encompassing rights to the same physical entity, I think, is not possible. Only if two people are on a single legal instrument. Because both parties would have equal right to do anything without permission from the other, which itself means that the claims don't actually grant exclusive rights.

Oh yeah and they also said they have plans to rollout improvements in data access including potential changes or upgrades to claims databases. Which would be awesome. One thing is they said they have plans or have been talking about digitizing paperwork filings so you can pull papers and maps without having to travel to the state office. Already in the Lakewood office they have a program where the public room will email copies of any paperwork (loc certs, etc) to you for a small fee so you don't have to drive halfway across the country to get a copy, but not all offices do that yet.

Well they call themselves "claims adjudicators" when I talk to them or that's what they refer to them by when they transfer me to them, whatever their official title may be. Anyways, I'm just posting what I was told because it might have implications in a year or two, whatever they may be. They said they have been looking at the situation in Washington for a few years and they now have plans to take action to rectify it nationwide. When I prospect and map out the existing claims, probably close to 50% of the claims (especially lode) are filed erroneously or the location certificate is so rife with contradictions and errors that I can't physically locate the actual claim on the ground. So as it is, I talk to these claims adjudicators on a fairly regular basis in a number of different states. They are the ones who work at the BLM state headquarters and determine wether claims are valid or not, or if they need amendments or additional paperwork, or whatever else. Also they are the ones who you get directed to when you go into the state headquarters with existing claim specific questions, I've met a number of them in person. So whatever their official title is, that's what they call themselves.

Regarding claims update news in general, I was told by 2 different offices that they are currently working on some kind of new policy to deal with the profusion of paper stakers and internet snake oil sales like Gold Rush Expeditions (GRE), Department of Land Transfer, and all those ebay scam artists like them. I don't know what the solution is but I'm guessing it's going to be another maintenance fee increase or something along those lines. I was told in no uncertain terms that they (claims adjudicators) view those claims as garbage.

Are you involved in the testing taking place Oct/Nov, Steve? Or if not, any idea if they are giving it to some gold prospectors to test or if it's just coin/relic testing?

Dang, I didn't want to even think about buying another new detector after the GPZ. That selectable frequency elliptical up to 55khz though... I can't see really needing another VLF for my personal uses ever, awesome! I don't follow this closely, are the frequencies really individually selectable or all used simultaneously?

I don't know if this is still how things work for buying vehicles but it might be worth looking into both for new or used vehicles - in 2009 I got mine for $24,500 brand new with all the options I wanted, in the color I wanted by dealing only with the dealers who had online sales departments in a 5 state area, then I pitted each department against each other until they started dropping off 1 by 1 saying they couldn't go any lower, until finally I had the lowest offer. Did it all over the email at home and then finally by phone. It was conveniently in Prescott, AZ where I was wanting to go anyways, so it worked pretty well. The lowest price I could get from the Wyoming dealers at the time was $28,500 so it saved me $4,000. The online sales departments were always about $1000 cheaper than their real life counterparts at the very same dealer too even before I started haggling, not sure why. At the time it was kinda new doing the "internet only" sales for such a large purchase though and it seemed like the dealers were fighting for business, not sure if it's still like that or not?

Taco is definitely worth consideration if you can't find a Jeep. I've never had anything break (that I didn't break myself) after 110,000 miles of hard offroad, towing, and prospecting miles. It can tow ok too, I towed a 24ft camper for 5 years from WY to CO to NV to AZ, right at the 6500lb weight limit with my prospecting gear. It struggled going over mountain passes, but did the job. The rear suspension is a bit weak but the dealer upgraded it for free, still for big payloads airbags would be useful. 2.5" levelling kit and 10 ply BFGs are necessary upgrades but drop MPG to 17 highway. I got 7-9mpg towing the trailer! Good luck with whatever you get, they are all good prospecting rigs.

Haha yeah I mean it in a good way. Scrappy was the little dog in Scooby Doo who would just go directly fight whatever monster they encountered by himself instead of making excuses or running away like Scooby did.

Love seeing the innovation, but I think nugget hunters can count this one out for now. Unless you are hunting gold boulders. GPR resolution is pretty slim. The crux of the problem is that higher resolution requires higher frequencies - and higher frequencies experience greater attentuation in soils, which means less depth. You can throw more power at the problem but then you end up with a cart mounted solution because more power=more weight. So basically, if you want to hunt for landmine size nuggets then you may be in luck, but even an oz'er the size of my thumb would be pretty hard to recognize on any kind of affordable GPR. Or square nails, etc. Also, GPR requires careful gridding and slow movement, and a lot of them require post-processing on a computer at home too, I'm not sure how accurate this would be swung on the end of a stick with instant results. Still. Never ceases to amaze me that a scrappy little country like Australia so consistently outperforms the US in the detector innovation arena despite our much larger population, much (MUCH) larger military budget, and the best engineering/science schools in the world. Stay hungry fellas, "good on ya". The fat cat gets complacent and I'm glad someone is out there catching mice still while US businesses would rather search for the next Hoffman than the next Candy.

I'm not sure a discriminating unit with PI depth is the game changer it once was thought to be. It's been long enough and the "dig everything" mentality so deeply ingrained, that in many areas it probably won't make much difference now anyways. Yes, there are still some areas where this type of machine is exactly what is needed, but it's just down to specific spots now. Speaking just for myself, a discriminating ZVT/PI wouldn't entice me to go back to gold prospecting full time, at least not here in the US. I can think of other advances that would though. Again, just my opinion, but the goalposts have been moved due to the increase in people digging and the ever decreasing amount of nuggets out there. With each nugget pulled there is one less lead to follow making actual prospecting more difficult every day and that is the real problem, not trash. Trash is almost never even a consideration for me anymore during exploration, I'm digging virtually every target when I find a patch anyways, and even the popular goldfields today rarely contain enough trash for it to be a bother for those who spend time in those places. The game changer now is less microscope and more telescope and the first company to realize that wins the detector end game.

Yeah I read all through their website before I went out prospecting for jade, that's where I got the idea for core drilling from, it seems to be their chosen method for determining quality in the field now. My jade is not as vibrant and green as that big boulder, but it's close to some of the darker green stuff they have listed on their carving page. I have found some gemmy float like that though. Anyways, thanks for the advice. I have another question for you too but it's not about mining methods per say: If there existed a situation where a person can't get access across private land to federal land, (assume it's completely impossible to obtain permission for whatever reason), but that private land was surface rights only and the mineral rights under it were open for federal staking, what surface access rights do you suppose a person would gain by claiming those mineral rights under the private surface? The BLM gives varying opinions and I'm reading varying opinions online too. Could a person gain access to cross that private surface to the federal land locked up behind it? Or would their access rights be limited to actions incident only to their claims under that private surface? One step further (because I think I may predict one potential response?), let's assume a valid claim could be filed on those minerals without even stepping onto the private surface. Say for instance you could prove a historic vein extended from federal land and under that private surface land in question. Or assume you have old mineral surveys which delineate the strike and dip of the vein too. Could you at least walk onto the private surface to pound the stakes in the ground to make sure the claim was complete? Or would that be a trespass still? Which leads to another question: If a claimant does have access to private surface then how much surface disturbance can they do? And if they can make surface disturbance for mining activities, then do those activities need a NOI of POO since the surface is private? This was another point of contention I can't find any answer on. In other words, can you mine federal minerals without a NOI if the surface is private? Assume the land is vacant, zoned mining or ag, and has no other plans, covenants, or other instruments preventing mining. I realize of course the best way is just to negotiate leases for access and this is why landmen do this for oilfield access and whatnot. But in some cases it's impossible, I've run into it for varying reasons in a number of different states now. Just curious, I know you know a lot about these things and in this particular case I'm coming up with so many conflicting opinions and writing that I honestly don't know what to think. Maybe it just comes down to a state level issue? In fact standing in the BLM today I had the surface mgt guy telling me a-ok and then a rancher standing next to him getting a permit saying he was totally wrong.

Haha thank you for posting that AuWanderer. I don't think I've seen a reel that illustrates the point better than that one! Well, best of luck to anyone who does these. I try to shutup about them, but they just won't stop. 2 or 3 new ones a year. And also since at least 1 producer is browsing this thread...I hope they realize not all prospectors are brash, toothless bumpkins that grew up in ole Kentucky spitting chaw, eatin' possums and using rifles as walking sticks. Because most of the succesful guys I've met are actually intelligent and hard workers, and pretty normal people like you'd find in any job. These shows can happily find the exit door IMO.

Yep exactly. I applied to some of these too and discovered the same thing. Prospecting and mining are mostly irrelevant, they are just writing a story and what the characters do is less important than the characters themselves. Big character and big breasts are what they are looking for. There are only 7 stories ever written, and if I'm going to read a permutation of one of them then it's going to be written by Steinbeck not schlock trying to emulate the last 10 mildly successful shows that preceeded it. This here is why we end up with nothing but comic book movie crossovers for a decade straight in the theaters and why people like me haven't watched or owned a TV for years. There are real prospectors risking real money and real lives and they know how to find them if they want, they just don't want to.

Awesome, looking forward to the video, I want to see the monster eat dirt. How many yards per hour can it process? Does the engine power the blower, conveyor and the shaker or do you have like an electric motor for the blower somewhere? The ones I've seen running ran great but ended up with engine problems almost all of them due to filtering and dust. Over here the problem seems to be solved not by better filter design but instead by purchasing disposable Harbor Freight engines with an easy no-nonesense return policy.

It's just green, the camera probably added blues in to compensate for my black jeans or something, dunno. So basically what you are suggesting (so I can get it clear in my head) is to quarry the rock in place with diamond wire saws, remove it in blocks, then make 2 slices into the block with the diamond circular saw to remove the jade vein out? Essentially cutting the top and bottom buns off the hamburger and taking the patty so to speak? You don't happen to have a huge old diamond saw from those days like 40" you'd want to sell cheaply by any chance? Is the feather/pin/wedge method that thing where you drill holes across a boulder in a line and then drive wedges into each hole, then just tap tap tap on each wedge one at a time on down the line back and forth for like a day until it breaks in half? Always wanted to try that, maybe record a video of it in high speed for fun. Definitely too slow for what I have planned though. What about core drilling? All the float material has weathering rinds so they look like common rocks (you can see the reddish brown rind about 1/8" thick on my sample perimeter, it's almost 1/2" thick by my leg but hard to delineate in the pic). Even once you learn to recognize the rinds still like 95% of the float I find is just junk and taking it all home and paying to use someone else's saw is getting too expensive. And the hammer doesn't always break it (sometimes it breaks my hammer haha as you noted). For big boulders I need to core them before I try to move something big. Did you guys core your boulders or did they lack weathering rinds in California? Is there a good way to do it with no water (it's technically a desert here)? Do you just have to drill a lot deeper than you want so you have extra core and break the core out wherever it breaks out with a wedge? Does the wedge method work with a real small core like 1/2" even? Just trying to figure this out because a core drill is expensive (to me) so I can't afford to make a mistake here, but I think I almost need one to be more effective prospecting.

Ok haha a 3rd question too, but it's really the same just different area and rocks: With crystals in matrix, is there any way to remove them? Or do you just need to blast and go after the vugs? Here are some beryls (I think?) in situ I found in a pegmatite vein but I couldn't hammer them out to bring back to test.

Also a second question: when you are diamond core drilling, how do you remove the core if you don't drill all the way through the rock? Since it's still attached at the bottom. Someone told me to put a wedge in and break it off but it seems like if I drilled 6 inches in the wedge would just break the core off halfway at 3" or something...? Especially since I want to drill as small of a hole as possible (like 1/2" if it'll work) and can't get much of a wedge in there. Do you just drill a lot deeper than you want to sample to avoid this, or? I have to pack the water with me so I really need to minimize the core size and amount of drilling I do, that's why I'm wondering.

This isn't about gold and I know this is a gold oriented forum but there are a few geologists and miners with a lot of experience in many things so maybe someone can help... My question is, how exactly do you go about mining and seperating a material like vein jade without destroying it? Seems like with blasting you risk blasting the vein apart too. Even if I did blast and broke the diabase into manageable cobble sizes that I could remove and process, how would I remove the actual vein itself without destroying the jade? A little backstory, one of the minerals I'm prospecting for is jade and I've found some veins (nothing economic or gem quality yet) finally so I think I'm on track to finding something better and potentially worth mining. But it got me thinking - with ore mining you can just blast it apart since it's being crushed anyways. But with something like jade where the vein is in place in rock and you want to keep the gem material as intact as possible, what would be the best method for mining and extraction? I have finally located a few veins, they are low quality material not worth mining and far too slim anyways. But even if these veins were good material I'm not sure I see a good way to remove it. I tried chiseling with very little luck. The veins are in either basalt or diabase and the rock is very hard and durable and the jade doesn't want to seperate easily. Most jade mined or even just collected by hobbyists is float in alluvium it seems like, so I'm not finding much useful info online on how to approach this. I'm attaching a photo of a small vein I found as an example, it's only 1/2" wide and low quality olive jade so not worth mining, but this is still the same rock and material I'd need to mine and work. Also here is some gemmy good deep green material I just cut off a boulder I found. This is Wyoming nephrite, it was float but still had vein material attached so I think I'm getting close.

Something that truly doesn't exist? Well, I have an idea that doesn't require banging heads against a wall of patents, but a manufacturer can fairly pay me for it, no one gives me free detectors or profit sharing after all. EM fields decay quick - but they decay to infinity. So in the near field really all we have is a noise problem if we look at it that way, a problem which does have solutions. And then some things might not seem so impossible if you aren't a manufacturer who thinks 2 decades behind the times or in terms of a coil on a stick... I don't believe a discriminating PI(or ZVT) is the holy grail though, at least not for the prospector I don't view it as anything but an inevitable next step - maybe in the 2000's it was the impossible but times have changed both in what we have technologically available to work with and the states of the goldfields and it's only a game changer in some specific areas IMO. Especially since the goalposts are being pushed further and further away every year as the goldfields become more and more depleted. I say this because I hope the manufacturers are thinking bigger and not in terms of goals set a few decades ago, or I want to encourage them to do so if not.

What are you running your stabilizer at? Might stabilize it some more if you are in or near cities. EMI does change in some places by time of day. Some interference can come from far off and be more intense at closer to night, like why AM radio stations have to reduce their broadcast power at night because propagation increases due to interactions with the ionosphere. Noise of certain frequencies also increases propagation distance and so in some places you'll start hearing a lot more in the evening. Thanks for the test with the 14x9 and 8", good to know. A 14x9 hitting a .1 gram nugget at 3.5" in bad ground is pretty impressive really, even if it was outperformed by the 8", you can cover almost twice the ground..

Also, has anyone filed for a NOI to operate a suction dredge on their claim in Califonia and then been unable to follow through with their plan? That there seems like it'd be a pretty solid court case to me because no one can reasonably expect, or argue that a miner must be expected to move 1000 tons of gravel in an active rivercourse only by non-motorized means by any legal defintions that I know of - economically viable or not, it's just an unreasonable expectation. Especially if you state that the time period for your plan is 2 weeks of work or something along those lines. Also, it's not just removing the gravel, processing 1000 tons of gravel in a stream sluice is going to be near impossible without building something so big that it itself becomes an environmental impact.

The state is making the argument that the moratorium doesn't conflict with federal mining law because there are no stipulations in federal law that the claimaint's operation be economically viable. But this is wrong! The BLM can devalidate your claim if you don't pass the Marketability Test as defined by the Secretary of the Interior in 1933. Which seems to me that it makes Melnick's argument moot and prooves Rinehart has a valid complaint. If there is a state law preventing you from mining at a profit then the State themselves are preventing a claimant from meeting the Federal regulations and that should be enough to win the case. Shouldn't it? If there is dispute over the defintion of "profit" in that rule then the Prudent Man Rule, which we as claimants must also follow, can be used to define it: It's pretty hard for a prudent man to justify expenditure of labor and means, with any prospect of suceess with a freakin' pan and a shovel. Let alone "developing a valuable mine". I think a guy would have trouble maintaining minimum wage doing that, and no court will define that as "success" or "valuable". Why isn't this argument being made? If the federal regulations require claimants to meet these standards, then a state law that prevents us from meeting them is surely a violation. It also disproves Melnick's assertion that "economic viability is not important". Not only is it important to the miner, but it's REQUIRED by federal law. Barry (Clay)...? What do you think?