Gold in Manitoba – Where to find it

The easiest way to find Gold in Manitoba is to visit a mine. But chances are that the owners will not want you poking around on their claims and they will most certainly not allow you to take away any gold – that is unless they let you buy it! None the less there is gold at the mines in Bissett, Lynn Lake, Herb Lake, Snow Lake, and in the discoveries near Red Sucker, Beresford and Island Lakes and at other locations. Gold that has been found by prospecting, plenty of work and in most cases has cost considerable sums of money to explore in detail and develop.

Although you cannot take gold from a known claim or mine, you can still learn something about how to find some of your own by studying how others have found gold and using what you have learned when you go prospecting.

If you are determined to prospect for gold, then the best place to start is by reading. There are publicly available Mineral Occurrence Files, geological and geochemistry information, past mineral claim work assessment files, company press releases, publicly available files on geophysical surveys and a host of other data available that you can become familiar with to use in guiding your activities. You also need to obtain a prospecting license, without it no claims for you.

Finding a minable gold deposit is not easy, while there is good information to help guide you, there are no sign posts that say dig here! Your success is going to be measured by your work effort and by your savvy, no work no zeal no gold.

In the most productive Gold areas of the province you will have to go out in the bush and stake a claim on ground not already claimed, and you do so by physically erecting marker posts and making a boundary through the bush, across bogs and swamp and over rock outcrops. That’s how you get a mineral claim in those areas. Important: Do not try and stake one where there is already a claim, that don’t work and no one is going to allow you to stake ground they have in good standing, thus before you start staking do your homework and find out if the area is already claimed or not.

Once you have a registered claim you have to do work on it and start looking for gold or other minerals. Just because you have a mineral claim does not mean you are rich nor those it mean your claim is good for anything other than a pasture for moose. You need to go out there, use your knowledge or that of someone experienced that you hire, and prospect the claim. Look for something good and perhaps find it.

Most, if not all Gold recovered in Manitoba, is not of the variety that you can obtain from panning in a stream. In Manitoba you are in hard rock country, meaning anything mined to date on a significant scale was found in rock and not as nuggets, dust or flour gold mixed into stream or bench sands. Gold in the province is typically of a lode type found in veins or as by-product in base metal deposits.

Your best chances of finding Gold anywhere is being able to obtain a claim next to a past mine or a recent gold discovery. Obtaining a claim in such an area is no easy task, because normally the surrounding land is well staked and claimed by others.

You could if your funds permit and after careful study and advice, explore for gold where no one else is working. This you can do as a hobby and providing you know your geology, you can prospect without staking a claim until you find something of value. After testing then stake a claim.

Prospecting means among other things, taking samples and having the same assayed to determine if the rock holds anything of value. Plain old rocks to a prospector are a pain in the behind; rocks that have demonstrated content of some mineral are an entirely different matter. The prospector loves ore grade (good mineral content) in his/her rocks, however most rocks do not favor the prospector. Finding good gold showings is not a common occurrence.

Yet it has been and is still being done. Chance favors the prepared mind and hard work can pay off. Remember if it was easy everyone would be doing it and gold could be worth a lot less.

Happy prospecting!

Manitoba gold properties available for sale or option. Located in the Rice Lake Gold Belt!