|
I'm sure Kevin will answer much smarter than I, but having staked a few claims myself, here is m advice. It's best to stake at least one claim to make sure you know the process for when you have a well paying area that you need to get it right to get the minerals without someone taking it from under you when you could have made money. As far as the financial portion, whenever you feel like its worth it for the $350 or so per 40 acres to file the claim with the county and BLM, and then the $50 to $100 a year to cover the yearly small miners waiver, unless you choose the to pay the BLM full fees each year.
Staking a claim is kind of like on art. You file with the county and also the BLM, but if you get it wrong, they responsibility to tell you or void it. What can go wrong is filing the wrong form, filing with the wrong county, filing over something else. All of those are common errors that are made that the county and BLM will take your money, but owe you no refund if you filed wrong. I certainly screwed up the first claim I ever filed. You also need to be sure its on appropriate land to file with the BLM, ie, BLM land with the BLM, not state trust land with the BLM. State agencies have a different process. Nearly impossible to file a claim in AZ on state trust land, but hear in AK its much easier to file an state land.
Also, how long you think it'll take you to develop the claim would lay into it. A lot of the creeks I go down are small and isolated and short, so if its something I'd work in a weekend, no need to file a claim on that. I'd be done with it before someone else gets there. If its gravel a couple of feet thick for several hundred feet long ad a few feet wide, that is something that would be claimed.
We like to watch shows like gold rush for things like "10 specs per pan," but I really thing would be best to work an area when prospecting for a few hours to see how much you can pull out. For example, I took a sample on a creek that looked really promising, but after working that stretch of creek for a day, digging waist deep in gravel, came out to be about $2 worth of gold per ton of material moved. Definitely not worth claiming.
With the way I mine with a dry washer, I'd need about $40 per ton to break even. That is about a gram per ton. That is digging 36 five gallon buckets of dirt, running it through the dry washer to get a gram of gold, which will basically cover the bottom of my vial. That would not pay my bills, but let me pay for diesel to drive my truck out and then gas for the drywasher.
|