By Dave McCracken

If you are going to get involved with a gold mining program, it would be wise to plan on the effect that gold will have on yourself & others!

I once knew a very knowledgeable guy who had spent a considerable amount of time studying the characteristics of gold. One of his conclusions was that each different kind of matter (the basic elements) emits a different vibration or wavelength; and that the vibration given off by gold is a wavelength of beauty in the aesthetic band. That gold is a very pure and beautiful substance is not in question!

But wait a minute: Beauty and value are perceptions or feelings that are experienced internally by human beings, not by the material substance. A person feels that gold is rich and beautiful when he or she looks at it closely and/or comes into intimate contact with it. So we are discussing here the way people commonly feel when they have some experience with gold – or sometimes just the concept of gold. In my own (quite extensive) experience, these common reactions are: (1) admiration (can be to the extreme or worship) of the pure, aesthetic quality and richness of the substance; and, (2) the desire to have some (or all of it) for yourself; and, (3) feelings of euphoria when you actually acquire some of your own gold, especially when you have made the initial discovery in some hidden place; and, (4) the fear or worry that someone might try and take your coveted prize away from you, or that you will not receive all of what is rightfully yours; and, (5) the impulse to take necessary steps to protect your interest from others.

Please understand that I am not saying that any of this is wrong. I am just saying that these are the normal sequence of emotional reactions that play themselves out when human beings search for and discover high-grade gold deposits. Add high-grade gold into the never-ending challenge of just normal human relations, and you are potentially in for a lot of drama, unless the various relationships are structured thoughtfully and managed carefully.

Gold is a very rich and alluring substance to deal with. No-matter how much gold a person has, there never does seem to be quite enough of it to completely fulfill one’s desire for more. Very much like an addictive drug, the more gold that you have, the more you realize that it is not nearly enough to fully satisfy your desires.

Perhaps gold does not affect everyone like this. But it certainly strikes most gold prospectors this way! To those prospectors out here who would disagree with this, my answer is that you just haven’t found enough gold yet to get your juices going!

Over the years, I have heard quite a few beginning gold prospectors declare that they are immune to all of this gold fever nonsense, saying they are just into gold prospecting for the money and economic reasons. Some say they are into it just for the fun and adventure – or for something interesting to do. But I say that you really cannot be certain of your immunity or how you will react until you uncover a rich gold deposit of your own. Usually, it is the nonbelievers who lose themselves the worst once substantial amounts of raw gold come into play in a gold mining project. My own conclusion is that nobody is immune. It is just a matter of how much gold that it takes to draw you out. Usually it does not take very much!

But even if you are one of the few people on this planet who are entirely free of the emotional impact from large quantities of raw, gold (very doubtful, or you probably would not be reading this article), if you are going to get involved with a gold mining program, it would be wise to plan on the effect that gold will certainly have upon others!

Let me first start by explaining that I am not a licensed attorney, so I am not able to give out legal advice. But I am an experienced prospector and miner, and I have had the opportunity to become involved, or stand on the sidelines and watch, many, many prospecting and mining ventures make a go at it. The views expressed in this chapter are not meant to give you legal advice. You should seek out a licensed attorney for that. My purpose here is to point out some of the different situations and relationships that you may encounter by circumstance as you move forward in a gold prospecting program of your own. How you ultimately deal with the different situations is your own business. My views provided here are expressed only to give you a look in advance at the types of relationships that are commonly involved with gold prospecting.

It is very important to be careful about who you partner up with when dealing with any amount of raw gold, especially when you are planning a venture with the intention of recovering large amounts of gold.

When negotiating the various dealings which you will have with partners and/or the owners of mining property, it is very important to be extra careful to make deals which all parties are agreeable to, and which all parties will be able to stick to. Agreements should be made very clear, in writing if possible, and always before the first high-grade gold deposit is located! Ultimately, the structure of an agreement should be put into place and finalized as the next step beyond discussion of the idea between the partners – before you begin organizing or capitalizing the project.

The process of putting agreements in writing forces the persons involved to address and agree upon important details that otherwise can be just brushed over in verbal discussions. A written agreement should reflect the complete final structure of the business relationship between the people involved, leaving earlier ideas or solutions behind, creating a record of all the final details. A written agreement allows anyone or everyone involved to go back for a reminder whenever it is necessary. Everyone directly involved should sign and receive a copy of the final agreement.

It becomes more important to have a written agreement to fall back upon once a high-grade gold deposit is being developed. Because that is usually when details become more important than they were before you found high-grade.

“Lets not worry about how we’re going to split up the gold; we’ll figure that out if and when we find any…” This might work alright on other things, but with gold it is very poor organization. Arrangements like this can very easily end up in dispute once high-grade has been discovered. Believe me: No one is looking at the world quite in the same way after a rich gold deposit is added to the picture!

Additionally, any agreements that you make in a gold mining venture should be tailored to suit the valuable amounts of gold that you are going after. The reason for this is that if you make a deal which seems to be fair with everyone based upon developing a marginal pay-streak, and you then discover a very rich pay-streak that is producing commercial volumes of gold everyday, the deal may no longer be fair to everyone involved. But to try and revisit the inequity with your partners and to get everyone’s agreement on a new deal is almost impossible once large quantities of gold have been brought into play.

I learned this the hard way with an experience of my own. I had been dredging in an area for quite some time and had really put out a lot of time and energy to get familiar with it. Through dredging many sample holes, I was steadily working my way closer to a very large and high-grade pay-streak. But I did not know it at the time, because I had not found it yet. Man, I had gone through some real lean times prior to that! It was winter dredging with storm flows. This meant dredging in ice cold water that was also moving very fast. I was also trying to learn how to dredge at the time and trying to figure out how to find pay-streaks – all at the same time, while living in a tent out on my mining claim. And I was just starting to get pretty good at sampling. But I didn’t know that either. That is when an old friend of mine asked to come out and dredge with me for a few weeks. Well, he was a good friend, and his company sounded pretty good, so I encouraged him to come.

We worked out a 48/42% deal, with the larger share going to me. This seemed about right; because at the time my friend arrived, I was not finding paying quantities of gold, and it seemed like he ought to have a fair-sized split of the smaller amounts of gold that we found together. We agreed that I should receive a larger share, because it was my operation and he was just visiting.

We hit that rich pay-streak on the first sample hole of the first day that he arrived! It was not the first pay-streak that I had been into, but it certainly was by far the largest and best-paying – even after our split.

But the thing about it is that I was planning to put that sample hole there as my next project anyway. I had been working right into that pay-streak for months in my data collecting, hard work and sampling activities (that pay-streak and half-dozen others for that matter, which I did not know then, either). Man, were we into the gold; it was incredible!

I had invested the better part of a year of work into learning how to dredge and find that first big deposit. That was the gold which should have paid me off for all the hard times I had stuck through up until that point. Because of the deal I made with my friend, I ended up giving almost half of the gold to someone who took no part in the hard work of finding it. Sure, he helped clean it up. But cleaning up a rich pay-streak is the fun and easy part. The amount of time and energy it takes to get familiar with an area and learn how to find pay-streaks is worth a lot more. But this is something that my buddy would never have been able to fully appreciate, because he never had to go through it. To him it was just good fortune. For me to have tried to explain differently would have caused hard feelings. He would have figured that I was just trying to squeeze out of the agreement we made together. A deal is a deal. So he received his full split from the entire pay-streak and went away very happy. Me? I learned this lesson well: Make your partnership deals based upon the high-grade amounts of gold that you are going after and the fair exchange that should go to each person when that much gold is being recovered!

I personally try to avoid forming full partnerships where the others involved receive some portion of the net profits – meaning the money that is left over after all expenses are paid. There are several reasons for this: (1) Putting yourself in a situation whereby you have to account for and gain the approval of others for every financial expenditure can really slow things down. This situation also creates the potential for internal disagreement and conflict, as even the simplest of things can get micro-managed by a committee. (2) I do not like to sell my share of the gold unless I have to. We have gotten around this in full partnerships by splitting off some portion of the gold recovery amongst the partners and only selling the amount of gold needed to pay expenses.

If you are going to do a full partnership arrangement whereby you will find yourself having to account (to others) for every expense you make, I suggest you keep the number of people you must account to as small as possible. The more opinions, the more potential conflict.

It is easier if you create limited partnerships whereby you just pay a fixed percentage of the gross recovery to those who are participating. This way can be a bit more risky, because fixed royalties do not allow you to pay your expenses first. But at least you will not have to devote a bunch of your creative energies accounting for and justifying to others about every move you make.

You will have to make your own choices about how to structure your deals with partners. My advice? Keep it as simple as possible!

It is not unusual for a commercial miner (on a small-scale), who already has all the gear, a place to mine and all the capital needed to keep the operation going; but he still needs a helper to dredge or mine with him. Very seldom do dredge helpers or small-scale miners get paid a wage or salary. They are almost always brought in for some percentage of the recovery. While deals vary, it is most common to see this kind of limited partnership come together whereby the helper(s) (junior partner(s)) receives 25 or 30% of the gross gold recovered – right off the top. That, by the way, is a big piece of the pie, considering that the mining property and mining gear should each be allocated 10% of the gross. This only leaves around 50% of the gross for the senior partner to pay operating expenses and repairs – and have something remaining for his own time and effort. Unless the operation is recovering a good deposit, sometimes the junior partner might be the only one making any money on this kind of deal. Still, you have to offer the junior partner enough of a cut to make him interested, or you will find yourself operating a commercial mining program all by yourself! One note on this: In the case where you would take on more than a single helper, it would be necessary to work out an additional agreement how they are going to split the 25 or 30% of the gross recovery.

Sometimes it works out better to set up a split on sliding scale, whereby the percentage that goes to a junior partner is higher when the amount of gold being recovered is less. This allows the junior partner to get an immediate return for his labor that is large enough to keep him interested. Then, when higher-grade pay-dirt is uncovered, the helper’s percentage gets scaled back. Not so much that he does not benefit from the additional good fortune. But enough to allow the senior partner (who invested all the time, work & money and took most of the risk) to be rewarded for his larger investment into the program. By the way, this kind of arrangement should always be worked out in advance of finding the higher-grade pay-dirt!

It is easier, by the way, to make a generalized deal that you are not particularly happy about, or in which all the details are not fully worked out, before you get into the gold. This is actually quite common. A few friends get together to go out and have a little adventure. They are not comfortable about discussing the gritty details of a business deal together, because they do not want to make anyone else mad at them. This is easy to do if you are not sure that you are going to find gold in paying amounts, anyway.

Then, after the gold is discovered, you really wish that you spent more time doing it right in the first place! I have seen this happen time and time again. It is so easy to talk glibly with your partners about how you will not have any trouble dealing with the gold, when “the gold” is still an abstract concept that you are doubtful will ever become a reality.

It is a whole different world when you are pulling pounds and pounds of beautiful, raw gold out of the river. You feel entitled to so much because of your contribution; your partners feel the same way because of their investments; and it all adds up to more than 100% of the gold! This is when the trouble really starts within the partnership. But it also is the time when the partnership should be turning up the production!

You can lose good friends over the smallest of disagreements when it comes to gold. I have watched it happen time and time again. It is better to work it all out right at the beginning; or if you cannot agree on the terms, just don’t do the project together.

For that matter, when dealing with substantial amounts of gold, it is tough enough to prevent dissension within a group even when the best and most carefully-structured deals are made with the most ethical of partners! This is just the way it is with gold! If you do not believe me, it is just because you have not found a rich enough gold deposit, yet.

A number of things need to be discussed when structuring how two or more people will come together in a mining venture: What part will each person play in the partnership? Who is going to be the project manager? How will you acquire the equipment needed for the operation? Where is the money going to come from to pay operating expenses and repairs? Who is going to handle the money? Exactly how and when is the gold going to be split up once you get into it? How are the nuggets going to be split up? Who, if anyone else, is going to be allowed to help develop any high-grade that is found? Who, if anyone else, is even going to be allowed to know about the pay-streak before it is cleaned up? How much time is going to be put into production? How much gold will be sold to handle expenses and repairs? Where the gold is to be stored before it is split up? How long will the partnership last?

Sometimes agreements need to be modified to cope with unanticipated circumstances or some other situation that requires an adjustment. There is nothing wrong with modifying an agreement as long as everyone involved goes along with it. When this happens, the written agreement should also be modified as soon as possible, with everyone signing the modified version. It is good administration of business to make sure the written agreement continues to accurately reflect the existing arrangement between the partners.

 

 

By Dave McCracken

It’s much better to make your deal to work someone else’s mining property before you locate high-grade gold there!

Dave Mack

Dealings with the owners of mining property should be accomplished in detail before a gold prospector or miner begins sampling around on those particular mining properties. This is for the gold prospector’s protection. I have seen it happen quite a few times where a prospector makes a generalized verbal agreement with a claim owner, whereby the prospector is given permission to prospect around on the property with the idea that they will make a “fair deal” if anything valuable is discovered. An arrangement like this might feel more comfortable than hammering out the details of a structured deal before gold is found. But things always look entirely different to everyone involved once a good pay-streak is located on the property!

Before a pay-streak is found, the mining claim does not necessarily carry any great amount of value to the bargaining table, because no one knows for sure if there is even any acceptable pay-dirt on the property. This is the best bargaining position for the gold miner! Under these conditions, a ten percent deal is very standard within the industry. That is 90% to the person doing the mining. What I mean by this is that a royalty of 10% of the gross (total) gold recovery will be directed to the owner of the property that is being mined.

Once a rich pay-streak is found, if a specific percentage deal has not already been established between the miner and property owner, the mining property suddenly becomes very valuable; and the mining claim owner is in a position to be asking for just about any percentage that he or she chooses. His position will now be that a treasure has been located on his claim, and all that is needed is for someone to come in and develop the deposit. And, of course, he is right!

I have seen it happen that a general deal was made between the gold prospector and a property owner “to be worked out in detail if pay-dirt is found.” Once the prospectors located the pay-streak, the claim owner believed he was entitled to 50% of the gross gold recovery. “After all, it is rich pay-dirt on my claim, and all you have to do is dredge it up: 50%–take it or leave it!” A property owner has the upper legal hand unless you make some kind of firm agreement that allows you the right to develop the gold deposit(s) which you discover on his property. So it is not a good idea to strengthen a property owner’s bargaining position by finding a pay-streak on his property before you finalize a percentage deal. Some final arrangement should be made before sampling is started, with the value of the mining property taken at face value at that time.

Just like in partnership deals, the arrangement with a property owner should be thoroughly discussed: Is the royalty going to be ten percent of recovered gold weight? Or, is it going to be ten percent of the complete range of nuggets, flakes, and fines? Is the split to be done on a daily basis? A weekly basis? Monthly? At the end of the season? Does the owner want to see the gold split up? How many dredges or sluices can you use on the property? Does the agreement allow you an exclusive right? Or might you find yourself competing with other gold miners on the same property? These are the types of things that need to be agreed upon during the very early stages.

The time frame is another thing that should always be discussed with a property owner. You should be comfortable that the property owner is not going to suddenly decide that your time is up on the claim, until after you have had a reasonable opportunity to mine out the high-grade deposit(s) that you have discovered there.

One of the richest gold deposits I located in my early years was turned over to one of my competitors by the claim owner, because my competitor made an offer to give the owner 20% of the gold recovery (from a deposit that I discovered). My deal with the claim owner was 10%, because no underwater deposits had ever been located there before my arrival. But because there was no discussion about my exclusive rights to what I discovered, or how long I could mine on the claim, when my competitor offered the owner a higher percentage, I was told I had to stop mining immediately and move on. That was real disappointing!

If you are not receiving an exclusive right to prospect and mine on the property, it is very important to work out an arrangement that at least allows you an exclusive right to develop any pay-streak that you are able to locate on the claim. Build some protection into the deal so you can be sure that a competitor is not going to be allowed to move in on your pay-streaks; or in the case of dredging, that no one else is to be allowed to move onto the claim up in front of you and cloud you out with their tailings.

Competitors come crawling out of the woodwork, once a rich gold deposit has been exposed. Expect that people are around who will try to figure out how to get some part of it, and they will be in there trying their hardest. The main idea behind structuring good agreements in advance is to minimize the amount of conflict and confusion which nearly always results when high-grade is brought into the picture. Well-structured deals with your partners and the property owner will usually allow you to get directly to the business of recovering gold.

It is not always necessary or possible to get agreements in writing with property owners. Some people simply do not like to commit themselves to anything in writing, and you cannot push it without causing the person to tell you to just get lost. This does not necessarily mean that these people are lacking in integrity. There are some people around who may consider that there is probably something wrong with your character if a hand shake is not good enough to seal a deal. You will have to find your own way through all this as you go along. However, the more you put at stake on a single mining property, the more important it is to have a written agreement that covers the main concerns.

These are the rules of the game that you will be playing. So it is wise to discuss them long enough, and thoroughly enough, to insure that everyone directly involved understands the essential details and are in full agreement with them.

PERCENTAGE DEALS

In small-scale mining such as hand-sluicing and suction dredging, for the most part, at least in most of the places where I have operated for the past 30 years, the property owner usually receives ten percent of what a dredging operation recovers off of his property. I am talking about 10% off the top of the gross recovery.

I believe that it is excessive to pay more than 10% to a property owner, if I have to locate the pay-dirt myself. If the property owner can tell me right where the high-grade has already been located, and it is just a matter of my going in there and developing an established gold deposit, maybe a higher percentage might be justified, depending upon how rich the location is. Seeing is believing!

This mostly comes back to basic economics. You are paying for the mining and support equipment in the first place. You are going to pay the operating expenses, the repairs on your gear, and the living expenses for yourself and your crew. You are doing all the hard work. You are taking nearly all the risk. This is all on the possibility that there might not even be any high-grade on the property in the first place. Twenty percent is too much of a demand by a property owner under these conditions. But some will ask or insist. So I just walk away. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of proven mining property available to you these days!

One thing to keep strongly in mind while negotiating a mining property deal, is that the bigger piece of the pie you agree to pay the property owner, the less percentage of the pie that you will end up with as your own reward after all the other expenses are paid. This means that the more you agree to pay, the richer the gold deposit has to be in order for you to make anything for your effort. While giving away a higher percentage might not seem very important before you sample an area, just remember that there is a lot of pay-dirt around that will meet your minimum requirements on a 10% deal, which might not meet those very same requirements if you must pay 20% to the property owner.

Please keep this in mind: We are talking about giving away a portion of the gross (total) gold recovery. You will still have to pay yourself back for your investment in the mining gear, set up of the operation, repairs, operation expenses, and then split what is left over with the other guys who are helping you on the mining operation. Or perhaps they are also receiving a portion of the total gold for their participation. In a marginal pay-streak, the only person who might be making anything from all your hard work is the property owner! Or, after everything settles out, you might discover that everybody involved is making something, except you! So it can undermine the entire viability of your project if you agree to give away some higher percentage of your gross gold recovery to the property owner or anyone else. When someone asks for an additional 5% or 10% of your gross recovery, the number does not sound like very much. But in the end, that person could be making more gold from your mining operation than you are!

Some years ago, a person hired me to help him set up a production dredging operation in Cambodia. The guy was very excited about his prospects for success, based upon some very positive results that I obtained in a different area of the same country. But in order to gain all of the necessary permits and licenses over there in a hurry, he ultimately agreed to give away 90% of his gross gold and gemstone recovery to various officials in the country! And he had not even sampled for a deposit yet!

I did not find out about this until I arrived over there and got into a discussion with him about what percentage of gold he was planning to give the guys who would operate the equipment. He was asking me to help him arrange an experienced dredging team from the west. His idea of a partnership arrangement was to allow the crew to split 2% of the gross recovery. Here is an example of someone who liberally gave away the whole pie! Nice guy! Because he had already made his deal with the officials, they were unapproachable on the subject of a renegotiation. Since he could never get help from an experienced crew in exchange for such a low portion of the recovery, the operation never even got started. But the guy did end up losing all his gear and his full life’s savings trying to set it all up. Moral of the story? The more of the pie (especially the gross recovery-pie) that you give away to others, the less chance your operation will succeed, and the less chance the other pie-holders will get much out of it, either.

For a claim owner to ask, without a good and visible reason, for some unusually high percentage of the total gold recovery, he is inviting the dredgers to set their personal integrity aside and steal from him, and he most likely will end up receiving less than what would be reasonable. I have talked with a lot of miners over the years, and have found that for the most part, unreasonable property owners usually get treated unreasonably!

KEEPING QUIET

One good way to get yourself into all kinds of trouble, is to start yelling and screaming out your excitement for the whole world to hear when you have just made some kind of gold discovery. This is just as true even it is just a little find – or even if you are just goofing off! Those people who hear you and your excitement imagine gold finds and bonanzas probably far better than what you are actually into. That includes the property owner. If you make big noise about a small find, word is likely to get around, and the property owner might start wondering if he is being cheated!

On the other hand, if you find something nice and contain your excitement, it will be a pleasant surprise to the claim owner when you pay your royalty and he gets more than he or she expected. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying to withhold information from the property owner. I am advising you to not allow your own excitement and enthusiasm to create false perceptions which can thereafter get you into trouble.

When a person suddenly starts to do really good at something, there might someone else around who wants to make some trouble. This can be especially true when you start turning up high-grade gold deposits! It is better to not advertise for trouble!

When you are into a high-grade pay-streak, as difficult as it may be to do, it is good policy to keep pretty quiet about it until after you have finished cleaning it up. Then you can make all the noise you want to, as long as what you are saying is true. But while you are into it, if you do not tell anyone who doesn’t really need to know, you are less likely to become distracted by others who would like to get in on a piece of your action.

One other note on this: Since pay-streaks usually form in groups, where you find one, it is likely there are one or two more in the immediate vicinity. Perhaps the others are even richer! So there is something to be said about keeping things on the quiet side until some later time when there is not so much at stake.

BUYING MINING CLAIMS

Mining claims sell for just about any amount, depending upon how much value is being attached to them. Notice I didn’t say: “How much value they really contain!” Mining claims can sell for $200, or they can sell for a million dollars!

The best way to determine the actual value that a mining claim holds for you, is to thoroughly sample it. If you are thinking about buying a mining claim that you intend to dredge, it is not good enough to take samples up on the banks with a gold pan. It really takes going out there with your equipment and dredging sample holes to obtain an accurate idea of how valuable the claim is going to be to you as a gold dredger. It also is not good enough to dredge just one or two sample holes and stop there if you find pay-dirt. If you are going to pay a lot of money for the claim, it is wise to dredge more holes to see how long and wide the pay-streak actually is. Sometimes you can choose just the right spot to dredge (or the seller tells you where to dredge) a sample hole and put down in beautiful pay-dirt, only to find out later that it was a single deposit, or a very small pay-streak! This can be very misleading. I have seen it happen a few times!

If a claim owner is asking a lot of money for a mining claim, based upon his assurances that it is “very rich,” then he should have no objections to you doing some testing to see for yourself. It would be unreasonable for a seller to expect you to rely entirely upon his assurances. By the way, under the circumstances where someone is telling you how much gold they dug or dredged from the property, ask immediately to see the pictures! What, they got all that gold and didn’t bother to take any pictures? Seems unlikely to me! If there are pictures, match up the background to make sure it is the same property?

Watch out for the seller who plays it up real big and tries to get you so excited about all the gold you are going to recover, that you do not feel the need to do any testing! “Oh man, this claim is so hot that it kills me to sell it—but I’m too old to work it and I need the money …” This is where the con-man is going to try and get you.

When dealing with mining claims, if it is worth a lot of money, then it is definitely worth a lot of sampling first!

Another way that you can get stung on a mining claim deal, is by buying one from someone who does not really own it, or by paying royalties to someone who has given you permission to mine on the claim, but who does not really own it.

With some research, you can locate any active mining claim in the County Recorder’s Office and the Bureau of Land Management records, and find out who really owns it and make sure the yearly paperwork has been kept up. At the same time, you can research to see if anyone else has filed a mining claim over the very same location. If two or more people have filed mining claims over the same ground, future conflicts are likely, so it may be wise to look for another mining claim.

Perhaps it is not necessary when you first make a percentage deal over a claim with a person who apparently owns it. But if you get into large amounts of gold, it could be worth the little time it takes to verify who the actual owner is.

Or, rather than buy a mining property, perhaps the better idea is to join up with a prospecting organization that freely makes mining property available to its members. You can turn up a large number of such organizations simply by doing some word searches on the Internet. Just as an example, our organization makes 60+ miles of gold-bearing property available to our members at the cost of just a small fraction of what a single mining claim would cost to buy in the very same area.

 

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