Hunter Mineral Exploration

Gold, diamonds and fishing, what do they have incommon? Lets start with trout fishing and dams. During the 1930’s we built a lot ofdams across this country.  Now dams are great, we get power from them, they controlerosion, etc., however we have no more spring floods.  This causes the silt tocompact and forms a very thick crust over the gravel beds where the trout used to spawn.Trout clean their beds with their tail and there is no way that they can break through thesilt crust. You can hardly get through it with a modern suction dredge. It can be done andthese people know how to do it.  www.jetlink.net/~keene/13.html#2

Recreational mining by individual prospectors using suction dredges willrejuvenate this natural fish habitat. All a suction dredge does is lift up the gravel andseparate any gold and diamonds, and puts the gravel right back. It is most unfortunatethat Michigan has no laws regulating recreational mining. This closes the doors to a wholeindustry that could be beneficial both to the recreational users and my fellow troutfishermen.

However, this same equipment will dredge out fishponds and in Michiganyou are only required to get the townships permission to dig a pond less than five acresin size. Our area is primarily a marine deposit that is saturated with small kettles orsinkholes as they are called around here. Large blocks of ice melting caused these, andthat gold will lay right at the bottom, on the sandstone that is our bedrock here.Remember the first rule of gold prospecting, never stop digging until you are on bedrock,and we have modern equipment that can go thirty feet.

As a young man, I remember the old timers whobrought ginseng to Dad, they were a mysterious group. Many times they would sit and talk,this one fellow in particular used to carry a little glass bottle of gold with him. Hewouldn't tell me where he was taking it, other than on the Raisin River in southernMichigan. It kind of fascinated me. This led to a summertime pursuit of recreationalmining. In our area of Michigan, we've got gold. This is where the glacial fault from thelast ice age melted. There is a dome under Michigan, the minerals moved to the inside ofthe dome. The dome ends between Jackson and Lansing and the glacier curved around it alittle bit, then it melted. This soil in our area is some of the most highly prizedginseng soil in the world because of this. We have gold in the Kalamazoo River by Concord.

For years the ginseng coming out of the Carolinas has been the highestprized ginseng in the world. That is gold bearing territory down there.

Reported Gold Occurrencesin Michigan

Following are excerpts from "Gold in Michigan" by R. C. Allen(1911):

Reported gold occurrence in Michigan

Upper Peninsula; Iron River in Ontmagon County. Area streams aroundIshpeming, especially near old mines. Streams in and around the Huron Mountains inMarquette County.

Lower Peninsula; Allegan, Allegan County. Antrim Creek, Antrim County(nuggets). Boyne River, Charlevoix County. Little Traverse, Emmet County. Walton, RapidRiver and Kalkaska, Kalkaska County. Near Lake, Leelanau County. Greenville and HowardCity, Montcalm County. Little Sable River, Manistee County. Manistee River, Manistee andWexford Counties. Muskegon River, Newaygo County. White River near Whitehall and MuskegonRiver, Muskegon County. White River, Oceana County. Birmingham, Oakland County. Mareellus,Cass County.

The renewed interest in prospecting combined with modern equipment andtechniques, we believe will uncover gold in many previously untouched locations, and thatwell-known locations still hold significant amounts of recoverable gold.

In the lower peninsula of Michigan, the geology of the region has atremendous bearing on the value of the ginseng, especially when you get into the Asianmarket. If you can show the Chinese just one little flake of gold out of your region, itmakes their mouth water.

The soil that we are growing on went over one big gold deposit inOntario. About one hundred miles north of Lake Superior, is the largest working gold minein the North American hemisphere. If you come straight down from that, you pick up thegold deposits in the upper peninsula. If you follow that flow, you can figure where theglacier went. Follow a map right on down the west side of Michigan. It came on down andmade a bend around Jackson, which is one of the reasons this is my home base.

Study your geology. Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin also haveglacial deposits. Only Michigan and Indiana have significant amounts of goldmineralization, and then only in certain areas. There is no soil to equal southernMichigan's. Without a doubt Michigan will produce the finest ginseng in the world, justlike it always did.