The only reason anyone is looking for gold at Rice Lake or Red Lake or any other gold camp presently being worked is because someone sometime found gold in quartz veins or other structures on the surface.

In Rice Lake one can feel confident in saying that the decision made to drill anywhere is somehow based on surface indications that were discovered between 1910 - and 2010. If there wasn't a surface indication not one of the many old trenches or shafts would ever had been made and started or mined including the main present day shaft.Nor would someone go out and wildcat a core hole based on nothing other than a good feeling. It all starts at the surface rather this century or last

Today you have the realization that there is higher grade gold deeper, however it is in or near the very same areas that the old guys looked at and dug out. Today San gold has more money and better technology enabling them to look deeper which has resulted in more gold being revealed.

There is an old saying "the best place to find a new mine is next to an old one" Gold Corp red lake is an excellent example of this. Thus desposit indication wise "the best place to find a new despoit is next to an old one".

It is my opinion that what we see on the surface can become much better deeper down, this is what happened at Red Lake and now appears to be happening at Rice Lake.

However similar results have not yet materalized from companies in other locations of the Rice Lake Belt.

This could be that they have properties of lessor value but I tend to think that they don not have the cash needed to drill holes to the depths required,

or they are testing on limited funds

or they got the location wrong

or there is nothing there anyway.

Just as any propsector or exploration company experiences and knows San gold drilled a lot of footage before they hit the big wad. A hell of a lot more footage than any of the other juniors in the belt can afford to finance.

I heard a while back that San Gold has over 240,000 meters of drilling and climbing. That in comparison to another company finacing and carrying out a 2000 meter drill program for example. Who has the better chance of hitting a good lode?

In gold camps it is often the best efforts that produce.