Shawn Ryan Parlayed a Mushroom Business Into a Gold Prospecting Bonanza
Shawn Ryan turned mushroom hunting into gold. In Canada’s Yukon Territory, the scene of a famous Gold Rush more than a hundred years ago, Bob Simon finds a man whose technique for finding mushrooms inspired him to create a method to find gold, making him one of the Yukon’s biggest gold prospectors. Ryan’s story will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Oct. 19 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Ryan has made millions as a mountain prospector while others, like their 1896 predecessors, look mainly in the rivers. Ryan looks for gold on Yukon slopes by taking soil samples and analyzing them to produce data he can use to find the likeliest places for gold. That process grew out of an analytical and very successful way he used to search the mountains for morels, mushrooms that high-end restaurants will pay dearly for.
“I actually give a lot of credit to my gold discoveries based on the mushroom picking,” he tells Simon. “Because I was able to understand, scientifically, the parameters of why these mushrooms grow up here.” Ryan figured out how to use computer graphics and sometimes a drone camera to map his gold claims and identify tens of thousands of potential sites. The technology helps him overcome extremely long odds of finding gold, as low as “one in 10,000,” he says of the sites he maps. “The norm is to fail…this is what you’re dealing with.”
Ryan doesn’t mine the gold. He makes his money by selling his claims to mining outfits that will pay him fees based on a percentage of the gold mined. Rough terrain, bad weather and the occasional bear make his field trips challenging and dangerous. He brings dogs and bear spray when they venture onto the slopes, and on this trip with the 60 Minutes crew, they needed them. Watch an excerpt.
He’s a millionaire, but Ryan lives modestly. He still remembers the crude shack without electricity he lived in when he picked morels, something he still does with his family for fun. And he continues to prospect, despite having the kind of money many who had subsisted off the land would happily retire on. But the “mother lode,” the gold ore deposit he believes is the source for all the gold in the rivers up there, remains his elusive prize. “Nobody’s ever found that… that’s what keeps me going.”
For the original source of this article, click here: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/10/16/60-minutes-features-yukon-prospector-who-turned-mushrooms-into-gold-sunday-on-cbs/315881/
Above video is from the 2011 PDAC (Prospector of the Year) Bill Dennis Award Winner for gold discoveries in the Yukon – Shawn Ryan