The Black Grouse occurrence is located on the northwestern side of Kane Creek, 4 kilometres west of the former McAllister mine (082KSW025). New Denver, British Columbia lies about 23 kilometres to the south-southwest.
The Slocan mining camp is dominated by fine grained to aphanitic clastic sedimentary rocks of the Triassic Slocan Group and consists of locally weakly metamorphosed argillites, quartzites, limestones and some tuffaceous rocks. These sediments are frequently intruded by dikes, sills and stocks of varied composition and origin.
The majority of the deposits are predominantly fault-fissure veins within distinctive zones and trends and replacement deposits where limestone or limy strata have been locally or extensively replaced by ore minerals.
The Black Grouse property was first staked in 1896; it was later operated under lease. Much of the work was done from one crosscut adit. The adit runs in an easterly direction into the hill for 58 metres.
Hostrocks of the Black Grouse property are very fine grained, dark grey-black slaty argillite of the Slocan Group intruded by a quartz feldspar porphyry dike. Strong, northwest trending lensoidal quartz veins and veinlets are developed along the dike/sediment contact. The veins generally strike 285 degrees, dip 45 degrees north and occur in the footwall of the dike. The hangingwall is sheared and brecciated. Vein widths vary from 12 centimetres to 3 metres. Oxidation has developed as limonitic coatings along cleavage planes in the hangingwall and footwall of the dike as well as inclusions in the dike itself. Graphitic gouge is also prevalent in both the hangingwall and footwall.
Argentite, galena, native silver, sphalerite, possibly tetrahedrite, arsenopyrite and rare malachite are developed as shoots or pods of mineralization within the sheared hangingwall and to a lesser extent in the footwall of the dike. The quartz veins carry minor mineralization.
The Black Grouse occurrence has four years of recorded production; 1915 to 1917 and 1935. A total of 108,736 grams silver, 31 grams gold, 241 kilograms lead and 442 kilograms zinc were recovered from 31 tonnes of ore.
