The BIG showing is located north of Blackbear Creek in its eastern headwater area, approximately 12 kilometres east of the village of Likely.

The area lies within the eastern part of the Quesnellia terrane. This region is underlain dominantly by fine-grained metasedimentary rocks, which are in contact with the Barkerville terrane. The metasedimentary rocks comprise mainly dark- grey phyllite and silty slate considered to be of the Middle to Upper Triassic. Part of the black phyllite succession is informally correlated with the Nicola Group but has also been informally referred to as the Quesnel River Group sediments.

Mineralization consists of argentiferous galena with associated gold values in quartz veins cutting graphitic silty phyllite. In 1983, a channel sample yielded 117.9 grams per tonne silver and 3.27 per cent lead (Assessment Report 12566).

In 1981, Canadian Nickel Co. Ltd. completed a program of prospecting and sampling on the area as the BB claims. In 1983, Clearbrook Mining prospected the area as the Big 2-3 claims.

In 2015 and 2016, the area was prospected and float and subcrop rock samples were taken by Barker Minerals on the Black Bear East property. Rock samples were collected over a 1000 by 500 metre area around the Big showing. Five samples returned values between 9.19 and 11.19 grams per tonne gold (Assessment Report 36689). Further sampling was done over outcrops in the Big area in 2017 and 2018, where sparsely occurring pyrite and quartz veinlets were sampled over a 1.3 kilometre length. One grab sample returned a value of 12.23 grams per tonne gold (Assessment Report 37701).

From 2011 through 2019, the Black Bear East property was prospected and soil, stream sediment and rock (float, subcrop, outcrop) samples were taken by Barker Minerals Ltd. From east to west, the property included the Hobson occurrence (93A 074), Black Bear East - North (093A 333) and South (093A 334) zones, LA (093A 332), B.B. (093A 331), Big and Providence (093A 003).