The Buster (Lot 2937) is a past producer located 2.75 kilometres west of the summit of Goat Peak and 3.5 kilometres south-southeast of Beaverdell, British Columbia (Assessment Report 16772). The Reverted Crown grant was forfeited February 15, 1994.
The Buster occurrence was Crown granted to J.P. Kelly and K.T. McKenzie in 1909. By 1913, an incorporated company (Alaska Mining Co.) took ownership but no work was done. Prior development consisted of a 27.4-metre shaft that had exposed a vein. In 1918, a 22.9-metre tunnel and opencut and surface work was carried out by J. P. Kelly and associates. Ore shipments were made in this and the following year. Penticton interests acquired the property in 1934 and carried out further development work in 1935 and 1936. In 1946, work was carried out by Highland Silver Mines Ltd. In 1947, the '46-77' drift was extended from 21.5 to 97.5 metres length on the Standard Fraction claim and continued onto the Buster claim, for total extended length of 181.8 metres. A short section of ore was found at the end of this tunnel in the Buster vein on the Buster claim. The vein, however, was faulted off in the back of the tunnel. Silver Bell Mining Syndicate took over the property in 1949. The most recent interest in the Buster property has been by Canstat Petroleum Resources Corp. in 1983. During 2007 through 2009, Intigold Gold Mines Ltd. completed programs of rock and soil sampling and am airborne geophysical survey on the area as the Beaverdell property.
Initial prospecting began in the Beaverdell area in the late 1880s. The first ore was shipped in 1896. The major producing mines in the Beaverdell silver-lead-zinc vein camp, from west to east, were the Wellington (082ESW072), Sally and Rob Roy (082ESW073), Beaver (082ESW040), and Bell (082ESW030), with numerous other small workings throughout the area. For a detailed description of the geology and mineralization of the area refer to the Beaverdell (082ESW030).
The Buster claim adjoins the Buster claim (082ESW035) to the southeast. The property is underlain by Westkettle granodiorite and Permian Wallace Formation metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks. An east trending silicified shear/fault zone in chloritic granodiorite hosts a mineralized quartz vein that strikes 100 degrees and dips 60 degrees south. In the east, the vein locally extends into quartz porphyry of the Wallace Formation where it becomes a shattered zone. The quartz vein varies from a few centimetres to 1.2 metres in width.
Mineralization consists of tetrahedrite, galena, sphalerite, pyrite, native silver and minor chalcopyrite in a gangue of banded quartz and sericite. Tetrahedrite, discovered in the Buster shaft, is intergrown with argentiferous galena and sphalerite. A grab sample (#011/50349) taken by Canstat Petroleum Corp. in 1983 from the Buster adit yielded 1386.9 grams per tonne silver, 0.3 gram per tonne gold, 10.3 per cent zinc, 3.2 per cent lead and 0.17 per cent copper (Assessment Report 12734).
In 2008, a chip sample (080731A) from a massive quartz-carbonate vein with galena from the adit area assayed 3029 grams per tonne silver, 0.300 per cent copper, 5.30 per cent lead and 8.10 per cent zinc over 18 centimetres (Gray, P.D. (2010-05-28): Technical Report on the Beaverdell Property).
Total recorded production from the Buster claim was 7 tonnes in 1919. From this ore, 19,719 grams of silver, 225 kilograms of lead and 813 kilograms of zinc were recovered. Five tonnes of sorted ore was stacked at the portal of the Buster tunnel in 1918 but it is not known whether this ore was ever shipped.
