In the spring and summer months, Eugene Curley gets dropped off by a helicopter, or driven by ATV, into the Yukon bush for one, two or three weeks at a time.

There he’ll work, alone, prospecting for gold, and other valuable minerals.

With him, Curley carries a geologist’s hammer, sometimes a gold pan and a small shovel, and bags for his samples.

He eats canned foods out of small tins, dried goods, rice and tea – stuff that will last a while, he said in an interview Wednesday in Whitehorse.

He always carries a rifle for protection.

“I’ve had occasion to use a rifle a couple times,” he said, but hedged when asked why.

Curley, who lives in Faro, arrived in the Yukon in 1978 and has been prospecting since the early ’80s. He’s had some luck (he probably wouldn’t call it that), but remains modest.

“(I’ve made) some new discoveries, so far nothing has turned into a mine,” he said with a chuckle.

On Monday, Curley will be named Prospector of the Year at a ceremony at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre.

He was bestowed the honour after a vote by his peers at the Yukon Prospectors Association.

“It’s kind of shocking and feels good,” said Curley about the distinction.

A little like finding gold.

As a kid in Prince Edward Island, Curley heard stories about the Klondike and the riches that lay beneath its vast and rugged surface.

He started as a placer miner in 1981, retracing the steps of the original gold diggers.

“Looking for clues from where old-time gold miners have worked is generally an indication that there could be mineralization in that area,” said Curley.

But there’s much more too it than that.

Geologists survey large swaths of Yukon land.

Water and silt are tested for minerals, soil is sampled, rocks too, and the results are compiled by the government and made public. This information acts as a kind of treasure map, and Curley studies it for clues.

But the magic (though Curley likely doesn’t see it that way) happens in the bush.

One season in 1988, for example, Curley was prospecting on the top of a mountain when he came across a bear – or a bear came across him.

The bear gave chase and Curley made a run for it.

Escaping the animal, Curley found himself atop a second mountain, overlooking a valley.

What he saw gave him pause.

Amid the dark grey rock, a reddish-brown outcropping ran like a scar next to a creek.

“I went down and checked it out and it was a huge vein, 10 feet wide at the surface,” he said.

“It was a quartz intrusion.”

A closer look showed apple-green arsenopyrite – “arsenic bloom,” as it’s called by insiders, for its high arsenic content – in the rock.

Arsenic bloom is “a great indicator of gold values,” said Curley.

“I was excited at that,” he said. “I knew that I’d found something.”

Results from an assay, the laboratory test that determines a sample’s ingredients or grade, proved Curley right.

“When I assayed it, it assayed pretty good. I got a half ounce over five feet in width and about 0.2 over 10 feet. The average was maybe 0.25 ounces per tonne,” he said.

Carl Schulze, the association’s secretary treasurer, affirmed the discovery.

“Those are nice numbers, quite high grade,” he said, sitting next to Curley during the interview with the Star.

The Yukon’s not the only place Curley’s gone prospecting. He’s also done work in South America and Australia.

Still, he prefers working in the northern territory he calls home.

“Yukon is an excellent place to work and prospect,” he said. “It’s more free and it’s more (politically) stable.”

Not one of Curley’s four daughters is interested in prospecting, he said.

“Not at all.”

Neither are young people in general, he noted.

Curly, who is 77 years old, plans to go back into the bush this summer, though by his own sardonic admission, “I’m much more limited, now that I’m starting to get mature.”