The Staking Report: April 2026

Scout Discoveries Corp staked 607 new claims in Baker, OR during April 2026, more than any other company recorded in the month and enough on its own to account for 15.2% of all new mining-claim ground nationwide. The next-largest staker, Anglo American, added 509 claims split across two adjoining Arizona counties -- a reminder that even a major's monthly haul can trail a single junior's push into one Oregon county.

April's national total of 3,996 new claims continued a cool-off from the surge recorded in September 2025, when stakers filed 12,466 claims nationwide, nearly triple any other month tracked here. Volumes fell in each of the following months through February 2026, then rebounded in March 2026 to 4,480 claims before slipping again in the feature month -- a zigzag that leaves April running below March but roughly level with the January reading of 4,154 claims and the February reading of 3,727. BLM's public claims data take months to fully populate, which is why April 2026, rather than a more current month, is the newest period treated here as settled.

Who Staked the Most Ground

Two companies set the pace. Scout Discoveries Corp and Anglo American together claimed more new ground than the rest of the top ten combined, though they were not chasing the same commodity or the same geography -- one concentrated entirely in eastern Oregon, the other spread across Arizona's Graham and Greenlee counties. A second thread runs through Washington County, Utah, where Apex North LLC and Pilot Goldstrike Inc both staked heavily, suggesting a district-level draw rather than a single company's initiative. A third grouping ties Celatus Copper USA and Tungada, Inc. together across a stretch of borderland counties running from Cochise, Arizona into Hidalgo, New Mexico, Gila, Arizona and Humboldt, Nevada -- a pattern consistent with copper-focused staking rather than a single project footprint.

Where the Ground Rush Went

Geographically, April's staking split between concentration and fragmentation. Some counties saw a single company take nearly everything on offer: Graham, AZ logged 376 new claims from just 1 staker, and Greenlee, AZ and Hidalgo, NM showed the identical pattern, with 174 and 153 claims each from a single company. Other counties told the opposite story. Mohave, AZ drew 256 new claims from 20 separate stakers, the most fragmented picture in the month's top counties, while Esmeralda, NV split 180 claims among 4 companies. Baker, OR led the county rankings outright with 494 new claims recorded across 3 stakers, and Washington, UT followed with 387 claims among 4, underscoring that the month's biggest hauls were as likely to come from a crowded county as from a cornered one.

Spotlight

Public listings describe Scout Discoveries Corp as an Idaho-based mineral exploration company, headquartered in Coeur d'Alene, that says its mission is finding tier-one precious- and base-metal deposits using what it calls a vertically integrated exploration model. Its push into eastern Oregon this cycle appears, on that basis, to extend the company's search beyond its home state rather than being tied to any project it has previously disclosed.

Mineral-occurrence records near that ground show a cluster of documented showings. The Little Baby Prospect, listed variously as an occurrence and as a more advanced prospect for copper, lead, zinc and vanadium, sits about 1.1 kilometers away. The Hilltop Keating Claim, carrying gold, cobalt, copper, nickel and silver, lies roughly 1.3 kilometers off, and two further copper showings -- one classed as a prospect, one as an occurrence -- sit within a similar radius. Taken together, the district's documented multi-metal showings align with the polymetallic focus the company describes in its own materials, though the records here speak only to what has been found nearby, not to what the company intends to do with the ground it staked.

Ground Opening Up

Closures were far smaller than the new-claim tally. BLM recorded 236 closed claims nationwide against 3,996 new ones, leaving net growth of 3,760 claims for the month and pushing the nationwide active-claim count to 579,094. Arizona's La Paz County accounted for the largest pullback, with 37 claims closed in one filing and another 29 closed in a separate action nearby, making it the month's busiest county for closures even as it stayed quiet for new staking. Grant County, New Mexico, where Freeport-McMoRan added a modest amount of new ground, saw 25 claims closed, while Nevada's Humboldt County gave up 24 claims and Pershing County 12.

The Year in Staking

Top stakers of the period

Methodology: figures reflect unpatented mining claims located in April 2026 per BLM MLRS public records as of 8/7/2026. Claim counts reflect unpatented mining-claim filings recorded by BLM for which claimant attribution is available; subsidiary holdings are attributed to parent companies where public records establish the relationship. Data: ClaimWatch.

About this data

BLM records new mining claims weeks to months after they are staked and publishes its files in irregular batches, so a raw snapshot of "this month's" filings is mostly older activity catching up. The Staking Report keys every figure to the claim's actual location date -- when the ground was staked, not when BLM logged it -- and features April 2026, the most recent month whose recordation is substantially complete. More recent months are still being recorded and will revise upward in later issues.

For scale, BLM's most recent update carried 9,352 new claim filings; the largest shares were for ground staked back in May 2026 (35.8%) and April 2026 (23.6%) -- a live look at activity the public record is still catching up on.

Closure counts exclude BLM's annual assessment-year void -- 37,467 claims relinquished in a single administrative batch on 2/9/2026 for non-payment of maintenance fees -- which is reported separately from month-to-month closures.

The Staking Report is built from BLM MLRS public records by ClaimWatch, ChoraQuest's mining claims intelligence platform: 579,094 active unpatented claims tracked across 12 BLM states, 4,483,724 claim records, updated on BLM refresh cycles (data as of 8/3/2026). ClaimWatch produces leadfile examinations, due-diligence area reports, and claim monitoring for the mining industry. Learn more at claimwatch.io.