Most of the ore extraction by breaking out the ore from the outstanding rock, today's pits found. The fire-setting method was also used, whereby the wood fire heated the rock strongly and the people then cooled it quickly with cold water. This was used to create cracks in the rock so that it could then be broken out more easily. With the equipment available at the time, this was still an immense effort.

Heavy bedrock blocks were salvaged from the Saalach River. These blocks with a diameter of up to 40 cm had a dent about the size of a fist. The Celts dragged these to the ore sites. With another fist-sized spherical tapping stone, they crushed the mined raw ore lumps at the sites. In the process, they separated the raw ore from the rest of the rock, which remained heaped up on the stockpiles that still exist today. In the second step, rubbing stones were used to crush the walnut-sized raw ores to grain size, which were then roasted in furnaces. The ore rock was heated in these furnaces, and in the subsequent steps the copper was smelted into black copper. What remained was the slag from the smelting process.

These smelting sites can still be recognized today by the slag residues.

Furrow pits created by surface mining are also visible to this day, and can be found above all on the Altenberg and on the Wirtsalm on the slope of the Sausteigen.   But also at the Tennstallalm, Kressbrunn, Weberalm up to the Rehrenbergalm above the Wirtsalm the smelting sites can be explored. On the Raggensteinalm below the Geierkogel you can find decayed tunnels, recognizable by the smoke shafts for the fire settling, which can be seen every few meters.  Between the fiefs of Oberarzbach and the Hecheralm in the Arzbachgraben at 1300 meters above sea level is a larger smelting site as well as sand slag can be found on the way to the Weberalm. There are also large lumps of raw slag on the Gorialm south of the Sausteigen.

The mouth of the Hermastollen lies 150 m above the Saalach in the northern slope of the valley.  The Hermastollen is an old Bronze Age dwelling that goes almost horizontally into the mountain 30-50 m from the mouth. Here, the fire-setting method was used, and timbers from the fire-setting were found. Parts of a bridge by means of which the miners worked at height, a water trough, 1.28 m long and a conveyor trough 84 cm long, which was used to pull ore, as well as other finds. The good preservation is due to the circumstances that the gallery was completely drowned.

These finds in Viehhofen are among the most important evidence of mining in the Eastern Alps in the Bronze Age and testify to the supra-regional economic and cultural importance.

In 1912, G. Kyrle discovered, among other things, 3 air shafts leading to the Verhau. The northernmost and middle one were buried with rubble, but the southernmost one was completely free. This one is about 1 m wide. A 2 cm thick layer of soot and underneath small cracked rocks that can easily be broken away. But the number of shafts is no coincidence. The northern air intake was built first and then the tunnel went south. The inclined position meant that it was possible to fire the tunnel and work in it at the same time. This was followed in 1955 by extensive scientific investigations and mapping and surveying. Three bronze needles from the Urnfield period were picked up, which provided a first starting point for a chronological classification of the site.  In addition, several inspections were undertaken, which revealed pottery fragments as well as various tapping and rubbing stones as clues that speak for prehistoric mining.