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Aguila American Gold (TSX-V: AGL) CEO Mark Saxon on Modern Exploration at WUSA & Potential Acquisitions
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of Aguila American Gold, Mr. Mark Saxon. Mark, how are you?
Mark Saxon: Gerardo, good afternoon. Great to talk to you. And perfect pronunciation on the name of the company. Well done. Not many people get it right, so congrats to you.
Gerardo Del Real: You know, Spanish is actually my first language. And so yeah, it makes it a little bit easier to pronounce, unlike Gerardo, which nobody can get right. Right?
Mark Saxon: No, good job.
Gerardo Del Real: Listen, you had some news about a week or so ago and I wanted to have you back on because, let me play devil's advocate. If I'm anticipating drill results on a drill program and I get the type of assay numbers, and let me read some of them. 6.1 meters of 0.17 grams per tonne gold, 4.9 meters. I mean I could go on, right? The meters are between 1.2 and 6.1 meters and the grades are, let's say 0.17 grams per tonne, 0.22, 0.20 grams per tonne. So nothing that headline-wise screams spectacular discovery to me. However, me knowing the history of the property and me speaking with you, there's a lot in the release that I think probably was missed. And I wanted to have you back on to explain why you're actually encouraged by these early, early results.
Mark Saxon: Absolutely, Gerardo. And yeah, thanks for the opportunity to give you an update. And I guess, let's talk about a few bits of context, first of all. And I guess first of all, the results took quite a long time to come out and it's just because the industry is very busy and yeah, obviously COVID protocols in laboratories slowed things down and also, just the workload of the industry. Industry is running hard at the moment, so it took a bit longer to get out. And when the results came out, I guess we saw them as a positive without blowing the wheels off. Absolutely positive because the gold is modest as you said. 6.1 meters at about 0.2 grams per tonne. Not a great headline result that you see on some properties. However, we've got to remember this is a brand new property.
So within about 20 kilometers of where we were drilling, there had been one hole drilled before. There's been no records at all of any other drilling really, in the area of this property, which is particularly exciting. So the reason that we got into this project is to go and find something new, do something different, look in new areas. And really the results in that context are really very good. If you dropped them into Nevada, you would see we intersected gold over a two kilometer strike length. We intersected highly anomalous arsenic. We intersected highly anomalous tellurium, and I guess even more excitingly and one of the things that made the project for us in the first place is that there is an old mercury mine to the north of where we're drilling and there's an old mercury mine to the south of where we're drilling. So all of those factors in a Nevada context are super indicators of large system. It's just we're in a bit of a new terrain and so we're learning things as we go.
Gerardo Del Real: I think the scale of the spacing of the drilling is critical to understand, right? We're talking four holes that were drilled along a 1.6 kilometer strike.
Mark Saxon: Absolutely. So yeah, and I think in fact it was even a little bit more from end to end, including the one hole that had been drilled there in the past. So we've now tested two kilometers of the system. So only five drill holes over two kilometers and all very shallow holes over a near surface test. So yeah, this is just like prospecting, I suppose. It's like taking a rock sample when you don't have great outcrop and that's all we were doing in this drilling program. So in that context, the results are extremely interesting.
And I suppose the key thing that we need to come back to on WUSA as well is, and again, I'll use that Nevada analog, that if we were doing this work in Nevada, we would have a prospecting right, a mineral right that went for 200 meters to the north and 300 meters to the south. Here, we've got a trend that is eight kilometers long, all with the one landholder, all under our exploration license. So really we can go east, west, north, south, any direction we want to, and we are still on the land that we have under tenure with the land holder. So yeah, we've got a massive piece of land and 150,000 hectares in total that we can explore. And yeah, so very early days in a huge project and I think this has been a good result.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. And the question of the day, every day, what's next?
Mark Saxon: Sure. And yeah, so I guess, one of the key factors and findings that we saw in this drilling program is that our very southern hole, which I think was hole number five, so SDH 5. So that hole intersected the highest grade of arsenic we've seen and the highest grade of tellurium we've seen on the project. And so that is sitting out, I think it's 400 meters south of any other drilling. It is on the very last line of our soil sampling. So we know that the structure continues. So, I think we've discovered what we're calling an epithermal structure, which is brecciated. It's quartz veined. It's got clay alteration, in roughly a north south orientation. So now I guess one of the key factors is to chase that south.
But I guess as well, when we only have five holes within such a long trend and the style of mineralization we're chasing is an epithermal low sulphidation epithermal system, which varies. Their system's very well known for rapid change horizontally and vertically. So you can go from low grades into high grades extremely quickly, like over a number of meters. So it's such an early stage project that, particularly to the south and particularly at depth of the places where there's great potential.
Gerardo Del Real: Mark, that's a thorough update, both on the deposit style, the type of system, why the holes were encouraging, the pathfinder element. And I love the context about if these were the types of results that you saw from what really is pretty much a maiden drill program with modern exploration techniques, this would be hugely positive. So thank you for the context. I also know that you and the team have a deep network that you can access, and it's part of why I participated in the most recent financing. How are things on that front? Let me backtrack. You've always been looking at many, many, many projects. Is that something that's still active?
Mark Saxon: Absolutely. And looking at new projects, I think is the core of our business and Aguila is extremely active in that regard and we'll be seeing the results of that come through fairly quickly. Yeah, obviously gold is great. Copper is excellent. Silver is excellent. So we're very focused on those commodities and we're focused on the locations where our existing team in the western US are able to take full advantage of those projects. And so yeah, we're working on that pathway right now.
Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Well, it sounds like we'll have something to chat about soon. Thank you again for the context today. Anything else that you'd like to add to that?
Mark Saxon: No, thank you very much, Gerardo, and I think I'll be publishing a few images on Twitter and on the websites, and making that comparison back in Nevada and the great land holding we have, because I think that's really the key part of the project, is if we find something we can explore it quickly. We can move to drilling in a very short amount of time, because of our great relationship in Oregon. So yeah, I think there's many positives to take away from this program and yeah, we're very enthusiastic.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Thanks again, Mark.
Mark Saxon: Thanks Gerardo. Cheers.