Categories: Base Metals / Precious Metals
Topics: General Base Metals / General Precious Metals

Aguila American Gold (TSX-V: AGL) CEO Mark Saxon on New Copper-Gold-Silver Acquisition & Future M&A

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Aguila American Gold, Mr. Mark Saxon. Mark, it seems like soon, you might have to become Aguila American Gold and copper with some silver. How are you doing?

Mark Saxon: Good afternoon. And, yes very true. It's one of those days where you kind of question the company name. Once we are moving a little bit more to a copper focus, but yeah feel free to throw me some good names and we'll consider them. So, yeah I certainly agree that there's a pivot happening in the company away from gold into more of the battery metals.

Gerardo Del Real: Jokes aside. This has actually been discussed by co-owner of Resource Stock Digest and myself, Mr. Nick Hodge had a great name for you. I'll get it on the record. No pressure. “Heartland Resources.”

Mark Saxon: Okay, there we go. All right, I'll check it out the website that for that one.

Gerardo Del Real: So, Mark obviously you've been busy behind the scenes. You are incredibly well-connected and have a great network to source and vet projects. You are also notoriously very, very picky and methodical when evaluating a project. And I know you've looked at, it's got to be hundreds now and correct me if I'm wrong. So anytime I see a news release like today's where you're actually acquiring a project, this one, a copper silver project in Nevada. Me as a shareholder, I tend to perk up a little bit because I know how selective you are. Can you tell me a bit about the project and just kind of what motivated going, looking for it, and actually getting it through the finish line there?

Mark Saxon: Most certainly Gerardo and thanks very much for the question. And yeah, as you say, we've looked at measured in the many hundreds of projects, and I guess we've had some pretty clear sort of thinking and drivers in, in what we're after. And so focusing on good mining jurisdictions is a part of it, but we haven't been, I guess, all that keen to go back to the prospects that are well-known to sort of drill a few more holes and expand them a little bit. We want them to be doing something a little bit different and moving into some of the areas that have great prospectivity, that haven't been tested before. So if you think particularly about the Walker Lane in Nevada, where we've got this project, then there's been, yeah tens, hundreds of discoveries over the last 200 years in that belt. Almost everything has been done within the outcropping areas.

So the places where the rocks come to surface, and you can see the places where the gold is developed or copper is developed. There's been almost no discoveries when you move underneath the post mineralization rocks at cover sequences. So I guess in our thinking we took a look at the Walker Lane and we said, all right, where's the outcropping portions with small, interesting deposits, that have lots of under cover areas around them? And we focused on those places. So this one that we picked up later, is exactly that it's got a small, let's call it a window of outcrop with maybe 200 small, copper prospects sitting in that tiny little window, surrounded in cover where historically explorers haven't explored at all, so zero. And that's really formed the target idea for us. And then looking along the Walker Lane, there's a very strong association between some characteristics in the magnetic data that's provided by the USGS. And so we've followed up on those characteristics and later dropped out as a really strong target.

Gerardo Del Real: So I'm assuming in this case, two things that have to be... Well, three things, frankly, that have to be encouraging. One, the fact that you have outcropping that's obviously there and is not confined to one or two outcrops, that's got to be positive. And the second, it hasn't seen modern exploration because of that thin post mineralization cover, which for me, is actually the third thing that really stands out to me are... Am I accurate in seeing all those as positive things here?

Mark Saxon: Yeah, absolutely. And so with a bit of thin cover, you're able to hide a major ore body at shallow levels, without having really any characteristics at surface. And so in the area that it outcrops, old prospectors, plus 100 years ago, went through there, found a bit of copper at surface, followed up north, south east, west on the copper. They put in one very substantial pit from which, production came out of copper oxide. And then they were trying to expand the system and they went north and south until they hit the cover and there they stopped. And in fact, we can see where they were digging holes, called dog holes, kind of trying to get through this cover segment. But yeah, were never able to do it sort of 100 years ago. And so we're now able to sort of explore through that thing covering.

So really the only exploration that has been done on the site was in the 1970s. And that was Conoco, who did a lot of copper exploration through Nevada, Arizona. They ran an IP survey and there's a ripper of an IP anomaly that runs from the area of outcrop where the copper oxide sits, into the areas that are under cover. And so that's really, our first type that's following up for that IP anomaly. So Conoco, were working many, many projects across Nevada, Arizona at the time. They drilled a couple of shallow holes here. They didn't penetrate to the depth that's required to hit the IP target and they walked away to other prospects in the region. And that's left the amazing opportunity here.

Gerardo Del Real: I understand there are several hundred prospecting pits known locally as dog holes. Can you explain what those are?

Mark Saxon: Yeah, exactly. And that's from a time where, where people, I guess, were a little more desperate than perhaps us today, Gerardo. Yeah, old prospectors going through Nevada and as they have done in Australia and other parts of the world, California and things, looking for copper, gold, silver, and they would find one location in outcrop and which there's many of here at Lida and then they would, I guess, dig prospecting holes. And the prospecting holes would get down to basement and they would find a bit more copper and that would keep on going. Or they'd find nothing, and then they'd move on to the next one. So there's hundreds of those holes and some into the outcrop where the new copper was, and then some under cover where they couldn't get through, because they couldn't dig more than a meter or two through that cover segment.

Gerardo Del Real: Huh. That is absolutely fascinating.

Mark Saxon: We'll be sharing some photographs shortly. We've had our geologist on site, there, doing some sampling. And so we've got a good collection of samples in the assay lab at the moment. And yeah, so we'll be sharing some photos of those to show sort of how well that surface cover is. And then unable to get down to the bedrock, whether it's in cover.

Gerardo Del Real: Fascinating stuff, I got to believe you're still on the M&A trail, vetting projects, looking for projects. Can you give us an idea of the types of projects that you're looking to bring on?

Mark Saxon: We've certainly had a bit of a pivot here towards copper and we see the fundamentals for copper are just amazing. But that goes for all base metals or battery metals. The demand fundamentals, and particularly in the US., have turned completely. They're never going to see low prices again. So we're looking at, at high quality projects with a particular focus on copper. I'm happy with, with gold projects as well, but, but copper is the one that's catching our eye. And we're looking at the styles of deposits, I guess, that can make big systems. And so that's, that's Porphyry systems that’s Skarn systems that's VMS systems. And particularly when you think about the Skarn and the VMS is distance, you can get very high grades, you can get mixed metals that can support high-grade underground mining, as we've seen many parts of the world. I think the future of mining really does include those style of deposits. So there are better things in the front line.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I'm excited to see what you're able to come up with. I'm excited for this project. I understand there's some field work that's already happening and will likely continue on. Is that accurate?

Mark Saxon: Yeah, that's right. And we've had a geologist on site. We're planning for a geophysical program to sort of, locate exactly where that IP anomaly is. And then it becomes drill-ready very quickly. And then we're doing the same at our other... Rest of the acquired project in Arizona as well. And I'm preparing for a field program down there with geophysics. And again, that's very close to drill-ready. We know, that was good grades of copper in past drilling over really thick intervals. So we'll be back there very soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Mark, thank you so much for that update. Looking forward to having you back on we'll chat soon.

Mark Saxon: Thanks, Gerardo. Chat soon.