Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Aztec Minerals (TSX-V: AZT)(OTC: AZZTF) CEO Simon Dyakowski on New Drill Program at Tombstone Gold-Silver Project in Arizona

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Aztec Minerals. Mr. Simon Dyakowski. Simon, How are you today?

Simon Dyakowski: Hey, Gerardo. Thanks for having me on. I am doing great. Big news for us this morning, we started drilling, so appreciate the opportunity to come on and speak with you.

Gerardo Del Real: You know, I think your timing is excellent. Rigs are in high demand, in short supply, especially in the part of the country that you're operating in. So it's impressive you were able to secure a rig to get going. Timing couldn't be better with gold flirting with $1,800 and gold and silver, I should say, above $26 an ounce. I'd love to hear the details of the program. I know Tombstone, as you know, is a project I really like. I'm looking forward to the results from this program.

Simon Dyakowski: Yeah, so, you know, we haven't spoken in a while and I think the last time we spoke, we were just planning out our phase two program. But, what we're doing right now is 20 holes, 3,000 meters with a reverse circulation, or RC rig. And it's designed to follow up on the success that we had last year in our phase one drill program, stepping along strike and down dip from the intersections that we had last year to expand the shallow broad bulk tonnage, gold silver mineralization around and below the contention pit. Just to get into some greater detail on that, last year when we drilled, we hit broad intersections of bulk tonnage material, as well as some high-grade. So highlights of that include 15 meters of over six grams of gold and over 70 grams of silver in hole nine in the north of the pit.

We also hit 7.6 meters of 4.18 grams gold and over 170 grams of silver for just over six grams in hole 18. Another highlight was 12 meters of over 4.89 grams gold equivalent in hole 2 so, really encouraging results that had to be followed up on. We did have a little bit of work to do from the conclusion of the last drill program to the start of this one. And that was namely forming the joint venture, beefing up our team with the new VPX who was able to join us in early April. And of course, as you mentioned, they're securing the drill rig, which rigs in that part of the U.S. are in very short supply. So, we were pretty lucky. There was a neighbor of ours that, just concluded a program and the driller was able to slot us in next. And yeah, so we moved onto our site yesterday and we started drilling today.

Gerardo Del Real: Better lucky than good sometimes. I know you just brought on a new vice president of exploration. Obviously he is getting to work immediately, right?

Simon Dyakowski: He is. Yeah, but just maybe to introduce David Heyl to your audience. So, David, he's had over 35 years of experience in the industry, a whole host of different roles spanning from exploration to production supervision. Most recently he was vice president of operations with Duran Ventures, overseeing a small plant in northern Peru. A lot of experience in the Americas, particularly in Latin America, in the Andes, specifically in Peru, but also a lot of experience in Nevada and Southwestern U.S. So, he's he's based in Colorado, Western U.S., a lot of experience in Latin America. So he'll be, you know, key in helping us advance both of our projects, obviously the one, one's in Mexico and one's in Arizona and yeah, he was, you know, eager to get going. And then the rig arrived. So everybody's busy down on site right now. So great to have Dave aboard.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Excellent. Tombstone is 75% owned by Aztec. And I noticed that you acquired a couple of extra patents. I believe it was two additional patents, if I remember correctly to add to the land position. What's the thinking behind that?

Simon Dyakowski: Yeah. So the Tombstone, the historic Tombstone Silver District is, it's mostly patented and unpatented ground, obviously because it's all patented and unpatented, but we have most of the original patents of the district. Now, there are some that are to the east and west of us that we don't have. So any time there's an opportunity to acquire private land, you have to jump on it. So there was an opportunity to grab two patents to the southeast of the main contention structure, about 35 acres in total. So, we were able to strike a deal to acquire those a couple of months ago and enclosed that back in March. And yeah, I mean, it really just provides us a little bit more room, you know, there's geological targets on the land and, you know, if contention pit ever gets back into production, you always need land to build facilities on and then to have mining infrastructure. So, you know, kind of a technical reason for the land as well as an exploration reason. So we're very pleased to have got that.

Gerardo Del Real: That's smart execution, Simon. It's always better and easier, I should add, to do that early on in a program than later on when, you know, we're hitting all time highs and gold and silver and copper and all of a sudden there's a premium for everything. Right?

Simon Dyakowski: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you really want to get ahead of it. I mean, you want to be buying things before the discoveries are made and, you know, hopefully we will have some discovery news in the next few weeks. We're drilling the, as I mentioned, the 20 holes, the 3,000 meter program kicked off today. We should five or six holes down over the first two or three weeks in the program. And we expect to have results coming in, you know, maybe six weeks, eight weeks after that. So, you know, relatively soon we should have some initial results coming back from the Tombstone drilling. And yeah, it would be awesome if we were reporting some new discovery numbers against a stronger gold and silver pricing backdrop. And at least the last few weeks have indicated that we might be lucky in that front, but remains to be seen.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic Simon. That was a good update. It's been a bit since we chatted, I'm looking forward to having you on more often as the assays start trickling in anything else to add to that?

Simon Dyakowski: No, just that really there's going to be a lot to look forward to after a period of relatively little news from Aztec. We will, we will have a lot going forward, and we'll have the kind of news that gets investors excited with potentially discovering more mineralization through a robust Phase 2 drill program at Tombstone.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Looking forward to it. Thanks again for your time.

Simon Dyakowski: Thank you, sir.