Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. I think all three of us are in different locations. I'm lucky enough to have with me today Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, who is the CEO of Contango Silver & Gold, and Dave Larimer, the company's Vice President of Exploration. Gentlemen, how are you doing today?
Good, Romeo. Good to see you again.
Good. Morning, morning.
Awesome. Here's how today's going to work. Folks in the room who are regulars know, so just give me two seconds to get through it. This is an interactive event. I've got some questions just to lead the discussion about new, exciting geological news at Lucky Shot, which is, of course, why we've got Dave as the star of today's show. Once those are through, I do want to take some questions from the live audience. Some questions came in advance over email. Really appreciate those, so I'll get to those first. I do want to get to as many audience questions as possible today. Please do stick them in.
If for whatever reason I don't get to them, run out of time, they're off topic, a million reasons a question doesn't happen, I'll also make sure that the Contango team gets them afterwards, and they'll be sure to get back to you as soon as possible. I'll also say there's a Request Meeting button at the bottom of the screen. I know some of you have already requested a meeting over email, which I appreciate. Please do feel free to press that button at any time during today's event. I'll get you connected with the Contango team following. Finally, this is being recorded and will be available for replay probably at the end of day Eastern Time, so thinking about 4:00 P.M. It'll come on our YouTube page, but also right on this same link. Okay, boring stuff done.
Rick, I'll be honest, I've been begging to ask anybody this question for a while. This is before we get into the exciting geology at Lucky Shot, which is where I'll put Dave in the hot seat, I got to ask a macro question. I was always under the impression, people have told me, I've read books that told me gold and precious metals generally were a safe haven asset in times of instability. What we've seen over the last few months, a war, a wildly destabilizing war, seems to have dropped gold, and the end of a war seems to be raising it back up now. My question to you is, what the heck is going on?
Yeah, the peace dividend, I guess. I think the short answer is that in a time of crisis, what happens, and then particularly here, had oil basically being taken off the market. If you're desperate to find oil, as a country, you have to get it any way you can, and the easiest, most liquid way to do that is to sell your gold.
Sure.
Oil's priced in dollars, you actually need dollars to go buy that barrel of oil from wherever you can find it. I think that's the trade that's been happening, and then of course, the dollar strengthens in that environment and gold does weaken. Look, gold had a fantastic run.
No doubt, yeah.
Way beyond anybody's wildest expectations. I know there's people out there that say, "Oh, yeah, I predicted $5,000 gold 10 years ago." Yeah, they've been saying it for 10 years, eventually they're going to get it right. What I think is the more important thing is, now you've got an agreement to agree to negotiate some sort of settlement over the next 60 days. We'll see where that all ends. It could all go to hell in a handbasket.
Of course.
That's not impossible. I think you're going to see the central banks continuing to buy gold. In fact, the World Gold Council just had a report out, I think it was today or yesterday, that basically said that same thing. They've been interviewing all the central banks, their long-term plans have not changed. Central banks' long-term plans remain the same, which is to buy more gold.
Sure.
I think you've got a great floor in the gold market now in the $4,000 level. We're trading at what, $4,100, $4,300, $4,500 or so today?
Today.
These are great gold prices.
Sure.
We're making a lot of money. All gold companies who are producing gold are making a lot of money. All-in sustaining costs are in the neighborhood of $1,200, $1,300 for everybody. Ours long-term haven't changed. We're still sitting at about $1,700 gold for the life of mine for Manh Choh, so we're staying on course this year to deliver to the hedges, get rid of the debt, pay off the debt, next year's going to be an absolutely fantastic year for Contango in terms of cash flow. That's the same if it's $4,000 gold, obviously if it's $5,000 or higher we'll make more money. I think we're in a good place from a macro perspective. I think a lot of people were confused with the gold price coming down in a period of crisis.
Sure.
I think that was a short trade. It's, "I need dollars to buy oil. I got to buy oil because my country can't run without oil." Turkey sold 17 tons of gold.
I did hear that, yeah.
Now they're buying gold.
That's how macro scene works sometimes. I do, I find it fun logging into the internet and reading investors' hot takes on stuff saying, "Gold's over." I'm like, "Well, if you look at just napkin math, I think people are still making a lot of money.
We're happy.
You guys are happy. Rick, appreciate you indulging me on the macro. Dave, I'm going to throw you to the hot seat for the news this week. First of all, I'm going to start off, something really cool happened at Lucky Shot. Hole LSU-26091 came back. This is going to sound like an exaggeration, but it's true, folks. It came back so high it blew past the upper limit of the PhotonAssay method, and you had to rerun it by Fire Assay to get to the 972-gram number. When a result pegs the meter like that, what does it make you think about the part of the system that you're drilling into right now?
It definitely tells us we're in the very high grade, core gold-bearing portion of the system, and we're in the right place. We're obviously in the right district and stuff like that with the high-grade stuff. We originally selected that PhotonAssay method as our primary method because we wanted that higher accuracy, given the nugget effect of the gold. The PhotonAssay gives us that better accuracy. I honestly didn't think we'd actually achieve an over-limit while we did it. It was like we had an over-limit, and we all went back and was like, "Okay." We had to revert back to that 50-gram gravimetric finish on the Fire Assay and came back with a 972 grams, which is outstanding.
Sure.
To me, it's very consistent with what we see with Lucky Shot. We know we're dealing with narrow veins. We know we're dealing with high grade, nuggety gold. These results can be spectacular, we do have to handle individual results carefully, especially from a modeling and a Mineral Resource Estimate standpoint, which we'll get into a little later. It does show us that, yeah, locally, we can get these bonanza-grade gold systems in intercepts. It tells us, hey, we're on the right structures, and we're doing the right thing with our drill program. When I look at this, the real value is not just that single high grade, but it's that intercept that we're seeing, that reproducibility. With visible
multiple mineral vein systems. We have our improved geologic models through this drill program, and it's all starting to tie together. This is a hugely strong validation point for us, that high-grade potential of Lucky Shot as we move forward in our drilling programs.
Awesome. No, it's exciting. Some of the, like you said, a number of the holes had visible gold logged right into the core, including the one we just talked about.
I know as the QP, you-
you have a duty to remind people that visible gold doesn't always-
Yeah
track grade. Here, it does keep lining up with the assays. How much weight are you letting yourself put on visible gold when you're standing there in the core shack?
Well, first of all, we'll take it from the geologic, pure geology aspect. When you're down in the core shack, we get core down, what's the first thing we do, and what do our core loggers and geos do? We run out there, we find the intercept, bust out our hand lenses, and it's off to the race to try to find that visible gold. That's the exciting part of the day. It's like, we want to see that. It's fun. When you see it, you know you see it, everyone slaps fives. Like, "Okay, this is cool." Then it's like, "All right. Get back to work, boys and girls." "Let's get this logged." We use this as a very, very important field observation. It's no substitute for assays, and I'll talk about that a little, but it's a great geologic indicator.
Again, back to the right structures and mineralizing event. We do have a very disciplined approach in this logging with this visible gold indicator for that field stuff. Not only do we indicate in our logs, but we've asked our geos to, "Hey, get back and kind of exploit this a little more. Find a little more detail." Part of our logging procedure is that we got a macroscope that kind of attaches, and we get some close-up photos of that. Then we also have the loggers going, "Hey, look at the textures. What are the associated mineralizations?" We actually have them coming back to hand draw a little section of, "Hey, what's this look like?" Going back to all that 101 and petrology classes that we've had and doing hand sketches on the logs of, "Hey, here's the gold.
Here's our associated minerals with it. Here's the photo with it." This is what we see, because they are hugely important geologic indicators for us. It's very encouraging that we're seeing these observations, not only in a single vein system but across this development vein system. Then we do call it nuggety that we see at Lucky Shot. We do have to be careful. We can have these great, spectacular results, when I put on my QP hat, we have to maintain discipline and know that this does not automatically equal grade. It's a great geologic indicator, and it's exciting. Yeah, that's why we put those disclosures out there while we're doing this. Great high-grade geological evidence, and that's why we do the assays.
We have a detailed, robust assay program and a QA/QC program to validate those assays that we'll be using in that model when we do our estimation going forward. At the end of the day, the takeaway is that visible gold is great, it's exciting, and it's a great motivational tool for the geos, especially first thing in the morning.
Yeah, I bet.
A coffee, seeing visible gold in your core, in your program, that's what keeps you fighting through the rest of the day.
Hey, that beats most other things I'll say that for sure. Go for it, Rick.
Hey, can I just add that it's also the easiest gold to recover from a metallurgical standpoint. You're going to catch that with a gravity circuit. That's something that just comes right off the top, so to speak. As Dave indicates, these high numbers, they're great to see, but they're nuggety.
You're going to capture that free gold that's hard to measure, because you're going to catch that in a gravity circuit.
So-
Yeah. That's.
That's the other benefit that I see when we're logging free gold, nuggety gold. Seeing gold VG in the core, that means good metallurgy usually.
Oh, awesome. No, it's good to see what all this actually means because sometimes it's hard to piece it together. Speaking of that.
as somebody who's followed this Lucky Shot program pretty closely, what I understand, sorry Dave, I'm a layman.
Yeah.
What used to be, from my perspective, a few clean vein lines is now a much busier picture of stacked sub-parallel structures. I know a lot of people, possibly some in the room here, more complex generally.
Yeah.
They can get nervous when they hear that about mining. In your opinion, why would this added complexity be a bullish part of the story for Lucky Shot rather than a problem to overcome?
Yeah. When we talk about more complex, to me this is a good thing. Mother Nature doesn't do anything simply, and if we look at things too simply, she's just not that nice. She's not just going to give us the gold. We want that complexity at the end of the day. It doesn't mean more random. It doesn't mean more chaotic. It means we're seeing a larger, more developed structural system. As we get more drill holes in there, we get that higher resolution, we start to understand, and it's like, okay, yep, this is more complex. That's a good thing. Let's understand it. Especially with the higher density of drilling. We can resolve more issues on that higher resolution. Before the program started, we had our vein models out there with limited drilling.
It was enough to hold it in space, that's why we are targeting this drill program to understand it, get that higher resolution, and pulling out the vein systems between the L2, the L1C, B, D, the CK Vein, the L1E, and we'll talk a little more about the KM Veins.
What this does, this complexity of the system, it gives us more targets. It increases the volume of what we're looking for and gives us more targets. Instead of chasing just a single vein system, we're now chasing a broader mineralized corridor that is complex, with multiple veins through here, between the shear veins, these relay veins, CK conjugate veins, and we'll talk a little more about later, but that complexity is good. From an exploration standpoint, it's complex, but what the upside is we can start to model this. Now that we've interpreted this and it's holding up as we step through here, we can now feed this forward. We take our models now, what we know, that higher resolution, and we feed them forward.
What's this mean for the next drill program, and what do we have when we're going out through that next drill program? It helps prioritize that next phase of underground drilling. What we're seeing with these more complex models with a higher resolution, we can start to prioritize, hey, where do we want to hit, which ones we want to focus on. We need to spend a little more time in areas moving forward. At the end of the day, when Dave's talking complexity is good, especially in that geological, structural, ore deposits understanding of Lucky Shot.
Awesome. You've got some backup in the chat. Ben Whiting says, "As a geologist, I agree with Dave. Complexity is an advantage in the value of a mineral system." You got some geos backing up your claim there, Dave. I always love to see it.
Yes.
I do want to talk about that KM Vein. You were correct, that is where I was going next, because the vein runs at right angles to the entire Lucky Shot-
Yep
vein series. A totally different orientation than you've been chasing so far.
Yeah.
What does, again, speak layman if you can.
Yes.
What does a cross-cutting high-grade structure like that do to your sense of how big the system really could get?
It definitely expands. For me, it expanded that larger nature. Again, as we get the higher resolution in here, this is a very exciting outcome, but one that makes sense. When you step back, you look at the KM Vein, and you look at the kinematics of the deposit, how these things are sheared, born, we're always looking at, okay, we have an east-west striking Lucky Shot dipping to the north. That's what we see. We can start to lay our stress regimes on our structural geology of how these things have ripped, torn, and give us those dilated space. Finding the KM Vein, the quick history again, was found, I don't want to say by accident, but through drifting. We
had that West Drift come across, ran into a vein that was totally 90 degrees, and it was like, okay, kinematically, yep, this makes sense. It's running great grade. So it helps broaden our knowledge of, hey, what else is out there? So our eyes are always open for not only the normal Lucky Shot shear system, but hey, we also have to change our mentality when we're trying to interpret drill results and shift everything 90 degrees. Does this line up more on a KM Vein orientation now? So again, back to that complexity, which is good. It's not just a random cross-cutting veins. It does represent that larger, that structural complexity of the system that we're trying to understand. Currently right now, in the release, we talked about the West Drift extension, doing the underground exploration drifting.
This is prioritized because we want to follow up on that KM structure, those high-grade intercepts on it. So the plan is we'll drive that West Drift about 100 meters. And it's a great example of Contango's operating mentality from the geology to the operations side, that we're able to flex and have this flexibility of being able to maneuver these drifts in there. So when we get this drift in there, it's designed out that we can get the drilling back in there first and pop these short holes right up on great orientations to that KM Vein and just expand it coming out. And showing that potential that's there that's extremely close by to development.
So we don't want to overstate it, but the KM Vein's just a great exploration target that opened up and gave us that another angle to look at while we're drilling through our system through here. We'll drill it here in the next couple of months when we get the drills back underground, and hopefully put some good press releases out there in the future, and in a couple of months, we'll be talking again on this, Romeo.
I'd love to every time. I got one more for you, Dave, before I jump into some bigger picture questions for El Jefe. With the updated model that you now have in hand, the next phase is roughly 12,000 meters underground-
Yep
as I understand it. Where is that model pointing you now that you couldn't have justified, say, a year ago?
The quick and easy one, like I talked about, was the KM Vein and that West Drift extension. Our original plan, working with the operations team and the mine team is, okay, we originally drove that West Drift as a part of these four drifts, and we didn't think we needed to expand it. Finding that vein, that did become a priority and shows the flexibility we can have to flex to develop these things and drill it. After that, we're taking our models and our updated models and doing that forecasting going across. The next big one we're looking at is after the West Drift extension, our mining crews will target the 2070 East, which is basically right off the east drift coming the other way. What we're looking at is our feed-forward of a model from our current program.
Casting those across our drill program, they'll come across through there and try to target very similar results from the bottom or the footwall side and keep expanding to the east. At the same time, while we're drilling, we have staged this that we have the miners coming in, doing the West Drift 2070 East. Once they start that forward advance, that gives us enough space that we can put the drillers right behind them and get drilling and mining at the same time to start to accelerate that timeline. We'll drill it. We'll keep doing that expansion. We'll do another east and west drift further down the drift and turn around and bring the drills back down from the hanging wall side and potentially to test those further dip expansions of the Lucky Shot system there.
We're really excited about this program, and I can't underestimate, I don't want to say the nature of our models, how we can feed these forward. It's important to look at our drill programs are set up very specifically. We're not just winging holes out there. We look at these, each drill fan is almost like a mini thesis.
Sure.
Right now I have our project geo going through each of these sections, and he's coming out, looking at those model, and he's basically doing that predictive analysis right now before we drill of, hey, what do I expect to hit, at what depths, what faults do I think we're going to hit, and where do we think each one of these new vein updates we're going to hit? We update those as we drill. Each time a drill goes through, here's our hypothesis. We're testing that thesis on each drill hole as we go through, and we're updating our models as we log, and that's updating into the geologic model as we go.
Additionally, this is good because we can feed forward and let the drillers know, hey, you're going to hit a fault at 150 meters, or hey, I expect to see this vein at another 25. Slow down. Don't push it. Don't crush my vein. We're really excited about the program, how we're operating this moving forward, and really excited about this next phase of the next 12,000 meters of drilling underground to keep advancing this deposit that we have high potential for.
Awesome. No, I'm certainly excited to see what news comes next. Rick, I'm going to zoom out and ask some strategic questions of you, if you don't mind, just basically relating-
Can I just make a comment on the
Of course, please
On the KM vein, Dave mentioned this. We drifted out to the fault, the Lucky Shot fault, which offsets the Lucky Shot section of the vein from the Coleman section of the vein and shoves it uphill, basically. The geologic theory was that, okay, well, there's no mineralization on there, on the other side of the Lucky Shot fault. We purposely pushed it through the fault to see what was on the other side and make sure we knew where the fault was. I don't know how many different properties I have drilled in the past that you have a boundary fault that beyond which there's no mineralization because that's what somebody geologically determined at some point in time. Basically, they didn't have any data.
Sure.
That's really what exploration is about, is about collecting the data and testing theories, and sometimes you bump into new things that it's like, oh, it's a real eye-opener. The KM vein happens to be structurally in the orientation that you'd expect an extension to be happening in the Lucky Shot shear system. When you crunch rocks in an east-west way, they expand in that orientation, and that's the orientation. That's why it's at right angles. It all geologically makes a lot of sense, which is that's always reassuring.
Oh, yeah. Of course. I like Dave's explanation, every hole is a thesis. It's probably better than I've met cowboy geologists in my life. The scientific approach is probably a bit better. Rick, I'll throw it to you for one question. I know instead of keeping the rigs turning, currently Contango's paused at Lucky Shot to build out about 800 m of underground access first, is my understanding. For an investor watching the calendar, why is develop then drill the right order here?
It's room underground. It's making sure things are done safely, first of all. We're not going to wait till the entire 800 m is done before we start drilling again. We will, as soon as the 100 m on the extension of the West Drift is completed, we'll get the drills under there. As Dave said, we'll be basically drilling above our heads as the vein's just dipping above us. That'll get started within a month. I think they'll be done within a month of the getting the drift into the place.
Okay
We can get the drillers back in there. We've got some surface drilling to do as well. If you've looked at the pictures of Lucky Shot, that's a steep mountain. We want to get that work done in the summertime when it's nice weather, because in the wintertime, it's not so nice up top. It's great underground. Once you're underground, you don't really care what's going on above you. We'll get that work done this summer. We're not slowing down. It's just a little bit of a shift of focus. Dave, what do you have? About 2,500 m planned for the surface there? Is that what it is?
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, 2,500 m to 3,000 m. Yep. Great though. Infill, upgrade drilling.
Nice. Rick, I do want to ask, I know you've already mentioned a bit, but I did want to get you into the KM Vein too because I know you have some structural expertise. He's not just a pretty face, folks. Most programs at this stage, like you said, are mostly confirming what the team already expected. What does it mean to you, CEO, longtime controller of Lucky Shot. What does it mean to be opening up a brand new high-grade structure this deep into the work at this stage?
Well, the exciting thing is that because of where it's located, this wasn't known to anybody. The miners that were mining here in the 1920s, 1930s, and early 1940s, this was all below them, there's no way that they could've seen this. They didn't do exploration drilling back then. They drove when they drifted. They didn't do what we call exploration now. It really does open up the entire district for a different interpretation and just opens up a huge amount of potential targeting. We're going to stay focused on our area around Lucky Shot Coleman for right now. We got plenty to do.
This is another, I think it's a huge advantage with the DSO model is that we don't have to come up with a couple of million-ounce gold deposit to justify building a mill and a tailings facility and all that stuff.
Yeah
That takes a lot of capital and takes a lot of time to permit. We just need to put rocks in a box and send them up to Fort Knox for processing, the Fort Knox would love to have the ore, it's a very simple ore to process. As we said, quartz is mostly free gold. With a cyanide circuit to the gravity circuit, then you're going to get a good 90% plus recovery. Easy is good, Lucky Shot is simple and I know you just said it was complex.
Geologically
geologically complex, but from a processing standpoint, very simple.
That's geologically complex, metallurgically simple. That's a good T-shirt too, actually, next to Rossland. I do want to get into DSO a bit more, because I know, especially just looking at the list of folks in the room, there are quite a few that I don't think are familiar or as familiar with the story and the DSO model generally. For those folks, or the ones who are just familiar with Manh Choh but don't know how it applies to Lucky Shot, why is DSO the right fit for the high grade, narrow vein system you see at Lucky Shot?
Yeah, just a short repeat of history at Manh Choh. We made a nice discovery, 1 million ounces, 8 grams per tonne, open pit on top of a hill. From a mining standpoint, relatively simple, relatively straightforward. A 1 million ounces isn't enough gold to justify building a $400 million-$500 million facility. You have two choices. You either go find more, and in this case, the owners decided they didn't really want to put more money in to find more. Okay, well then you have the luxury of having the grade, 8 gram open pit. I think if it's not the highest grade open pit gold mine in the world, it's one of the highest grade open pit gold mines in the world.
If it costs you roughly 1 gram to transport it to an existing facility, well, you just saved yourself five years of permitting hell. Oh, $400 million-$500 million of capital. There's a price to pay for that, right? The price is 1 gram of gold to transport it up there, and paying the toll to Fort Knox, for the luxury of not having to put all that capital out yourself and spend all that time working with regulators to permit a tailings facility. Tailings is what is the most difficult thing to permit in the mining world, for a variety of reasons. They're more controversial.
Sure.
If you have an ore body that's not large enough to justify the capital and to ask the capital markets to support and take on the risk. That's why you see most junior companies have a target of 5 million ounces, because that's frankly the number that the big companies, that's their minimum threshold of what they're looking for. We actually think it's a really good business model to basically take the things that didn't make it to 5 million ounces, but that still meet our criteria of having high grade, close to existing infrastructure, and certainly in Alaska, U.S., if you're permitting just the mine on private land, that is something that I think you can get done relatively quickly, and we've demonstrated that now with Manh Choh and Lucky Shot, and we're in the process of demonstrating that with Johnson Tract.
We have two out of three permits that we need for Johnson Tract to develop an underground mine at Johnson Tract. Nothing's easy in the mining business, but it's relatively straightforward to permit a quarry operation, whether it's an open pit or an underground quarry, because again, you're not building that controversial thing that's a tailings facility. Mills are expensive, then both of those things need lots of power. Those are all things that we don't have to worry about with the DSO model.
No, appreciate that. I think there's folks in the room who aren't aware, it's helpful. Another thing, this again is for I think the large number of people in the room who mentioned that they're not shareholders when they registered for the event, which I always appreciate people noting. GMS is on site and already 43 meters in with five months of development ahead, as far as I understand it. For somebody who's in the room now deciding whether to tune in now, get involved in the stock now, or check back later, what does news flow look like over that stretch? What do people have to be excited about here?
I think, Dave chime in here, but I think, let's say, give us two or three more weeks to get the West Drift done, then we'll get the drillers in there, I think you're going to lock that out in what? A month and a half or so?
Yeah.
Drilling in there. He's got his rigs up on top of the mountain. I think you'll expect news flow here in probably 2 months again. Of course, that's all Lucky Shot. We'll continue to get the drill results from surface, then we'll be back underground drilling. There'll be a regular every other month news flow from Lucky Shot, I think.
There'll be an underground drill right now. It's pretty extensive with those developments. We'll drill through Christmas. We'll make sure the drillers can get Santa to see it, but we'll drill through Christmas and into the new year to finalize that program. We'll have a lot of great results as we keep advancing these models for the next six, eight months.
The purpose of all this drilling is to complete a feasibility level mine plan, a transportation plan, an arrangement with Fort Knox or somewhere else, to toll the ore. We're not doing this just It isn't just exploration anymore. It's advanced exploration to complete a feasibility study. What we're targeting is something that'll produce 40,000-50,000 ounces of gold for a five-year mine plan. That's a pretty typical underground development plan. In order to build a new facility, yeah, you'd need 10 years of mine life to justify it and for capital markets to take on the risk to do that. That again is a nice benefit of the DSO model because you're not building all those things. You're not capitalizing all those things. It's going to cost us $50 million to get to a decision point to develop the mine.
Great. I got a couple more questions about Lucky Shot. I know there's a question in the chat about multiple projects, I want to get to everything today. Let me do a couple more about Lucky Shot. It'll be my last question. I know Contango's called the KM vein another dimension for exploring not just Lucky Shot, but the whole Willow district. I'd love to hear from both of you, actually. I'll start with you, Rick, but then I can jump to you, Dave. If the next year goes the way you're hoping, if Santa's wish list goes Contango's way for this year at Lucky Shot, what does this project look like on our June 17th call next year?
Feasibility study. Yeah. We're talking the feasibility study results. Here's going to cost Yeah, I'll make up a number here, but it's in the ballpark, another $30 million-$40 million to put this into production.
Great.
That's the plan. Then, obviously once we're in production, you're generating strong cash flows. I know Dave's going to ask for a bigger budget. I know that.
Dave, you already see the bigger budget in your head?
Yeah. To follow up with Rick, the vision is to keep expanding, growing that seed from inside. That's the disciplined approach of underground. Once we do the Lucky Shot, Coleman, the PEA, we've already got plans on, hey, how do we want to attack the War Baby and then the Murphy Complex right next to us. Just still locally then advance that near mine exploration. Then stepping out further, what do we do with the rest of the district that we control? What do we know with the structural regime, how this deposit comes together, and apply those to the rest of the historics across it through the next 10 years.
Awesome.
Maybe Dave could mention, we've got a student that we're wrapping into to study Lucky Shot and look at the district. This thing's going to go on a long time and high-grade veins are pretty cool. They're fun veins to study. I think we're going to get a good student in here and we'll learn a lot more with that detailed level of academic study as well.
No, appreciate it. There's a couple of .edu email addresses in the room actually, I hope the students are taking a look at that kind of stuff too. In that same area, Philip from the chat wanted to know, Dave, I'll throw this to you, what's the plan for narrow vein mining generally? I know we can discuss it, but if you could get into some detail.
Yeah. I'll give this from a geological complex, not just in exploration, but I spend a lot of time on the mine geology side. Historically, with the orientation of the Lucky Shot, there was a lot of long hole slusher stopes. To directly answer your question, I would say we don't know yet. The reason we don't know yet is because the geological models are changing. Like we talked about, complexity updating. It wouldn't be prudent to pin one method. The intent is to continue this drilling, advance those geological models, get our domains, get the models, get the mineral resource estimate up there, that's when we get our engineer studies in there, right about that PEA time, because we'll have to put that in there. What's it look like? What's the best optimization? Do we do this more conventional? Can we long hole this?
Can we do some new technologies that are coming on to do some more shallow long hole stoping in this stuff? All those I expect to be wrapped up and have that initial presentation in the PEA next year that shows what's the best way. The key to the underground narrow stuff is, of course, minimizing dilution, optimizing the ore that you got, even to the potential of We've had discussion, do we need ore sorting through here? How do we optimize this going through? That's all going to be hung off the geological model and the mineral resource estimate model that we're fighting on right now.
Awesome. Appreciate that.
I haven't sorry to sidestep the question geologically, but it's got to be done first. Yeah.
Hey, we'll-
The other thing, look, it's going to be narrow vein underground mining, so it's going to be expensive mining. We get that. That's why you need the grade.
Yeah. No, makes sense. One for you, Rick, about Lucky Shot. Then we'll get into other projects that are bundled through the chat and stuff that I've seen online. Mauricio wanted to know what are relationships like with indigenous groups at Lucky Shot. If you could just tell that story real quick, that'd be great.
Yeah, no, the Alaska Native Corporation, it's a village corporation in Knik. We've got a good working relationship with them. This is all on private land. It's not like Manh Choh that is on actual Tetlin Native Council land. That's tribal land at Manh Choh. The project itself is on private land, old patented mining claims. This is traditional territory of the Knik Tribe. We have a good working relationship with them actually both on Lucky Shot and Johnson Tract. Yeah, that's the relationship there. Knik is a fairly sophisticated organization. They've got a number of businesses. We're talking to them about a number of opportunities. I think when you have a group that is well organized and knows what their abilities are, it's actually fairly easy to work
Awesome. No, appreciate that helpful answer. There's a number of questions in the chat and a number of questions that came in on email that all basically amount to, "Love the new company, but I came in with Dolly Varden. Tell me about Kitsault." Rick, if you could give an update on Kitsault, that's what some of the people here are looking for.
Yeah, no, exciting. Yeah, we've got five drills turning. Dave and I are down here, heading down there in July. Lots of activity. The drilling's a big thing. We're focused right now on the silver-centric part of the district. Torbrit, Dolly Varden, Kitsault vein.
Wolf Vein
What's it called?
Wolf Vein
Northstar. Northstar and Wolf. There's a cluster of five or six deposits right in there. We're updating the MRE. That's going to be out hopefully in the middle of July, is what we're shooting for now. We're a little bit late. Our QP got waylaid and shanghaied or whatever.
One of those
We were hoping to get it done by the end of June, but it looks like it'll be more towards the second, third week of July is what we're shooting for now. The MRE is the first thing to happen, but the five drills are continuing to do a lot of infill drilling and expansion. We're excited what we're seeing at Northstar. Like you see at the Lucky Shot we have VG. Well, at Northstar we have VS.
There you go.
Which is really cool. It's not a mineral you see a lot of, but when you see it, you know it. Lots of exciting news coming out of the drill results there. Probably going to expect the drill results in a month-ish. We'll see how. It's a busy year for everybody. There's everybody and their brothers out in the field. It's hard to find drill rigs, but it's even harder to find drillers for drill rigs.
Sure.
We talked to a number of companies that have drill rigs that are idle because they don't have drillers. This tells you it's going to be a very busy year out there, we'll see how the lab turnaround gets. Once you get up on step with the lab and the samples coming in, whether it's a six-week turnaround or whatever it is, once you get there, you can plan on that regular periodicity. I'm going to say first results in about a month out of Kitsault.
Great. No, appreciate that and helpful for the folks that came in originally through Dolly Varden. Somebody from the chat wanted to say, "Give our regards for success to Rob van Egmond and the team in the field." Throwing that your way. He also called it, I haven't heard this before, called Kitsault the silver lining of the Golden Triangle. Is that just poetry from the chat or is that a Seanism that I missed at some point?
Might've been a Seanism, that's good. I like that. I want to use it. Can we use that?
Yeah. Well, I'll reach out for copyright, Ben from the chat. I'd appreciate it. There's one question that's not a question at all. It's advice that came out straight off the top of the hour. Somebody said, "You need a mill for the Golden Triangle assets. Need to tie one up before they're all spoken for." I'll have you speak to that, Rick.
We're in the process. That's all I'll say right there. That's the golden goose. That's in process. I can't say a whole lot more than that, but that observation is absolutely key to the next level of where we want to get Contango to.
Awesome. No, appreciate that very much. I'll give everybody one last chance to both press the Request Meeting button but also ask any final questions. I'll let you guys end off with what you're most excited about, both at Lucky Shot and for the rest of this year. Rick, I'll start with you, if you've got an answer off the top of your head, and then we'll jump to Dave for just about people at the last second to request meetings.
Yeah, I'm excited to see all the drill results, but I'm particularly excited about the KM Vein. Just because knowing that that's the expansion orientation from a structural standpoint, I think that's exciting. Is there one vein? Are we going to see the same thing that we see at the Lucky Shot system where you have multiple veins? This drift is going to be really, really interesting to get in. Obviously, the drilling will be even more interesting to follow up. Then of course, when you got five drill rigs turning at Kitsault, and Kitsault has a habit of producing among the top 10 drill results for any given period of time. There'll be some very exciting news there.
Awesome. Dave, what's keeping you up at night with excitement for the rest of 2026?
As a Fairbanksan , I'm just happy that summer's here, and I'm excited to get out into the field. I ain't going to lie. The great weather, that means field season. Where I'm at, I get excited to get out there to the field, to work with our crews, to work with our geos, to see that spark, to see that driven in geology, to advance the geology but focused on ore deposits. If we do a little teach coach mentoring as we go, yes, we see these great results, making sure those programs are on track. That's what I get excited about, getting out there, doing the field visits. We have great communication nowadays, with the webinars and the web chats, but getting out there and seeing it firsthand is what I get excited about. Maneuvering these drills, getting them into the targets, advancing the geology.
We'll force them through the assay system and then back into the models. That's what we're excited about.
I have to say, you mentioned communication, Dave. I thought it was pretty cool that we, Contango Silver & Gold, got to ring the bell on the TSX the same day that SpaceX launched. That was awesome.
That's pretty cool. I got to say, of all the days, that's a fun one to be on it. I know you guys ringing the NYSE and the TSX in the same couple of months, obviously very exciting. Rick, Dave, thanks so much for going through. I know with the portfolio of projects at all stages, it's really fun to put a spotlight onto Lucky Shot. I appreciate you guys running through questions and appreciate the news this week.
Yeah.
For everybody in the room, I know there's quite a few of you. First of all, as always, thanks for behaving. Whenever there's more than 150 people, I like to say that. Appreciate it very much. If you do have any questions that we didn't get to today, or you think of the perfect one right after, let me know. I'll make sure the Contango team gets them. Everybody, thanks for spending the day with us. Rick and Dave, hope you have a great end to your Wednesday.