KE Report Interview
Cherie Leeden, President and CEO of Gold Bull Resources (TSX.V:GBRC – OTCQB:GRRCF) joins me to recap yesterday’s news reporting drill results from the Silica Ridge. Hole 43 was the best hole in the release yielding a high-grade intercept of 13..13g/t gold over 1.5meters withing a long intercept of 51.8 meters at 1.12g/t gold. The Company also announced the increase to the drill program to 5,000 meters (from 4,000 meters initially planned).
Transcript
Gold Bull Resources just hit another milestone in the advancement of its highly prospective Sandman Property. An April 19 news release announced a near surface intersection of 51.8 metres of 1.2g/t Au at the Nevada property’s Silica Ridge Target. The lengthy intersection notably included 1.5 metres of 13.13g/t Au, which suggests the presence of narrow, high-grade deposits at lower depths.
A pit-constrained mineral resource estimate released in January, 2021 established a contained resource of 494koz Au at Sandman with 433koz in the indicated category. Gold Bull CEO, Cherie Leeden, has remained adamant that her company will push that estimate to 1Moz in due time. Leeden’s confidence lies in the comparable geology and close proximity Sandman shares with Nevada’s historic Sleeper Mine, which produced 1.7Moz Au over a ten year mine life.
Leeden met with the KE Report’s Cory Fleck to discuss the latest discovery at Sandman and its impact on Gold Bull’s drill program moving forward.
Cory Fleck:
Hey everyone, welcome to another daily editorial here on the KE Report. In this daily editorial, we are getting an update from Gold Bull Resources. Traded on the TSX venture exchange under the symbol, GBRC and on the OTCQB under the symbol, GBRCF. I am chatting with the president and CEO Cherie Leeden. Now, Gold Bull is focused in Nevada. The company has a couple projects. The one we’re going to be focused on today is the Sandman Property. Now this project was acquired from Newmont in late 2020. Already has just short of 500,000oz gold resource on it. That resource comes from four different areas on the project. The area we’re discussing today is Silica Ridge. The company just released drill results yesterday, April 19th, from the Silica Ridge area. The headline number says up to 13g/t gold intersected over 1.5m. There’s also a longer width; 51.8m at 1.12g/t gold. So Cherie, balancing out the high grade intercept over a bit narrower width, as well as this long interval of just over 1g/t gold. Outline some more of these drill results to us. What it means for moving Silica Ridge, that area forward, please?
Cherie Leeden:
So Sandman is prospective for two different styles of gold. We’ve got the broad near-surface, low grade oxide gold, which is going around 0.5 To 1g/t. And we also have prospectivity and proof of narrow vein, high grade gold, which we call our feeder or our bonanza mineralization styles. And that’s typically going 5 to 15g/t. So one is potentially amenable to the open pit style of mining and the higher grade to potential underground mining. So we are looking for both and historically the work that was done in the 1980s and 90s was very much focused on the oxide, low grade gold at surface. So until we acquired the projects, no one’s really focused on the high grade feeder mineralization. And our announcement really highlighted the 13g/t gold over the 1.5m Because that’s proof that there are high grade feeder zones within our low grade. Silica Ridge at the moment is a resource of something like 100,000oz at 0.5g/t. So not only do we have higher grade within our relatively low grade. So that 1.12g/t is quite phenomenal, kind of numbers for the oxide low grade at surface. Then we’ve also got that high grade proof that there’s high grade feeders feeding and sourcing this low grade that we’ve got in these surficial deposits. So it doesn’t take a lot of dimensions or a lot of meters to really add ounces when you’ve got grades such as 13g/t, which is why we’re pretty excited about that high grade hit within the low grade.
Cory Fleck:
So this headline hole, both of the inter sets that I outlined, this is Hole 45. Can you outline where this hole was located in terms of the known resource and what potentially it could do to grow what the resource already is?
Cherie Leeden:
Yeah, so this hole was located towards the middle of our resource, and currently we are drilling another hole directly under it. And in our cross section, they kind of look like they’re on top of each other, but in reality, they’re about 70m apart. And we are trying to hit below this hole that we reported with the 13g/t. We’re trying to hit about 70m below that, towards what we call a basal contact, which is basically just two different rock types, because that’s where we think that the high grade mineralization probably would’ve settled when it came up a fault zone. So the next hole, Hole 52 that we’re drilling currently is going to be quite telling, that’s going to tell us, does this grade continue? Does the width continue? Does it get better? Does it get worse? So all those answers we’re going to have in this Hole 52. Ideally we’d do a couple more holes beneath it because it’s really indicative that there is something happening below the known Silica Ridge, low grade deposit. So now it’s all about trying to ascertain the legs or the roots of this deposit and hopefully those grades continue.
Cory Fleck:
So is this component what’s going to be tested with the increase in the drill program? Because also announced in this news was that the drill program initially planned for 4,000m is now going to be 5,000m.
Cherie Leeden:
That increase actually came from some positive lag sampling, which is basically surface geochemical sampling. And our team have discovered another couple of high priority targets based on that surface geochemical sampling. And we’ve got a couple of areas that are going over 1g/t at the surface that have never had a drill hole. And we call some of these targets our Sandbowl Target and our Midway Target. So those ones are where we’re extending the program. So they’re well and truly outside the known resources, they’re where we’ve got gold at surface with no explanation of that gold at surface and no drill holes, and testing that gold. So we’re very much looking forward to testing those, and again, those targets are twofold. Once again, we’d be very happy with either or the high grade or the low grade targets in those untested areas.
Cory Fleck:
Okay. So whole new targets to be tested. Have the drills started turning on these new targets or is that coming in the near term ?
Cherie Leeden:
That’s coming in the near term. Currently our drill rig is positioned on that Hole 52, that’s testing the depth extents that we reported in Hole 45, the 13g/t. So that will be finished, I’d say in about five days or so, and then they’ll be going to these new targets, the Sandbowl and Midway Targets. So we’ve got plenty of news flow coming. We also have batches of assay results still at the lab that we’re expecting in the coming weeks. So we’ve got the news flow flowing now that we are receiving the assay results that we submitted a couple of months ago.
Cory Fleck:
Yeah. The lab’s still a bit behind, but more results, it sounds like, to come. Cherie, one thing that we’ve talked about on a number of interviews is the growth of the company from this 500,000oz resource up to a 1Moz. How is that progressing in your eyes?
Cherie Leeden:
It’s progressing positively. We’ve announced a number of intersections and holes at Sandman where we have hit mineralization well and truly outside the known resources. So we try and make that pretty obvious in our press releases when it’s outside the resource, so the market can come to their own conclusions that it’s growing in the right direction. We believe that essentially with these epithermal deposits the more you drill, the more ounces you’re going to add. So it just comes down to how much do those ounces add from a cost of drilling perspective. This current drill program wasn’t so much about adding to the non resources, but to define completely new targets, the high grade targets. So where we are drilling through our current resources, that’s not the actual point. The point is to go beneath the current resources and to explore for that geological contact that’s located, typically about 50 to 100m beyond where the previous drilling stopped. So in some instances we are going through our resource which has a twofold bonus impact in that it increases our resource category and confidence having a better density of dual data. But it’s not the main point of this program, which is to find new ounces or new discoveries rather than add to the current resources.
Cory Fleck:
Okay. Yeah, so very much exploration discovery focused drilling still, and looking for some of those high grade components, how much are other projects in the area leading to some of the interpretation of these results and what’s possible at these deeper levels in terms of higher grade?
Cherie Leeden:
Well, our model is the Sleeper Deposit, which was one of the highest grade deposits ever discovered in Nevada and it’s predominantly mined out now. They left a little bit behind, but that was a 3Moz reserve and it was just bonanza grades and Sleeper was another one of those deposits that is very narrow. It’s basically the width of your room or almost the size of the width of a car, but the visible gold that was visible in the resource just made it one of the most profitable projects that the state has ever seen. And the chap responsible for discovering that project, his name’s John Wood, and we’re very fortunate to have John Wood as our advisor. So John Wood is working closely with our team. He’s been instrumental in defining many of these drill hole locations and working with our team to essentially test this new target, looking for the bonanza high grade. So hopefully with John’s expertise and his background in Sleeper, we’re on the pathway to put our holes in the right place at Sandman.
Cory Fleck:
So Cherie, another question that I get broadly when it comes to explorers in Nevada is, are there any close by deposits, other companies that are smaller than you that could be an acquisition target in terms of adding ounces through acquiring other companies?
Cherie Leeden:
Yes, absolutely. There’s both bigger and smaller players around us. So we’re already in discussions with just about all of our neighbors. Many of them have small 50 to 200,000oz projects that we could potentially feed into a central processing facility. So we’re most certainly talking to our neighbors and very active dialogues with our neighbors. And then there’s also bigger projects like Hycroft and like Rosebud and Twin Creeks, so there’s multimillion ounce known projects around and we are very eager to talk to everyone. So we’re talking to the guys bigger than us, looking, exploring potential synergies and also talking to the players smaller than us, again exploring potential synergies. So M&A has always been on a high priority for us, and we’re certainly active in that space.
Cory Fleck:
Okay Cherie, Thank you for this update. I will post a link to that news release so everyone can look through the cross sections as well as general overview of the Sandman project and where some of the targets and deposits already lie. Cherie, keep us up to date on future news. And full disclosure, I am a shareholder of Gold Bull Resources. If you have any follow up questions for Cherie, please email me fleck@kereport.com. I will get those addressed for you. Cherie, thank you again for your time. Have a great rest of your week.
Cherie Leeden:
Thank you very much, Cory. Appreciate it.