High-Grade Copper & Gold at Birch, Update & Catalysts

0:09 Hello everyone and thank you for tuning in today for this live event. We are joined by Rory Quinn, President and CEO of Yukon Metals, who will be discussing the high-grade copper and gold results from the Birch project, as well as discuss an upcoming catalyst for the company. Now there will be a live Q&A, so please do feel free to submit your questions in the chat in the bottom right corner of your screen. This event is also being recorded and will be made available shortly after the event. With the housekeeping out of the way, Rory, thank you for doing this, the floor is yours.

0:37 Thank you, Kyle. And thank you everybody for joining me today to learn a little bit more about UConn Metals and Birch in particular. I will focus on Birch today and we've recently had news on Birch and I'll recap Star River toward the end here. Star River has been quite eye-catching and I think has gotten a lot of attention given Bonanza grade gold and silver. I think Birch is probably less understood by the investor base. We saw a really good uptick in our share price and volume given Star River news. And as I said, I think Birch is relatively less understood. Internally, we are equally excited about Birch as we are about Star River.

1:28 Very, very bullish on the opportunity at Birch. So yeah, getting into it, Birch is roughly 65 kilometers away from Burwash Landing, which is how we access Birch, and roughly 35 kilometers away from the nearest road.

1:55 So as far as the genesis of Birch and how it entered our portfolio, it was initially it was it was owned by it was owned by Sean Ryan, sorry, because the name was evading me. Sean Ryan and Ryan Gold. They did a lot of ground-truthing there. They approached it as an epithermal gold target and did demonstrate a nice gold and soil anomaly at Birch. We didn't receive the certificates there. And so it was behooved us to do our own work, but we also approached Birch quite differently, whereas it was worked on by Sean Ryan and his group as they raised quite a bit of money, did a lot of soil work there.

2:48 We thought that it had copper porphyry potential and the gold there was part of sort of an enrichment blanket, the epithermal part of an intact copper porphyry. And I think that thesis has come to pass now with the work that we've done there. So what we've demonstrated there at Birch now is a 1400 meter long anomaly, a Gold and Copper in soil anomaly. You can see that down to the left here. It looks like a fish with Pinocchio fish, if you will. And yeah, so that's 1400 meters long, almost a gram per ton Gold in soils up to almost a gram per tonne Gold in soils.

3:40 There are places, even just in Canada, the Malarctic, other assets where they're mining a grand per tonne gold. And we're seeing up to a grand per tonne gold in soils and over 0.2% copper. So big, big target there. And so not only are we seeing that kind of size that we'd want to see there, we're also seeing grade. So mostly at Birch, you're dealing with overburden there. Whereas at Star River, we see a lot of outcropping, a lot of float, a lot of rocks. There's very limited amounts of that at Birch, but what prospecting we did do at Birch and with finding and collecting rocks for sampling, we did find some compelling samples there. So the one on the right here, that graded over 14 gram per ton gold and 0.4% copper.

4:39 So early on, we were quite excited about this project and the potential for size, for scale and grade.

4:49 Early on, we put out sort of partial results from the soil sampling. And with the soil sampling, we followed up with a tighter grid than what was done under Sean Ryan's group. And we used mechanized powered soil drill. So with you're doing soils relatively shallow, on a relatively shallow basis, there can be a lot of smearing over time of that top layer of soil. And so what we did is we used technology to drill down up to about a meter. And so in some cases, just above the rock there, And those gave us some really good samples. So as you can see here, this was the initial copper anomaly that we're seeing. And you can see that that matches up quite well with the gold and soil anomaly we're seeing. We sort of see that spattered down here as well to the south, But in the north of the project, pretty good overlap there between the gold and the copper.

5:53 And then also, as we followed up on this gold and copper and soil anomaly, We also tested the moly as well. And so you're seeing moly more towards the South, but also very, very good readings of moly. So really seeing all of the elements that you'd want to see, certainly the copper gold, molybdenum, that you'd want to see when wanting to develop a copper porphyry prospect. Also what we have seen, what we saw over the summer program is high-grade copper. So I demonstrated on the previous page, a rock sample that were 14 gram per tonne gold. We also found rock samples of 2.4% copper and above.

6:47 So I think 4% Copper and above. I think the opportunity at Birch is now that we have the scale of 1,400m long. If you compare that to other meaningful copper gold deposits, I mean, for instance, casino, Western copper and gold's casino isn't a million miles away in the Yukon. I would say that The main part of that ore body is probably, well, I say ore body, mineralized body, is between, I would say probably a kilometer, a kilometer and a half, right? And that's probably one of the bigger undeveloped copper gold systems in certainly North America, right? So it's, this is certainly the Yukon has the potential to emplace these type of systems, these type of powerful systems there.

7:47 And so we were tremendously excited about this. We are already working towards a drill program now. We'll overlay all of the data points that we have and sort of work towards the strongest drill targets. And if it wasn't for the seasonality at Birch, we would likely be drilling this in the not too distant future here. As it is, we're already working on the permitting necessary for likely a May start next year and working on on a 50 50 person camp so that we can have a really meaningful drill program here a couple of drills going all all season. So now I'll recap Star for some folks that might just be taking a look at the opportunity here. I think Star has probably moved the needle more than Birch, given, like I said, those pretty eye-catching numbers of work that we've done there and sampling that we've done there and the high grades that we've seen there.

8:56 So one interesting thing about Star River is its road access, so roughly 5 hours all the

9:03 way from Whitehorse. And so the road intersects the property on these east to west here, roughly east to west. And so we have 2 really interesting areas on both sides of that road. And so you tend to, as you go up from the road, you tend to see the outcropping as you go up the hill. And To the right, this is the type of rock that we're seeing all over the property at Starr. So that's galena and the sample there is the sample that was roughly 11,000 gram per tonne silver, so almost 4 ounces per tonne gold equivalent.

9:49 But we're seeing lots of

9:56 silver samples of roughly a thousand gram per ton. I would say of 11,000 gram per ton, 4,000 gram per ton silver, those are outliers. What I would say is going through all of the highlights that we've seen, I would say a thousand grand per ton silver might be just about the most common sample that we have. So just done over a thousand gram per tonne silver, just under a thousand gram per tonne silver. And we're seeing that throughout the property. So it's not just in 1 area. You can see it, you can see it here, here, and these are hundreds of meters apart. And we're seeing the same rocks and the same sort of rock packages in multiple areas. And then here to the south as well.

10:43 So multiple showings here of this high grade silver in Galena. And I think what, when I talked to Quinton Hennie about this, he was considering potential analogs for Star River and he considered the Keno Hill was a pretty good analog. Keno Hill is produced around a thousand grand per tonne silver for many decades, was also an asset that Wheaton Precious Metals had a stream on. And so very, very good, very good asset. And so I think, I think certainly a worthy comparison on the silver side. But subsequently, we've also seen incredibly high grade gold as well.

11:32 And again, we're seeing this in multiple areas. And really, the gold was what, with regard to the history of Star River, the gold was what the old timers were after. So we see closed adits there where the old timers were after this Gold and when they found it, just drifted into the hill. This is highly oxidized Acinopyrite. It's quite soft and crumbly, so you could actually mine it with relatively primitive tools. And so of course, here, the 100 gram per ton gold, obviously, Bonanza grade, and 3 ounces per ton gold equivalent.

12:18 That was very impressive. And I think when talking to Quinton Henney again, he thought, well, that's a bit different. That kind of changed his calculus about the potential at Star River. But we see plenty of gold grades in the 6, 7, and 9 grand per ton range. So when we initially approached Star River, we looked at it as a silver led zinc opportunity. So base metal with some precious metal credits. And I think now after the work that we've done, we see it really as a precious metal opportunity with some solid base metal credits. So here, the potential with STAR is that we're already working at STAR similarly with Birch on our permitting for next season.

13:14 We'll look for a Class 3 permit, 50-person camp. There is the potential here given an all, this is an all weather road that's plowed by the government year round. So there is the potential there to drill through winter. And so we'll look at that potential, but yeah, you can have, you can there, you can bring in large machinery, you can bring in drills by road. So drilling costs go down and building a substantial camp is quite a bit easier. So we're now scoping, we've been scoping sites now at Birch and Star River for meaningful camps for next season. And we'll have more, we'll be able to share more information on Star River relative to the geophysics that we've done there. We've done electromagnetic work and gravity work and so we'll demonstrate to the market our understanding of what we believe we have at Star River and how we're going to approach it next season.

14:19 Similarly at Birch, to finish off there, we've done induced polarization there as a tool to understand the bedrock better. And we'll be putting out news on Birch relative to that and then bring all the data points together at Birch and demonstrate again why we think we have an intact copper porphyry there, a gold-rich copper porphyry, and then discuss how we intend to delineate that as well. So that's the end of my presentation relative to Birch and a bit of a star recap. Kyle? Excellent.

15:05 Thank you very much here and for anyone that just tuned in we are doing a Q&A session so please feel free to submit your questions. I noticed some of you have already submitted questions upon registration So I'll go through some of those. Thank you, Roy, for the great presentation. First question we have here, you mentioned the anomalous zone extends over 1400 meters. How does this scale compare to other significant copper gold porphyry systems in the region? Well, typically, if you've got a kilometer long gold and copper anomaly, particularly given the kind of alteration that we're seeing, And I think that points towards a strong potential for a powerful mineralized system.

15:55 Right. And I think I mentioned, I mean, look, this is very early on And something like, for instance,

16:03 Western Copper and Gold's casino in the Yukon, that is that's in the permitting stage and they're de-risking that. But I mean, if you look at, I think, look at that pit shell, it's probably, I mean, if you take the mineralization and then you've got to build a pit from there, right? And I would say that's probably about a kilometer and a half in distance, maybe, and depending on how they structure it, but that's a very meaningful size, right? And so we're seeing great as well though, right? And so we're not just seeing the potential for scale, we're seeing there 14 grand per tonne gold in rock and then also 2.4% copper. So I think there we've got a pretty good indication of the potential for scale and grade and an intact copper porphyry.

17:06 With porphyry systems, typically they develop at depth. What do these high grade surface samples tell you more? Like, go ahead and elaborate further on that and the potential system you're targeting below? Sorry, what was the question, Kyle?

17:22 With porphyry systems typically developing at depth, what do these high-grade surface samples tell us about the potential systems you're targeting below? It's a little bit too early to tell about the potential depth at this time. We'll need to do, we're doing interpretation of this induced polarization I mentioned, and that gives us more information about the bedrock. But what the soils, I think, show is the potential for a hydrothermal

17:58 system closer to surface, right? And in a porphyry, that's generally what you would see is this kind of enrichment layer and a hydrothermal, epithermal gold relatively close to system, surface I should say, with this large copper porphyry underneath. So I think that what the soils indicate is the good potential there for this epithermal goal, that surface, And our thesis is that that's part of a copper porphyry. Now you mentioned Sean Ryan was the previous owner of the Star River property, correct?

18:45 That was Birch. Oh, Birch property. Now Sean's a legendary prospector, right? So I'm always curious, why would someone part ways with their project? Yeah, well, that company, they raised a lot of money and did a lot of soil sampling, but there wasn't money then for the follow-up and interpretation. And so my understanding of that property in particular is they just ran out of money. And I think they were acquired relatively cheaply. At the end, they're Ryan Gold. So I think they were able to raise a bunch of money, a lot of flow through, had to spend it relatively quickly.

19:31 And then essentially the company sort of went sideways and my understanding was acquired and didn't have the money to work on it anymore. And so I think that's subsequent to that, that Ron Berdahl and the Berdahl family, obviously other legendary figures now in the Yukon work to acquire it. And that's how we are now the beneficiaries of that. Thank you, appreciate that. Next question here, The involvement of Vision Quest, a Yukon First Nations owned company, seems significant. Could you discuss how this partnership benefits both the local community and Yukon Meadows exploration program? Yeah, great question.

20:19 Vision Quest have been really critical to the work that we've done. So very early on, even when we were waiting to close the transaction for Yukon Metals and the Birdol transaction. Vision Quest worked with us to do some staking work up in the Yukon. We worked with them to really get a good buffer around all of the key assets that we had. So to stake areas, so in around Birch, Talbot, AZ, some of these really key properties of ours. They worked with us to stake in spring.

21:02 At Star River, VisionQuest built our camp there. That was really our main camp there, so really substantial at any time. We had 3 geos working there, 3 geophysicists, and they helped set that camp up. And then probably most critically, Vision Quest worked with our team doing the soil drilling at Birch. And so Birch actually sits in Klawanee territory. And I should say Vision Quest is owned, is a Klawani First Nation owned and operated exploration and outfitting company. And so, yeah, I mean, it was benefited us very early on working, working with them. We came into the season relatively late. We just closed the transaction on June 3rd and got listed and, and we were in the field with, with Vision Quest the next month. So as far as a partnership goes, we certainly gain from their expertise and knowledge of the territories.

22:10 And as I mentioned in Birch, Talbot AZ, that is a Kloane First Nation territory. And so having them work in that territory and they're very knowledgeable of the wildlife and everything that you might imagine in those in nature and in the communities. And then I'd say there's been a big benefit to us, I would say, as far as the benefit to them. I mean, obviously, I think to the extent that you can, you want to ensure that as much of the work and money and spin-offs that are spent in the area goes to folks from those areas as possible.

23:00 And I would say another benefit is that company has, I think, done a lot of work for us, and they've been able to now, like they've bought, continued to buy more and more equipment. And then as far as with the soil drills, our team went out there with VisionQuest. And so I think they were able to really work with them to do this soil drilling, which is pretty intricate. I mean, it takes some skill. And so they've really been able to develop

23:40 skills now on doing pretty intricate exploration work that I hope is gonna be able to benefit us and them going forward on multiple assets. Thank you, Rory. Peter Epstein in the chat here is wondering, and sorry I didn't look into if you have historical drill results, but he's asking why no drill results over the decades like from the 1990s. Thank you. And this is this is relative to everything? If you're listening, please confirm if it's about Birch specifically. We'll start with Birch because the topic, the main thing we're discussing today is the Birch property. Birch, yes. Oh, Birch.

24:27 Well, as mentioned, so that was worked on by, as mentioned by Sean Ryan and doing relatively, I mean, it wasn't the tightest of spacing on that gold anomaly. And so I would say that you would want to do a lot more work than that. So the type of work we did this season, so doing follow-up work there, and we approached it differently than Sean Ryan did. But then also we've done LIDAR, we've done geophysics, we've now done induced polarization. So I think kind of wildcatting like that and going out and drilling without multiple data points can get you in quite a bit of trouble.

25:14 You can waste a lot of money that way. Drilling is very expensive. Everything here needs to be helicoptered in.

25:22 I would say for us, you can spend a heck of a lot less money doing corroborating work and doing multiple layers of targeting that we feel very comfortable now will produce and has produced really good high quality drill targets, that costs a heck of a lot less money than drilling. And so I think the work we've done this season now has put us in that position. Really, as far as why not drilling, I mean, the Yukon is this one of the reasons the Yukon is so perspective is that there's just so much there that has not been developed yet.

26:09 Right. I mean, even with the package, the land package we have, I mean, we're prioritizing 2 to 3 assets out of 17. There is just so much high quality there in the Yukon. And so, I mean, if you look at other assets around North America, It can take 30, 40 years for something to go from being a prospect and being prospected to actually being developed. So it can generally can be just that one company's advancing it, they run out of money and then another company picks it up. In our case, it was picked up by a prospect, a family prospector in the Yukon that really bootstrapped it over many years.

27:03 Yeah, I mean, the reason why you float these sort of things on an exchange is so you can raise the money to go drill these things. So I would suggest it certainly isn't for a lack of quality and potential. I think the burdolls have demonstrated, I mean, up to 3 and a half years ago, Snowline's Valley project, right, that's now what, 7 million ounces, that hadn't been drilled up to 3 and a half years ago. So I think They spent a year targeting that and then getting in there with the drill. I would just say there's so much potential in the Yukon. There's been places that have been overlooked. It costs money to drill and that leads into Brian's question here. Just wondering about the timeline and how you're going to raise the capital to generate a drill program.

28:00 We're not in a position where we have to access the capital markets at all. We have just under $10 million in the bank at the end of the season. So I think, first of all, we'll do the work of planning drill programs at Berkshire Star River, we'll budget them and then sort of, and put that together and talk to the market about these programs. Look, if the market is tremendously bullish and there's a want for us to be more aggressive. Could we top up? Sure, but not at 50 cents. I think if there's an appetite at 70 to 80 cents, I think that could be something we'd entertain.

28:45 But with 10 million, it's certainly not a situation where we have to go back to the market and I'm not in the midst of any capital raise here at all. So we've still got lots we can do here to demonstrate the potential at Star River and Birch, just for starters, and then put together meaningful drill programs that will be within this budget. So yeah, sure, if there's the potential for us to get extra aggressive here, we can, and we can do a little top-up in the near. As far as, did you mention timeline as well? Yes, as well as timeline and I guess I would add on and prioritization of targets, like you have multiple ones. How are you gonna decide which ones you're gonna go after first?

29:33 Well, so Star River and Birch are the 2 assets that we're are the most advanced for us. So we believe both of those are drill ready. So those are the 2 that we're currently planning on having meaningful drill programs on for next year. As far as timing, I mean, you deal with the seasonality in the Yukon, so I think you're looking at a May start there, right? I mean, you look to building camps there and having then an entire season of drilling. And we can get a lot done. So as far as picking what we have, yeah, I think both of them, you look for the most corroboration between all the data points that you have.

30:20 And we think we've got very strong drill targets now on both assets, which was not the case at the beginning of last season. Excellent. Thank you, Rory. And thank you everyone that submitted questions here. It looks like we've addressed all the questions. Oh, 1 second here. I've got something here. More commentary, it believes. Oh, okay. More commentary. Here's 1. Porphyry copper targets are notoriously difficult and expensive to drill. Does your team have experience? Are you guys experienced porphyry specialists? Are we experienced? Well, I'm not personally, Although I've certainly worked and benefited from large copper gold systems before.

31:09 But we are talking to specialists in that, especially now, and how to go about that. So we have on our board, Darrell Clark, he's a PhD level geo and specializing in economic geology. And he, from the beginning, was very excited about the pore-free potential at Birch. So that really helped feed our initial interpretation of it as a pore-free target, not an epithermal gold target. And so through that, through his leadership and the relationships that we have, that he has, sorry, I should say, we've begun that process of our team working with established people in the business to understand Porphyry very well.

32:08 So yes, we're working to pull in that kind of talent and thought leadership now. Excellent. Thank you. Like I was saying everyone, if you came in late, this is being recorded. So feel free to look out for it on YouTube on our channel, SIXINC. It should be available within the next couple of hours. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the company afterwards. I know Rory is very responsive with the emails. Rory, any last comments or final remarks before we end the session today? No, that's great, Kalli. I think all I would say is I think the market has really responded well to Star River and the potential there of the really high-grade gold and silver.

32:58 And I think certainly there's a very good Gold and Silver market out there now. And I think that's part of why people have responded so positively towards Star. And I just would encourage people to also see the potential here for Birch. The kind of size, the scale and the grade that we're seeing there is not common. So I think we are very, even early on here, just getting out of the gate. I think we're showing the potential here to be a 2 asset company really early on that can create huge amounts of value on the copper gold side and on the precious metal side. Excellent. Thank you so much for your time and doing this, Rory. Thank you, Kyle. I appreciate it. Thanks for watching!