Lucky Shot Project Update - Contango Silver and Gold

0:04 Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where in the world you're signing in from. All 3 of us are in different locations, but I'm lucky enough to have with me today Rick Van Nuenen, CEO of Contango Silver and Gold, and Dave Larimer, the company's Vice President of Exploration. Gentlemen, how are you doing today? Good, Romeo. Good to see you again. Morning, morning. Awesome. Now, here's how today's going to work. Folks in the room who are regulars know, so just give me 2 seconds to get through it. This is an interactive event. I've got some questions just to kind of 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. But 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. But 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, we run out of time, they're off topic, 1 million reasons a question doesn't happen, I'll still 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 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.

1:16 So at about 4 o'clock. It'll come on our YouTube page, but also right on the same link. Okay, boring stuff done. Rick, I'll be honest, I've been begging to ask anybody this question for a while. And this is before we get into the exciting geology of Lucky Shot, which is where I'll put Dave in the hot seat, I gotta 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. But 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. So my question to you is, what the heck is going on?

1:52 Yeah, the peace dividend, I guess. I think the short answer is that in a time of crisis, what happens, and particularly here, you had oil basically being taken off the market. And so if you're desperate to find oil, you have to get it, 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. And the oil is priced in dollars. So you actually need dollars to go buy that barrel of oil from wherever you can find it. So I think that's the trade that's been happening. And of course, the dollar strengthens in that environment and gold does weaken. And so, you know, we've seen and look, I mean, gold had a fantastic run way beyond what anybody, anybody's wildest expectations.

2:44 And I know there's people out there that say, oh yeah, I predicted $5,000 gold 10 years ago, but yeah, they've been saying it for 10 years. So eventually they're gonna get right. But what I think is the more important thing is, so 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. That's not impossible. But I think you're going to see the central banks continue 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 reviewing all the central banks and Their long-term plans have not changed. Central Bank's long-term plans have remained the same, which is to buy more Gold.

3:37 I think we've got a great floor in the Gold market now, in the US$4,000 level. We're trading at US$43.50 or so today. These are great Gold prices. We're making a lot of money. All Gold companies are producing Gold and are making a lot of money. All in sustaining costs are in the neighbourhood of US$2,200, US$2,300

4:02 for everybody. Ours long-term haven't changed. We're still sitting at about $1,700 goal for the life of mine for Moncho. We're staying on course this year, delivering to the hedges, giving to the debt, pay off the debt, and next year is going to be an absolutely fantastic year for Contango in terms of cash flow. And that's the same if it's US$4,000 Gold, and obviously if it's US$5,000 or higher, then 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.

4:48 But I think that was a short trade. 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. And now they're buying gold. That's how macro scene works sometimes. And I do, I find it fun logging into the internet and reading investors hot takes on stuff saying, you know, gold's over. I'm like, well, if you look at just napkin math, I think people are still making a lot of money. So

5:18 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. Because first of all, I'm going to start off, something really cool happened. Lucky shot. Whole LSU 26091 came back. This is going to sound like an exaggeration, but it's true folks, came back so high, blew past the upper limit of the photon assay 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? Well, it definitely tells us, you know, we're in the very high-grade, you know, coarse-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 photon assay method as our primary method because we wanted that higher accuracy given the nugget effect of the goal.

6:07 So the photon assay gives us that better accuracy. I honestly didn't think we'd actually achieve an over limit while we did it. So it was like we had an over limit and we all went back and said, okay, so we had to revert back to that 50 gram gravimetric finish on the fire assay and, you know, came back to the 9972 grams, which is outstanding. To me, it's very consistent with what we see with lucky shot, you know, we're no we're dealing with narrow veins, we know we're dealing with high grade, nuggety gold, These results can be spectacular, but we do have to handle individual results carefully, especially from a modelling and a resource estimate standpoint, which we'll get into a little later. But it does show us that locally, we can get these Bonanza-grade Gold systems

6:49 and 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 the visible multiple mineral vein systems. We have our improved geologic models through this drill program, and it's all starting to tie together. So this is a hugely strong validation point for us. So that high-grade potential of lucky shot as we move forward in our drilling programs. Awesome. No, it's exciting. And some of the, like you said, a number of the holes have visible Gold logged right into the core, including the one we just talked about. I know as the QP, you have a duty to remind people that visible Gold doesn't always track grade, but here, it does keep lining up with the assays.

7:35 So how much weight are you letting yourself put on invisible gold when you're standing in the core shack? Yeah, well, first of all, we'll take from the geologic pure geology aspect. You know, When you're down

7:45 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 goal. That's the exciting part of the day. It's like, we wanna see that. And it's fun when you see it, you know you see it and everyone slaps fives on, okay, this is cool. And then it's like, all right, get back to work boys and girls, let's get this log. But 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. You know, again, back to the right structures and mineralizing event. And 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. So part of our logging procedures that we got a macro scope to kind of attaches, we get some closeup photos of that. And then we've also had the loggers going, hey, look at the textures, what are the associated mineralizations? And we've actually have them coming back to hand draw a little section of, hey, what's this look like? You know going back to all that 101 and petrology classes that we've had and doing hand sketches

8:53 on the logs of hey Here's the gold. Here's our associated minerals with it. Here's the photo with it And 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 and then we do call it nuggety you know that we see it lucky shot but we do have to be careful you know we can have these great spectacular results and when I put on my QP hat, we have to maintain discipline and know that this is not automatically equal grade. It's a great geologic indicator and it's exciting, but yeah, that's why we put those disclosures out there while we're doing this. So great high-grade geological evidence And that's why we do the assays. And we have a detailed robust assay program and a QAQC program to validate those assays that we'll be using in that model when we do our estimation going forward. But at the end of the day, the takeaway is the visible gold is great. It's exciting.

9:47 It's a great motivational tool for the geos, especially first thing in the morning.

9:53 Obviously invisible gold in your core and your program. That's what keeps you fighting through the rest of the day. I'd take 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 goal to recover from a metallurgical standpoint? You're gonna catch that with a gravity circuit. So, and that's something that just comes, you know, kind of right off the top, so to speak. As Dave indicates, you know, these high numbers, they're great to see, but they're nuggety. But you're going to capture that free Gold. It's hard to measure, but you're going to catch that in the gravity circuit. That's the other benefit that I see when we're logging free Gold, seeing Gold VG in the core, that means good metallurgy usually.

10:40 Awesome. It's good to see what all this actually means because sometimes it's hard for it to piece together. Speaking of that, somebody who's followed this LuckyShot program pretty closely. What I understand, and sorry Dave, I'm a layman. What used to be from my perspective a few clean vein lines is now a much busier picture of stacked subparallel structures. And I know a lot of people, possibly some in the room, hear more complex generally, and can get nervous when they hear that about mining. But in your opinion, why would this added complexity be a bullish part of the story for LuckyShot rather than a problem to overcome?

11:17 Yeah. Yeah. It's when we talk about, you know, more complex, to me, this is a good thing. Mother nature doesn't do anything simply. And if we look things too simply, she's just not that nice. She's not just gonna 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. And as we get more drill holes in there, we get that higher resolution, we start to understand, it's like, okay, yep, this is more complex. That's a good thing, let's understand it. Especially with a higher density of drilling, you know, we can resolve more issues on that higher resolution. You know, before the program started, you know, we had our vein models out there with limited drilling. It was enough to hold it in space, but that's why we are targeting this drill program to understand it, get that higher resolution, you know, and pulling out the vein systems between the L 2, the L1CBD, the CK vein, the L1E, and then we'll talk a little more about the KM veins.

12:10 But 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. So instead of chasing just a single main system, we're now changing a broader mineralized corridor that is complex, you know, with multiple veins through here, you know, between the shear veins, these relay veins, CK conjugate veins, and what we'll talk a little more about later, but that complexity is good. You know, from an exploration standpoint, you know, it's complex, but what the upside is, 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 would we have when we're going out through that next drill program? And it helps prioritize that next phase of underground drilling. You know 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.

13:09 So at the end of the day, when Dave's talking complexity, complexity is good, especially in that geological, structural, or deposits understanding of Lucky Shot. Awesome. And 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. So you've got some geos backing up your claim there,

13:26 Dave. I'd love to see it. I do want to talk about that KM vein. You're correct. That is where I was going next. Because the vane runs at right angles to the entire Lucky Shot vane series. So totally different orientation than you've been chasing so far. So what does, again, speak layman if you can, 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 kind of that larger nature. And again, as we get the higher resolution in here, this is a very exciting outcome. But it wouldn't make sense. You know, when you step back, you look at the KM vein and you look at the kinematics of the deposit, you know, how these things are kind of sheer porn. 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.

14:20 And finding the KM vane, you know, 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 I 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, you know, so our eyes are always open for not only the normal lucky shot kind of shear system. But hey, we also have to kind of change our mentality when we're trying to interpret drill results and kind of shift everything 90 degrees. Does this line up more on a KM vein kind

14:52 of orientation now? So again back to that complexity which is good. And it's not just a random you know cross-cutting veins you know 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, 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 or coming out and showing that potential that's there, that's extremely close by to development.

15:53 So we don't want to overstate it, but the KM Bains, you know, 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

16:08 in the future 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. But with the updated model that you now have in hand, the next phase is roughly 12,000m underground, as I understand it. Where is that model pointing now that you couldn't have justified, say, a year ago? Yes. The quick and easy one, like I talked about, was the KM beta and that West drift extension. Our original plan working with the operations team and the mind team is okay, we originally drove that West drift as a part of these 4 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.

16:59 So the next big one we're looking at is after the West Drift extension, our mining crews will still target the 2070 East, which is basically right off the East Drift, coming the other way. And what we're looking at is our feed-forward of a model from our current program. Casting those across, our drill programs will 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.

17:30 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, start to accelerate that timeline. So 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 test those further dip expansions of the Lucky Shot system there. I'm really excited about this program and I can't underestimate, you know, 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, very specifically. We're not just winging holes out there. You know, we look at these almost as each drill fan is almost like a mini thesis. You know, right now I have our project, you know, 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 up. Hey what do I expect to hit? At what depths? What faults do I think we're gonna hit? And where do we think each one of these new vein updates we're gonna hit? And we update those as we drill. So each time a drill goes through here's our here's our hypothesis we're testing that thesis on each drill hole as we go through and then we're updating our models as we log and that's updating into the the geologic model as we go.

18:45 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. So 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

19:03 underground to keep advancing this deposit that we have high potential for. Awesome. No, and 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. I just basically really- Can I just make a comment on the- Of course, please? On the KM vein, and Dave mentioned this,

19:22 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. And so, you know, the geologic theory was that, okay, well, there's no mineralization there on the other side of the Lucky Shot Fault. And we purposely pushed it through the fault to see what was on the other side and make sure we knew where the fault was.

19:48 But I don't know how many different properties I had 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. But basically they didn't have any data. Sure. So, and that's really what exploration is about, is about collecting the data and testing these testing theories. And sometimes you bump into new things that are like, oh, that's a real eye opener. And the campaign 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,

20:29 they expand in that orientation. And that's the orientation. That's why it's at right angles. So it all geologically makes a lot of sense, which is, you know, that's always kind of reassuring. Oh yeah, of course. How's that? I like Dave's explanation, every hole's a thesis. That's probably better than, I've met cowboy geologists in my life. The scientific approach is probably a bit better.

20:51 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 800m of underground access first, as my understanding. So for an investor watching the calendar, why is develop then drill the right order here?

21:10 It's room underground. It's getting off and making sure things are done safely, first of all. And We're not going to wait until the entire 800m is done before we start drilling again. As soon as the 100m on the extension of the West Drift is completed, we'll get the drills under there. As Dave said, we'll be drilling above our heads, the veins dipping above us. That'll get started within a month. I think it will be done within a month of getting the drift into the place and get the drillers back in there. Then we've got some surface drilling to do as well.

21:51 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. 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 2,500m planned for the surface there? Is that what it is? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, 2,500 to 3,000. Yeah, great though. Infill upgrade drilling. Nice. And Rick, I do want to ask, I know you've already mentioned a bit, but I did want to get you into the campaign too, because I know you have some structural expertise. He's not just a pretty face, folks.

22:36 Most programs at this stage, like you said, are mostly confirming what the team already expected. So what does it mean to you,

22:43 CEO, longtime controller of LuckyShot, 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 20s, 30s and early 40s. This was all below them. There's no way that they could have seen this. They didn't do drilling, exploration drilling back then.

23:14 They drilled 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've got plenty to do. 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 hailing facility and all that stuff, which takes a lot of capital and takes a lot of time to permit.

23:56 We just need to put rocks in a box and send them up to Fort Knox for processing. Fort Knox would love to have the ore and it's a very simple order of process. It's as we said, it's quartz and mostly free gold. So you know, with the cyanide, you add a cyanide circuit to the gravity circuit and you're going to get a good 90% plus recovery. So easy is good. And Lucky Shot is simple. And I know you just said it was

24:30 complex, but from a processing standpoint, very simple. It's geologically complex, metallurgically simple. It's a good t-shirt to actually next to Rai's. But I do want to get into the 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. So for those folks, or the ones who are just familiar with Moncho but don't know how it applies to Lucky Shot, why is DSO the right fit for the kind of high-grade, narrow-vein system you see at Lucky Shot? Yes. So, there's a short repeat of history at Moncho. We made a nice discovery. 1Moz, 8g per ton, open pit on top of a hill. So from a mining standpoint, relatively simple, relatively straightforward.

25:18 But 1Moz isn't enough Gold to justify building a $400-500 million facility. And so you have 2 choices. You either go find more, or, and in this case, the owners decided they didn't really want to put more money in to find more. And so, okay, well then

25:43 you have the luxury of having a grade, 8g open pit. I think it's, 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. And if it costs you roughly a gram to transport it to an existing facility, well, you just saved yourself 5 years of permitting help and $400M or $500M of capital. There's a price to pay for that. The price is a 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

26:31 for a variety of reasons. They're just more controversial. 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 5Moz 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

27:08 to basically take the things that didn't make it to 5Moz, but that still meet our criteria of having high-grade, close to existing infrastructure. And certainly in Alaska and the United States, if you're permitting just a mine on private land, that is something that I think you can get done relatively quickly. We've demonstrated that now with Moncho and Lucky Shot, and We're in the process of demonstrating that with Johnson Track. We have 2 out of 3 permits that we need for Johnson Track to develop an underground mine at Johnson Track.

27:48 Nothing is 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. You're not building that controversial thing that's a tailings facility. Mills are expensive. And then both of those things need lots of power. So those are all things that we don't have to worry about with the DSO model. I appreciate that. I think just folks who are unaware, it's helpful. Another thing, and this again, this 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 5 months of development ahead, as far as I understand it. So 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?

28:49 I think we'll day-time in here, but I think, let's say, give us 2 or 3 more weeks to get the West Drift done and then we'll get the drillers in there. I think you're going to lock that out in a month and a half or so. He's got his rigs up on top of the mountain. I think you'll expect news flow here in probably 2 months again. Then of course, that's all lucky shot. And then we'll continue to get the drill results from surface and then we'll be back underground drilling. So there'll be a regular every other month sort of news flow from Lucky Shot, I think. The underground drill is pretty extensive with those developments. I mean, we'll drill through Christmas. We'll make sure the drillers get Santa to see it. We'll drill through Christmas into the new year to finalize that program.

29:43 So we'll have a lot of great results as we keep advancing these models for the next 6-8 months. The purpose of all this drilling is to complete a feasibility level 9 plan, a transportation plan and an arrangement with Fort Knox or somewhere else to toll the ore. We're not doing this, it isn't just exploration anymore. It's advanced exploration to complete a Feasibility Study. What we're targeting is something that will produce 40,000oz to 50,000oz of Gold for a 5-year mine plan. That's a pretty typical underground development plan. In order to build a new facility, 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 doing, you're not building all those things, you're not capitalizing all those things. It's going to cost us $50M to get to a decision point to develop the mine.

30:44 Great. I've got a couple more questions. I know there's a question in the chat about multiple projects, so I want to get to everything today. So let me do a couple more about Lucky Shot. I'll do my last question. I know Contango's called the KM vein another dimension for exploring not just Lucky Shot, but the whole Willow District. So I'd love to hear from both of you, actually. I'll start with you, Rick, and then I can jump to you, Dave. If the next year goes the way you're hoping, if Santa's wishlist 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. We're talking the feasibility study results. I'll make up a number here, but it's in the ballpark. Another $30M to $40M to put this into production.

31:36 That's the plan. And then obviously, once we're in production, you're generating strong cash flows. I know Dave's going to ask for a bigger budget. They've already see the bigger budget in your head. Yeah. And to follow up with Rick, you know, you know, the vision is to keep expanding, you know, growing that seed from inside. You know, and that's kind of the discipline approach of underground. You know, once we do the Lucky Shop, Coleman, the IA, you know, we've already got plans on, hey, how do we want to attack the War Baby and then the Murphy Complex, you know, right next to us, just still locally and kind of advance that near mine expiration and 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?

32:28 Awesome. Dave just mentioned, we've got a student that we're wrapping into to study Lucky Shot and look at the district. This thing is going to go on a long time and it's high-grade veins are pretty cool. They're fun things to study. I think we're going to get a good student in here and we'll learn a lot more with that level of detailed level of academic study as well. No, there's a couple of .edu email addresses in the room, actually. So students are taking a look at that kind of stuff, too. And in that same area, Philip from the chat wanted to know, and 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 get into some detail. Yeah, and I'll give this from a geologist's comp, not just an exploration, but I spend a lot of time on the mine geology side.

33:16 Historically, with the orientation of the lucky shot, you know, there's a lot of kind of longer 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 geologic models are changing, like we talked about complexity updating, It wouldn't be prudent to pin 1 method. The intent is to continue this drilling, advance those geologic models, get our domains, get the models, get the mineral resource estimate up there. And that's when we get our engineer studies in there, right about that IA time, because we'll have to put that in there. What's it look like? What's the best optimization? Do we do this, you know, more conventional? Can we long hold this? Can we do some new technologies that are coming on to do some more shallow long hold stoping in this stuff? So all those I expect to be wrapped up and have that initial presentation in the IA next year that shows what's the best way. But the key to the underground narrow stuff is, of course, minimizing dilution, optimizing the ore that you got, even to the potential of, you know, we've had discussion, do we need ore sorting through here? How do we optimize this going through? But that's all going to be hung off the geologic model and the mineral resource estimate model that we're fighting on right now.

34:24 Awesome. I appreciate that. Sorry to sidestep the question geologically, but it's got to be time to do that first. Hey, we all know It's going to be narrow vein underground mining. It's going to be expensive mining. That's why you need the grade. Yeah. Makes sense. 1 for you, Rick, about Lucky Shot. Then we'll get into other projects that are bumbling through the chat and stuff that I've seen online. Mauricio wanted to know what are relationships like with indigenous groups at Lucky Shot. So you just kind of tell that story real quick. That'd be great. Yeah. No. The local Alaskan Native Corporation. It's a village corporation in Kinnick. And We've got a good working relationship with them. This is all on private land, so it's not like Monchaux that is on actual Tetlin native council land.

35:15 That's tribal land at Monchaux. The project itself is on private land, old patented mining claims, but this is traditional territory of the K'Nick tribe. We have a good working relationship with them, both on Lucky Shot and Johnson Track. So yeah, that's the relationship there. And, you know, Kinnick is a fairly sophisticated organization. They've got a number of businesses. We're talking to them about a number of opportunities. So I think it's a way when you have a group that is well organized and knows what they have, what their abilities are, It's actually fairly easy to work.

36:02 Awesome. No, appreciate that helpful answer. Now there's a number of questions in the chat and number of questions that came in an email that all basically amount to love the new company, but I came in with Dolly Varden, tell me about Kitsault. So 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 5 drills turning. So yeah, that's, Dave and I are down there, heading down there in July. Lots of activity. So, but the drilling is a big thing and we're focused right now on the silver-centric part of the district. So, Torbrett, Daly-Varden, Kitsilvain, Northstar. So, There's a cluster of 5 or 6 deposits right in there.

36:52 We're updating the MRE. That's going to be out in the middle of July. We're a little bit late. Our QP got way late, and our Shanghai or whatever. 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 5 drills are continuing to do a lot of infill drilling and expansion. And we're excited what we're seeing at Northstar. Like you see at Lucky Shot, we have BG. Well, at Northstar, we have VS, which is really cool. It's not a mineral you see a lot of, but when you see it, you know it.

37:42 Lots of exciting news coming out of the drill results. They're probably going to expect their drill results in a month. We'll see how it's a busy year for everybody. 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. We've 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 and the, you know, whether it's a 6 week turnaround or whatever it is, once you get there, then you have, you can sort of plan on that regular period of the city.

38:33 So, but 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 Rudd. Somebody from the chat wanted to say, give our regards for success to Rob Van Eggman and the team in the field. So 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 Shawnism that I missed at some point? It might have been a Shawnism, but that's good. I like that, I wanna use it. Can we use that? 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 1 up before they're all spoken for. I'll have you speak to that, Rick.

39:22 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. But I'll let you guys end off with what you're most excited about, both the lucky shot in 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, which brought people to the last second of the request meetings. 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.

40:20 Is there 1 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. And of course, when you've got 5 drill rigs turning at Kitsil, and Kitsil 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. And Dave, what's keeping you up at night with excitement for the rest of 2026? As a Fairbanks in, I'm just happy that summer's here and I'm excited to get out to the field. I ain't gonna lie. You know, 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 GOs, to see that spark, to see that driven in geology, advance the geology, but focused on ore deposits.

41:17 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 and 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. You know, maneuvering these drills, getting them into the targets, advanced in the geology, force them through the assay system and then back into the models. You know, that's where we're excited about. I have to say, you mentioned communication, Dave, and that was pretty cool that we, Contango Silver and 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 bring in the NYSC and the TSX in the same couple months, obviously very exciting. But Rick, Dave, thanks so much for going through. I know with a portfolio of projects at all stages, it's really fun to put a spotlight on to LuckyShod. So I appreciate you guys running through questions and I appreciate the news this week.

42:20 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. So I 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. But everybody, thanks for spending the day with us. And Rick and Dave, hope you have a great end to your Wednesday.