Why This Gold Stock Is Positioned for 2026: (CSE:TEX) Grassroots Discoveries & Actively Drilling
Summary
0:00 CSE:TEX, Targa Exploration 2:35 Disclaimer 3:11 Introduction 4:55 OPINACA Gold Project 13:01 El Zanjon, Argentina 17:00 …
Transcript
So some not notal mines in this district would be the Sarah Vanguardia mine just 30 km north of Elan Han. Um Sarah Negro which is owned and operated by Numont. That one's closer to our Benadero project. Um you know these are multi-million mines as I mentioned before. Sarah Vanguardia has produced over 6 million ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver. Uh and so really what drew us to Elzan Han is that um being so close to Sarah Vanguardia, it actually sits on the same regional structure and as that major fault zone passes through Saranguardia, it makes a big bend. And as it makes this bend, it creates sort of a dilation zone around the elbow of that bend. There's got to be at least like 100 silver and gold bearing veins that have been discovered in that area. But that same regional fault then continues to the south and as it passes through our Alenhan property, it makes another big big bend like that. We believe we have the potential for another one of these sort of elbow dilation zones down there and we're looking for a repeat of the structural and geological conditions that host Seruardia but down at Elan Hong. >> It's nice to actually hear a real like actual exploration discovery story because like they don't happen anymore. >> Well, people try to say, "Oh, the best place to find a gold mine is under head frame, right?" So, they keep drilling under old projects and it's true. You can pretty much always find some gold down there. But, you know, I I I find there's you're accomplishing two things when you're doing mineral exploration, and people usually only talk about one of them. People talk about what you find. Um, but the other thing that you're doing as you're exploring is you're also sort of determining what's not there. So, you're reducing the potential of what you could potentially find, right? So, you're like, "Oh, we know there's not gold over here. There's only low grade stuff over here." So, you're kind of shrinking in the potential of any project. Um, but when you start on these big grassroots projects like we've been working on at Alanaka uh and Elen Han, there's no history of that exploration. There's no history of that drilling. So there's nothing on the what's not there list yet. Um so that keeps the optimism high and the potential still out there for making these big multi-million ounce discoveries. I find a lot of people or a lot of companies that are drilling on more legacy assets or areas with a lot of history of exploration. You know they've got a lot of potential for finding gold out there. They're successful finding gold but you know again because a lot of that area has been sort of drilled off elsewhere. you know, they might have potential to make a million ounce discovery and, you know, which is exciting, but you know, these days I think which what really moves the needle in the market is the multi-million discoveries. You you know, the 2 million ounces or 3 million ounces is kind of the new 1 million ounce sort of thing. So, if you're drilling in these older areas, you know, a lot of them you you kind of know that you're not going to make a 5 million ounce discovery out there. Um, but we can very much make those types of discoveries on the assets that we're working on at TARP. For disclosure purposes, our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services, or products. Nothing on our site or this podcast should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. For disclosure purposes, Target Exploration Corporation is a paid for client on the Investor website. Cameron, it's great to have you on the show. For our following that is new to Tarra Exploration, do you want to start at the beginning of how you founded the company and your first flagship project? >> So, the company went public towards the end of 2022. I joined probably partway through 2023, but the company target was uh incubated out of the Invent Capital Group uh located in Vancouver. So that's where we have our head office and uh we share that office with probably about a half a dozen companies or so under that invented capital uh umbrella. We keep our back office expenses down and put all the money that we raise in the ground. Originally we were a lithium explorer back in sort of 2022 2023 and uh we were doing early stage exploration across a pretty big portfolio um all over Canada and on one of those projects our opanaca project that had no history of mineral exploration prior to our acquisition of that project that we acquired from Kennley Minerals the project generator and it was sort of in those early sort of one or two seasons of work up there doing regional till sampling across the project where we came up with a big uh gold anomaly about 7 km in size right in the middle of the project and So lithium prices at that time were were pretty low and uh gold was on the way up. So we made a pretty natural pivot to to gold exploration. So now we are fully focused early stage grassroots gold exploration looking to make new gold discoveries. The first discovery of which we did announce in January this year at that Aanaka project in Quebec. Uh we did a maiden drill program out there last year. Made a nice big discovery. Uh and now we have uh new projects in southern Argentina as well in the province of Santa Cruz. and we're actively drilling on our Elanhan projects now. We're fully focused on making gold discoveries. Uh we've got one gold discovery under our belt already Aanaka and then um we're looking to make hopefully another discovery at Elan Han in the near future. Already seen some visible gold in the first hole. So I think we're on the right track. >> It's been a very exciting start to 2026 for you 100%. Do you want to go a little more into detail with Aanaka like the land package because you have quite a big land package there also you have um project partnership with Kennerland. Do you want to talk a little bit about that discovery because you said like it's never been drilled before so you weren't going off historics or any of those things like how big were the stepouts? How did you plan that as far as finding that discovery? >> Sure. Yeah. Had zero history of exploration so no historic drill holes. Uh the project itself like you said quite large in size. uh we have about 67,000 hectares in size up there. Uh when we made that first original uh discovery of the till anomaly from that regional sampling since we were sort of the first movers in that area we were able to expand out and and stake some additional ground. So that's why we have a nice nice big ground coverage up there. Um and so we have a partnership on that with Kenderland Minerals. We now own 100% of the asset but they still retain a 3% NSR and we still retain them as project operator at Aanaka. So, Kendallan does executes all of the field programs for us up there um from the early stage work that we did back in the summers of 2023 and 2024. Uh they also managed our drill program out there last year and they'll be managing our drill program later this year as well. We'd like to get back there um sort of probably in August to do maybe a 4,000 or 5,000 meter drill program. Um but yeah, I mean the history of it, like I said, it's it's mostly covered in glacial tillup in that area, so not a lot of bedrock exposure. And of course in the the key area where we believe there was a likely to be a mineralized system buried below the till based on that till sampling. Uh not really in the outcrop at all. So we don't have any um mineralized outcrops that we've seen to date where we see gold in the actual outcrop. We just see it in the till where we're analyzing under the microscope um some of those samples and seeing gold grains. We've seen a few boulders as well that are gold bearing in that area. But it wasn't until we actually went out with that drill program uh in the fall of last year, we actually got a good picture of the bedrock and actually started seeing some some mineralized bedrock in that core. And so for that drill program um you know in terms of picking the drill locations because again no mineralized outcrop to go on almost exclusively based on the geochemistry that till sampling that we did and where we start to see a a termination of the gold in the till in the upice direction there. So we figured it's got to be sort of in that 7 km long band. Um so we did eight holes up there. We did a bit bit of geoysics ahead of time, but it wasn't super useful. Um, and we got really lucky. We ended up hitting gold in seven out of eight of those drill holes. And so those drill holes were spaced over a strike length of about 4 km. Again, we had gold in almost every single hole. That 4 km strike length sits within the wider 7 km till anomaly up there. So we do believe there's more potential to keep stepping out to the east and west and hopefully keep pitting more gold out that way. We still have a ton of room in between those drill holes uh to continue drilling. Uh so we did basically three drill fences more or less last year. 2 kilometers between each drill fence. So again huge open space in between. Uh we're seeing multi-gram gold in each of those drill fences. And the highlight of that drill program was hole number seven which is in the western uh drill fence where we hit about 13.8 g per ton over 3.65 m. Uh and within that was a really nice high-grade section that was about 30 cm wide. Had some really nice coarse visible gold in it. Uh, and that was about 166 g per ton. So, we've got some nice high grade out there. Uh, this year we got to go back out and, you know, obviously fill in the blanks, start connecting those dots, starting to see if we can understand what is controlling the gold mineralization up there. Obviously, it's very broadly mineralized system across that big strike length. And we really start honing in to find, you know, where is there a center of mass? Where can we start seeing some of these good grades over wider widths more consistently and start connecting the dots. I'm assuming most of the investors know James Bay area fairly well and have heard of it before, but some of the neighbors like Chichu and some of those that might give them a little bigger picture idea of the property. >> Yeah, sure. In terms of like what we're looking for out there. So, uh the project itself sits within what's called the Aanaka subprovince, which is mostly a metamorphic grade environment, metaediments with ignous intrusions. So, it's not your traditional greenstone belt where most gold exploration takes place in Quebec and Ontario. Um but we're sitting close to a subprovincial boundary and so the main gold deposits up in this area uh they actually sit sort of along that boundary region sort of along the periphery um between the Aanaka subrovin and the Lrant subrovince. And so the more notable deposits up in that uh area that kind of sit within that sort of boundary zone uh would be the Chichu deposit as you mentioned uh that's owned by Fury Gold. Uh it's currently a 3 million ounce gold deposit is undeveloped. Uh we really like that as an analog for what we're potentially looking for up at Aanaka just based on what we saw in the drill core last year. The textures, the minology, the host rock. Um very very very similar looking to what they see over at Chichu. Uh particularly the presence of a tonalite which is an intrusive rock. Um most of the ounces hosted at that 3 million ounce Chichu deposit occur within a tonalite. And we're starting to see more of that tonal light unit occurring in our drill program, particularly in that western fence where we had the highest grade interval. Um, so a lot of our drilling this year will likely focus sort of around that western fence as well, looking for more of that tonalite, looking for some more consistent intervals. Um, but also in that area close to Chichu, you have the Elenor gold mine that was formerly a gold corp operation operating for many years, producing millions millions of ounces of gold. Um, it was taken over by Numont, sold to Dilmar, that's still in operation today. I believe they still produce about a quarter of a million ounces of gold per year there. So, these are the sorts of tier big big tier type deposits that we're looking for. Multi-million systems that can produce, you know, hundreds of thousands of ounces per year. Um, you know, that's really the the prize that we're looking to get after at Alpineaka. >> I love that the story is actually a real discovery because that's so rare to hear. Most most places use the past historics and past producing mines. So to actually hear a true discovery story is fantastic. Um do you want to talk a little bit about what the future is um for the rest of this year? Like are you going to add on more geoysics for the property? Are you just planning on drilling it out um as you come to the close for this year or? >> Yeah. So specifically for APCA um you know again we'd like to do a phase 2 drill program there this year. uh we haven't found geoysics too effective because uh while the gold does seem to be associated with some other mineralization like some traces of pyite and arcs pyite um we're not seeing a high percentage of those minerals uh in the core even when we do have good gold grades there's definitely some association with them and we see elevated arsenic where we see the gold um but it's really not like a heavy mineralized system that we could really pick up with like an IP program for example um we did do like a mag survey over there prior to the drill program last Here we saw what we thought was a big round anomaly kind of in the middle of the project. And we kind of use that to help uh guide the drill program, but we also see like a lot of uh magnetite rich sand in the in the till that covers it that can kind of impact what we see on the magnetics a little bit. Um and when we actually drilled the core, we didn't see a big change in magnetic susceptibility sort of inside or outside the areas where we had gold. Um so unfortunately geoysics not going to be too useful out here. I think a lot of it's just going to be dependent on the drill bit. Um, we do have another till anomaly on the same project about 15 kilometers further to the east of the main one that we've been drilling that remains unrill tested. Uh, if we have the budget for it in the meters, so you know, we'll try to do a drill hole out there as well this year. And then up to the northeast, we have a big arsenic anomaly that didn't have as much gold in it, but it's certainly an interesting area for us. Um, so that could potentially be another target and that's at least, you know, five plus kilometers to the northeast of the main anomaly. So, we've definitely got uh some other things going on within the system here that we could potentially test this year. Um, but really the plan is to, you know, get back in within those drill fences that we did last year, looking for some more consistency in gold grains, uh, gold grades and, uh, you know, focusing some more of those meters towards the west where we saw some more interesting geology and some higher grades of gold last year. >> I'd love to switch gears and talk about your Argentinian projects. Um, El Sanhan, that has never been drilled before as well, correct? That's correct. Very very similar setup to Aanaka in terms of uh it's never been drilled previously. Uh and the targets there are largely you know a combination of uh geochemistry and geoysics. Um because at Alzen Han similar to Aanaka so we don't have any bedrock on the project even less than at Alanaka. Aanaka at least we have some sporadic bedrock here and there. At Alzen Han right now the project covers 57,000 hectares. So it's almost the same size as Aanaka, but there's only outcrop in one location in the northwest area of the project at the bottom of a lagoon when the water level's low. You can see a little outcrop area, but other than that, the whole project is covered in a tertiary sediment. So that's a postmineralization sediment. Uh probably a marine sediment of some kind. Half of it's gravel and sand and the other half of it sort of a a marine mud, if you will. And it's about, you know, 40 to 50 meters thick depending on where you are on the project. So, it's very much uh relying on geochemistry and geophysics again to to pick our drill targets out there. >> You just announced some of your um first results from there, which are pretty outstanding. Start the drill program off. Um congratulations on that for you to go dive deeper for investors and following. >> Yeah, so we've got the drill program underway right now. Um we only just completed the second hole over the weekend. Um but what you're referring to what we announced I think on Tuesday last week is uh when we're drilling the the very first hole which we don't have assays from yet but samples have been sent to the lab is the presence of of visible gold that we saw in the very first drill hole. Um which was incredibly exciting for for the team to see and really why that stands out. Obviously visible gold means at least some visible there's some gold in the system. Three key questions. We're 30 kilometers away at the Sarahardi mine. There's a very big system out there. They produced over 6 million ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver. We're looking for one of those at Alzanhan, but because no one's ever seen any of the bedrock before, no one knows for certain if there's going to be epiothermal systems. And we were able to definitively say yes, we do have an epiothermal system here. We can tell from the geology and minology what we're seeing in that core. Question number two is, is any system that we find going to be fertile with precious metals? Again, we don't have assays back yet, but seeing the presence of visible gold and what we believe is also electrum um in the drill core. Electrum being a natural alloy of silver and gold uh certainly answers that question of whether or not we're going to find fertile ground somewhere on the project already. Uh and you know question number three is really the strategy uh that we're employing to develop drill targets in an area where we can't see any of the bedrock. Is that ultimately going to be effective in in producing, you know, quality targets that result in mineralized hits? Uh, and I think the fact that we drilled our first target here and that first target hit visible gold, you know, directly where we expected the target to be, uh, I think obviously that's only one data point, but that's a pretty pretty pretty strong observation to to support our our process and our methodology for using geoysics and using this geochemistry to generate targets on this project. Um, that that geochemistry that we're using is called ionic leech geochemistry. So, we're effectively taking a soil sample. Um, but since this gravel and and the soil that we're sampling is not a decomposing bedrock like it would be in in in other sorts of environments, like really representing the the bedrock there, um, we're looking for gold and and silver ions that are potentially leeching from the bedrock below that overburden through water cycles and making their way up to the surface. And so, we're looking for like, you know, a few parts per billion uh, of gold and silver. So really really, you know, weak signals that that could indicate that there's something down there, you know, is obviously a big risk to get out there and and and drill the first couple of holes to to test these series. But I think even with with just that first drill hole, you know, we've either definitively answered or very strongly supported both of those questions that we're seeking to answer with this drill program. what was um the reason or like what really draw drew you to the two projects in Argentina to add on to target exploration and can you talk a little bit I guess about both of them and the size of the land package and they're both an option agreement is that correct >> that's correct so we have the option to earn up to an 80% interest in both the Alzen Han and the Vanadera project both of them located in Santa Cruz Argentina Elzen Han is about 57,000 hectares today um we actually added on to the project earlier this year in January to sort of protect some of our boundaries. So, it's grown since our the first option agreement. And then Mandadero is around 10,000 hectares or so. Uh it's a little bit more to the west in Santa Cruz. Um and it's a bit of an earlier stage project. So, we'll be working on generating some drill targets at that project over the next one or two years for for a future drill program and sort of bring it in the pipeline. Um but so these projects came originally from rugby resources. uh the early stage work that that geopysics that geochemistry that was all conducted by them over the last several years um and this was a you know rugby resource was a company that was sort of spearheaded by Bryce Roxburg who has actually recently joined our board of directors and brings 50 years of discovery making experience with them fantastic to to have him on our team but rugby resources got acquired by what is now Indina comper last year uh to get a hold of a discovery they made in Colombia called kabrasco um so Alen Han and were sort of the next projects they are lining up for Joe programs after they made that discovery. And so as part of that acquisition of Rugby Resources, uh these two projects were were spun out into another unlisted company right now called Aegis Resources has a few other assets in the company, but really they were looking for a group to come and option these Santa Cruz projects from them. Uh Alenhan being pretty much already drill ready when we optioned it. Um and so we were kind of front of the line to to get our put our hands up and go after these projects. And the reason why we really like them, particularly Elen Hong, because it's a little more advanced, but Santa Cruz is a fantastic jurisdiction for for mining and exploration, very supportive of provincial government. In Argentina, the resources are really managed by by the provinces. So, it really depends province to province where you are in in terms of uh you know, local support and uh and supportive laws and things like that. Santa Cruz very good mining uh province and then the Desiatam seif which is the sort of Jurassic age volcanic geological environment that we're sitting in for both these projects uh is very well known for hosting tier one type epiothermal low sulfidation epiothermal gold and silver deposits. Um so some notable mines in this district would be the Sarah Vanguardia mine just 30 kilometers north of Elzan Han. Um, Sarah Negro, which is owned and operated by Numont. That one's closer to our Benadero project. Um, you know, these are multi-million ounce mines. As I mentioned before, Sarahuardia has produced over 6 million ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver. Uh, and so really what drew us to Elan Han is that being so close to Saraveia, it actually sits on the same regional structure. And as that major fault zone passes through Saranguardia, it makes a big bend. And as it makes this bend, it creates sort of a dilation zone around the elbow of that bend. And it's in that dilation zone where you get all the mineralization, the the epiothermal vein systems uh coming up that form the Savanguardia deposits. There's got to be at least like a 100 silver and gold bearing veins that have been discovered in that area. But that same regional fault then continues to the south and as it passes through our Alenhan property, it makes another big big bend like that. So we believe we have the potential for another one of these sort of elbow dilation zones down there and we're looking for a repeat of the structural and geological conditions that hosts Sanguardia but down at Elzan Hong now they're lucky up at Sarah Vaguardia they sit within an erosional window so the bedrock is actually exposed up there so decades ago you know those veins were prospected and discovered and it's been in operation since the late 90s and Han has not been drilled or looked at because no one could see any bedrock there. Um, so we think we have the potential to sit on a similar style system at Sarah McGuardia and that's what we're trying to prove with our drill programs right now. So that's what really drew us to there was the potential to host, you know, one of these big systems had a lot of good supporting data at a regional and local level, you know, to support the drill targets and to support that theory. And I think we're off to a very good start with the visible gold and things that we've seen in just the first couple of holes. Assuming that you continue to see fantastic results and those drill holes um come out with some great results. Is that going to be your main focus going into the summer to expand that drill program and then Aanaka after or are you going to simultaneously do both? >> One of the reasons to why we have them on sort of projects at opposite ends of the Americas is you know when it's prime time summer season for drilling up in northern Canada it's it's it's winter down in southern Patagonia. They do get snow down there on those projects. Um, so ideally we'd be kind of going back and forth between the two, but it really depends on the results of this first program as well. Uh, in terms of timing for Aanaka, we're looking at kind of late July and into August for for that drill program. Um, which is really heavily dependent on Kendall's uh, team schedule as well since they do a lot of exploration throughout Canada uh, throughout the the good season here. Um, so we kind of have to work with their team schedule as well for when they can fit us in. But in terms of you know right now we're drilling about 2250 meters for this drill program at Elen Han. It's probably going to take another 45 days or so depending on drilling goes to to complete that. It is going a little bit slower. This overburden is a little bit challenging to drill through. Um but the drill crews are are working on that and and making some good improvements on on drill progress. But whether or not we expand that drill program or pause and wait to come back later will will really be dependent on uh what the results from the lab look like over the coming weeks. We should see a turnaround time of about 3 to 4 weeks we believe for for assays down there. That's what they've told us, but we haven't actually gotten any assays back. So, we don't have anything to go on there. But hopefully they can stick with that 3 to 4 week schedule. Um, which would mean that we could potentially see some assays back from the first few holes before we complete the last few holes. So we could potentially make some some decisions then whether or not we want to add a few extra hundreds of meters, put a couple extra drill holes in there as part of this program or something much bigger if obviously we have some spectacular results. Uh so we'll just have to wait over the coming you know one or two months to see what those look like. >> Can you talk a little bit about the team that you have in place? I know that today you even just announced a new VP of exploration and then um anything the like background or history that management has worked in Argentina as well. >> We got a great team that we've assembled over the last couple of years um you know kind of adding adding the right pieces along the way obviously kind of at the board and advisory level. We've got some great people behind us not just from Invented Capital but also from Discovery Group. So Jim Peterson's our chairman. He's one of the co-founders and principles at Discovery Group. um his partner there, John Robbins, is one of our strategic adviserss. Uh and then we've also got uh Craig Perry joining us from Invented Capital as one of our strategic adviserss as well. And you know, the these gentlemen have done a tremendous amount of business in this industry, not just in making great discoveries, but also making sure that those discoveries translate to value creation success for their shareholders uh and big exits for their shareholders and takeouts. Um, you know, John and Jim were were part of uh the Great Bear Discovery and the and the sale of that to Ken Ross and Kamak, which they sold to Gold Corp. Uh, Bryce Roxberg, who's our newest director that I mentioned, he just joined us back in March. Uh, he's been making discoveries for the last 50 years, uh, including in Argentina. So, he actually him and his team advanced the Sarah Mororrow discovery sort of back in the early sort of 2012 2013 era, I believe it was. Um, they ended up selling that to Yana Gold for over $400 million. and Sarah Mororrow is in that same district that we're in down in Santa Cruz. So definitely got some good local experience and then on the ground um we're working with the same local geological team, Argentinian team that helped them advance that cereamoro discoveries and they also did all the early stage work at Alzenhan and Benadero and even kind of originally st the Alzenhon claim. So we've got a lot of good incountry experience uh at the at the board level and at the local level as well. I myself lived in Argentina once upon a time to study Spanish. Um, so we have a lot of Spanish- speaking professionals in our team. Myself, our new vice president of exploration, Ryan Weston, who just joined us today, has spent several years working in Peru, so he speaks Spanish as well. Um, we've got a our new CFO and corporate secretary are both native Spanish speakers. And then Bryce with all of his experience in Latin America as well. We've got uh I think a really solid team from the board level and advisers uh through management on down to the people that we have on the ground there in terms of uh discovery success, discovery history and and you know doing a lot of that work in Latin America. >> Uh share structure and then financials what you have in the bank. I know there's a great time to raise capital this year and raise 4 million. Is that correct? >> Yeah, that's right. We did a $4 million financing uh back in February. That was all the hard dollar financing. And the purpose of those funds is to to fund this drill program that we have active right now and cover all of our corporate and marketing overhead, you know, into next year pretty easily. Uh so we still got about $3 million in the bank right now. I think I just got a cash call this morning for the for the project in Argentina. So we'll send some more funds down there to keep the drills turning. Um you know, in terms of Aanaka, you know, we would likely do some sort of financing to to support that program uh a little bit later this year. uh last year, you know, we we we um funded most of that with either charity flow through or or regular flow through financings, uh which are fantastic that you can take advantage of that here in Canada. Uh really helps keep the dilution down when you want to do those big drill programs. So, we'll likely do something like that to support APanaka here in the near future. Um but yeah, right now we've got about 3 million in cash in the bank. Uh we have 66 million shares outstanding right now and uh I think this morning we were trading around.7 to 75 cents Canadian. Uh so market cap sort of 40 to 45 million Canadian right now. Obviously has a big bump from where we were uh two weeks ago, but after the news last week, people getting excited about our drill program uh in Argentina and the you know the early stage success that we're having down there. Uh we've seen our share price appreciate quite significantly since that February financing. >> What What's the difference in the cost of drilling down in Argentina? I'm assuming it's a little cheaper than here in Canada. >> Some things can be cheaper, some things not. um you know it's probably going to be similar price or maybe even a little bit more expensive actually for this first Elenhun program compared to our Aanaka project last year. Uh even though Aanaka was heli supported program um we had really efficient drilling up there drilling up in that archan rock we averaged I think it was almost 114 meters per day in terms of drill production from a single drill rig which is which is really quite high. And so when you have that really hydro production, you can really spread out a lot of those other costs per meter like your helicopter and personnel costs. Um down in Argentina right now, we're going a lot slower than that. Um you know, trying to get through this overburden has been has been a challenge for sure. Even the ground itself, a lot of it's very oxidized and so it's a little bit slower drilling. Um they did make some good improvements on drill progress for hole number two. We were typically seeing an average of about 50 mters per day uh going through hole number two. So hopefully we can kind of keep up that progress uh over the next um nine or 10 holes that we have left in this program. Um but you know seeing that big difference, you know, drilling almost twice as many meters per day uh in Quebec as we are in Argentina, that kind of drives up some of the cost. So I believe we averaged about $550 per meter Canadian at Alanaka last year. Uh budget this year is probably going to be somewhere around $600 a meter for that. But down in Argentina, we're probably going to end up spending, you know, closer to 700 or 750 a meter. um especially because it's a smaller drill program, so we're only set up right now to do about 2200 meters. Uh we just set up a bit of a camp, but it's nice that it is road accessible. We're renting like a farmhouse down there. Uh they've got a well that we can use to pump water out of to support the drill rig. Um so everything's kind of kind of right on site there. That that's nice from our Canadian standards where we don't have to use a helicopter, but it still takes a while to get down there and it takes a while to bring in supplies. Um you know, it's a bit of a long drive. Um so I would expect cost to be a little bit higher per meter down there than up in Canada. What's the long-term story for Target? Like what are you looking to develop these like to the place that and obviously a major would take over or obviously you're looking at discovery stories that no one's even drilled on? Is that going to be your plan going forward to acquire more projects that are just brand new? >> Yeah, I mean we want to be in this discovery making business, not the not the mining business. Maybe that's like taboo of a mining engineer to say, you know, usually geologists like to say that, but uh you that's the the treasure hunt. That's what get gets me excited. Um, so we're very much focused on discovery making, growing those discoveries, drilling them out, you know, working through feasibility, but ultimately looking for somebody else to purchase those or acquire the company to get access to those projects. That's our business model right now. Obviously, things could change way down the road depending on what we find. And really developing what we consider to be a gold discovery pipeline. So, right now, we've got three projects in that pipeline. Aanaka, since we've already made a drill discovery out there, would be the most advanced. Elen Han sort of right in the middle because we're actively drilling for the very first drill program there. And then we've got Venadero sort of at the early end of that pipeline. We did some early stage mapping there um back in February. We'll probably end up doing some soil sampling would likely be the next step for for Venadero, you know, after the Patagonian winter finishes. Um but we already know there's gold at Venadero. Earlier stage prospecting, they actually had bedrocketed that project, which is a nice change of pace for us. Um they've identified uh what's called the Gorgonola vein over about two and a half kilometers it's been traced at surface and samples from that vein have come back bearing gold and silver I think up to about 4 and a half grams per ton gold. Um but it seems like it's a bit high up in the epiothermal system. So the better sort of silver and gold targets we would expect to be maybe another 150 m below surface. So that could be a future drill target over there. From the mapping that we've done we've identified some other areas of interest in silica caps and areas that could represent upper areas of other epiothermal systems. So, we'd like to get out there, do some soil sampling probably before the end of the year, follow that with some geoysics, uh, and basically prepare that to be the next maiden drill program, you know, maybe sometime late next year. >> Um, any key takeaways that you want investors to remember from our conversation? >> Yeah, a couple of those would be, you know, again, we're focused on making gold discoveries. I think as a team a huge track record of making those sorts of discoveries but also just as you know with target we've proven back in January when we announced that discovery that you know we do have what it takes terms of the team and the right investors and the right people supporting the business to take a project which was essentially moose pasture when we first acquired it uh and bring it through in a very short period of time to making a gold discovery. We're looking to do that same thing at Elzen Han. I think with the results that we had last week or the observations that we made, we're heading very much in that direction to to repeat that success again on another project. Um, and we've got a lot on the go. So with an active drill program now, another drill program planned for up a little bit later this summer. Uh, you know, and then we'll be following up with the next drill program at Zenhan. Again, we plan on generating a pretty u, you know, steady flow of exploration and discovery related news going forward. Um, so I think investors can can look out for a lot of potential rerating milestones as we release that news and as we advance these drill programs. Um, so certainly very very good time to to keep an eye on target. Uh, look out for those that news flow and and and look out for those future assays and results coming in just in the next couple weeks probably. >> It's nice to actually hear a real like actual exploration discovery story because like they don't happen anymore. >> Well, people try to say, well, the best place to find a gold mine is under a head frame, right? So they keep drilling under old projects and it's true you can pretty much always find some gold down there but you know I I find there's you're accomplishing two things when you're doing mineral exploration and people usually talk about one of them. People talk about what you find. Um but the other thing that you're doing as you're exploring is you're also sort of determining what's not there. So you're finding what is there but as you find out what's there you kind of determine what so you're reducing the potential of what you could potentially find. Right? So you're like oh we know there's not cold over here. Okay X off that part of the area. Okay we know that's not good geology over there. Okay, nothing like there's only low grade stuff over here. So, you're kind of shrinking in the potential of any project. Um, but when you start on these big grassroots projects like we've been working on at Opanaka uh and Elen Han, there's no history of that exploration. There's no history of that drilling. Um, so there's nothing on the what's not there list yet. Um, so that keeps the optimism high and the potential still out there for making these big multi-million ounce discoveries. I find a lot of people or a lot of companies that are drilling on more legacy assets or areas with a lot of history of exploration. You know, they've got a lot of potential for finding gold out there. They're successful at finding gold, but you know, again, because a lot of that area has been sort of drilled off elsewhere, you're kind of shrinking in what the ultimate potential is. And so, you know, they might have potential to make a million ounce discovery and, you know, which is exciting, but you know, these days I think which what really moves the needle in the market is the multi-million discoveries. you, you know, the 2 million ounces or 3 million ounces is kind of the new 1 million ounce sort of thing. So, if you're drilling in these older areas, you know, a lot of them you you kind of know that you're not going to make a 5 million ounce discovery out there. Um, but we could very much make those types of discoveries on the assets that we're working on at Target >> and best ways to reach out to you and the company. >> Yeah, anybody interested in in having a chat or asking any questions on the company or our projects can reach me at targetexploration.com. Um, you can also just go to our website, targetexploration.com. I will be uploading, uh, a new deck there either today or tomorrow. So, um, watch out for that as well. Uh, and yeah, you can get our sign up for, um, for our newsletter to to make sure you receive our news releases as they get released as well from our website. So, I encourage people to do that.
Why This Gold Stock Is Positioned for 2026: (CSE:TEX) Grassroots Discoveries & Actively Drilling
Summary
0:00 CSE:TEX, Targa Exploration 2:35 Disclaimer 3:11 Introduction 4:55 OPINACA Gold Project 13:01 El Zanjon, Argentina 17:00 …Transcript
So some not notal mines in this district would be the Sarah Vanguardia mine just 30 km north of Elan Han. Um Sarah Negro which is owned and operated by Numont. That one's closer to our Benadero project. Um you know these are multi-million mines as I mentioned before. Sarah Vanguardia has produced over 6 million ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver. Uh and so really what drew us to Elzan Han is that um being so close to Sarah Vanguardia, it actually sits on the same regional structure and as that major fault zone passes through Saranguardia, it makes a big bend. And as it makes this bend, it creates sort of a dilation zone around the elbow of that bend. There's got to be at least like 100 silver and gold bearing veins that have been discovered in that area. But that same regional fault then continues to the south and as it passes through our Alenhan property, it makes another big big bend like that. We believe we have the potential for another one of these sort of elbow dilation zones down there and we're looking for a repeat of the structural and geological conditions that host Seruardia but down at Elan Hong. >> It's nice to actually hear a real like actual exploration discovery story because like they don't happen anymore. >> Well, people try to say, "Oh, the best place to find a gold mine is under head frame, right?" So, they keep drilling under old projects and it's true. You can pretty much always find some gold down there. But, you know, I I I find there's you're accomplishing two things when you're doing mineral exploration, and people usually only talk about one of them. People talk about what you find. Um, but the other thing that you're doing as you're exploring is you're also sort of determining what's not there. So, you're reducing the potential of what you could potentially find, right? So, you're like, "Oh, we know there's not gold over here. There's only low grade stuff over here." So, you're kind of shrinking in the potential of any project. Um, but when you start on these big grassroots projects like we've been working on at Alanaka uh and Elen Han, there's no history of that exploration. There's no history of that drilling. So there's nothing on the what's not there list yet. Um so that keeps the optimism high and the potential still out there for making these big multi-million ounce discoveries. I find a lot of people or a lot of companies that are drilling on more legacy assets or areas with a lot of history of exploration. You know they've got a lot of potential for finding gold out there. They're successful finding gold but you know again because a lot of that area has been sort of drilled off elsewhere. you know, they might have potential to make a million ounce discovery and, you know, which is exciting, but you know, these days I think which what really moves the needle in the market is the multi-million discoveries. You you know, the 2 million ounces or 3 million ounces is kind of the new 1 million ounce sort of thing. So, if you're drilling in these older areas, you know, a lot of them you you kind of know that you're not going to make a 5 million ounce discovery out there. Um, but we can very much make those types of discoveries on the assets that we're working on at TARP. For disclosure purposes, our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services, or products. Nothing on our site or this podcast should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. For disclosure purposes, Target Exploration Corporation is a paid for client on the Investor website. Cameron, it's great to have you on the show. For our following that is new to Tarra Exploration, do you want to start at the beginning of how you founded the company and your first flagship project? >> So, the company went public towards the end of 2022. I joined probably partway through 2023, but the company target was uh incubated out of the Invent Capital Group uh located in Vancouver. So that's where we have our head office and uh we share that office with probably about a half a dozen companies or so under that invented capital uh umbrella. We keep our back office expenses down and put all the money that we raise in the ground. Originally we were a lithium explorer back in sort of 2022 2023 and uh we were doing early stage exploration across a pretty big portfolio um all over Canada and on one of those projects our opanaca project that had no history of mineral exploration prior to our acquisition of that project that we acquired from Kennley Minerals the project generator and it was sort of in those early sort of one or two seasons of work up there doing regional till sampling across the project where we came up with a big uh gold anomaly about 7 km in size right in the middle of the project and So lithium prices at that time were were pretty low and uh gold was on the way up. So we made a pretty natural pivot to to gold exploration. So now we are fully focused early stage grassroots gold exploration looking to make new gold discoveries. The first discovery of which we did announce in January this year at that Aanaka project in Quebec. Uh we did a maiden drill program out there last year. Made a nice big discovery. Uh and now we have uh new projects in southern Argentina as well in the province of Santa Cruz. and we're actively drilling on our Elanhan projects now. We're fully focused on making gold discoveries. Uh we've got one gold discovery under our belt already Aanaka and then um we're looking to make hopefully another discovery at Elan Han in the near future. Already seen some visible gold in the first hole. So I think we're on the right track. >> It's been a very exciting start to 2026 for you 100%. Do you want to go a little more into detail with Aanaka like the land package because you have quite a big land package there also you have um project partnership with Kennerland. Do you want to talk a little bit about that discovery because you said like it's never been drilled before so you weren't going off historics or any of those things like how big were the stepouts? How did you plan that as far as finding that discovery? >> Sure. Yeah. Had zero history of exploration so no historic drill holes. Uh the project itself like you said quite large in size. uh we have about 67,000 hectares in size up there. Uh when we made that first original uh discovery of the till anomaly from that regional sampling since we were sort of the first movers in that area we were able to expand out and and stake some additional ground. So that's why we have a nice nice big ground coverage up there. Um and so we have a partnership on that with Kenderland Minerals. We now own 100% of the asset but they still retain a 3% NSR and we still retain them as project operator at Aanaka. So, Kendallan does executes all of the field programs for us up there um from the early stage work that we did back in the summers of 2023 and 2024. Uh they also managed our drill program out there last year and they'll be managing our drill program later this year as well. We'd like to get back there um sort of probably in August to do maybe a 4,000 or 5,000 meter drill program. Um but yeah, I mean the history of it, like I said, it's it's mostly covered in glacial tillup in that area, so not a lot of bedrock exposure. And of course in the the key area where we believe there was a likely to be a mineralized system buried below the till based on that till sampling. Uh not really in the outcrop at all. So we don't have any um mineralized outcrops that we've seen to date where we see gold in the actual outcrop. We just see it in the till where we're analyzing under the microscope um some of those samples and seeing gold grains. We've seen a few boulders as well that are gold bearing in that area. But it wasn't until we actually went out with that drill program uh in the fall of last year, we actually got a good picture of the bedrock and actually started seeing some some mineralized bedrock in that core. And so for that drill program um you know in terms of picking the drill locations because again no mineralized outcrop to go on almost exclusively based on the geochemistry that till sampling that we did and where we start to see a a termination of the gold in the till in the upice direction there. So we figured it's got to be sort of in that 7 km long band. Um so we did eight holes up there. We did a bit bit of geoysics ahead of time, but it wasn't super useful. Um, and we got really lucky. We ended up hitting gold in seven out of eight of those drill holes. And so those drill holes were spaced over a strike length of about 4 km. Again, we had gold in almost every single hole. That 4 km strike length sits within the wider 7 km till anomaly up there. So we do believe there's more potential to keep stepping out to the east and west and hopefully keep pitting more gold out that way. We still have a ton of room in between those drill holes uh to continue drilling. Uh so we did basically three drill fences more or less last year. 2 kilometers between each drill fence. So again huge open space in between. Uh we're seeing multi-gram gold in each of those drill fences. And the highlight of that drill program was hole number seven which is in the western uh drill fence where we hit about 13.8 g per ton over 3.65 m. Uh and within that was a really nice high-grade section that was about 30 cm wide. Had some really nice coarse visible gold in it. Uh, and that was about 166 g per ton. So, we've got some nice high grade out there. Uh, this year we got to go back out and, you know, obviously fill in the blanks, start connecting those dots, starting to see if we can understand what is controlling the gold mineralization up there. Obviously, it's very broadly mineralized system across that big strike length. And we really start honing in to find, you know, where is there a center of mass? Where can we start seeing some of these good grades over wider widths more consistently and start connecting the dots. I'm assuming most of the investors know James Bay area fairly well and have heard of it before, but some of the neighbors like Chichu and some of those that might give them a little bigger picture idea of the property. >> Yeah, sure. In terms of like what we're looking for out there. So, uh the project itself sits within what's called the Aanaka subprovince, which is mostly a metamorphic grade environment, metaediments with ignous intrusions. So, it's not your traditional greenstone belt where most gold exploration takes place in Quebec and Ontario. Um but we're sitting close to a subprovincial boundary and so the main gold deposits up in this area uh they actually sit sort of along that boundary region sort of along the periphery um between the Aanaka subrovin and the Lrant subrovince. And so the more notable deposits up in that uh area that kind of sit within that sort of boundary zone uh would be the Chichu deposit as you mentioned uh that's owned by Fury Gold. Uh it's currently a 3 million ounce gold deposit is undeveloped. Uh we really like that as an analog for what we're potentially looking for up at Aanaka just based on what we saw in the drill core last year. The textures, the minology, the host rock. Um very very very similar looking to what they see over at Chichu. Uh particularly the presence of a tonalite which is an intrusive rock. Um most of the ounces hosted at that 3 million ounce Chichu deposit occur within a tonalite. And we're starting to see more of that tonal light unit occurring in our drill program, particularly in that western fence where we had the highest grade interval. Um, so a lot of our drilling this year will likely focus sort of around that western fence as well, looking for more of that tonalite, looking for some more consistent intervals. Um, but also in that area close to Chichu, you have the Elenor gold mine that was formerly a gold corp operation operating for many years, producing millions millions of ounces of gold. Um, it was taken over by Numont, sold to Dilmar, that's still in operation today. I believe they still produce about a quarter of a million ounces of gold per year there. So, these are the sorts of tier big big tier type deposits that we're looking for. Multi-million systems that can produce, you know, hundreds of thousands of ounces per year. Um, you know, that's really the the prize that we're looking to get after at Alpineaka. >> I love that the story is actually a real discovery because that's so rare to hear. Most most places use the past historics and past producing mines. So to actually hear a true discovery story is fantastic. Um do you want to talk a little bit about what the future is um for the rest of this year? Like are you going to add on more geoysics for the property? Are you just planning on drilling it out um as you come to the close for this year or? >> Yeah. So specifically for APCA um you know again we'd like to do a phase 2 drill program there this year. uh we haven't found geoysics too effective because uh while the gold does seem to be associated with some other mineralization like some traces of pyite and arcs pyite um we're not seeing a high percentage of those minerals uh in the core even when we do have good gold grades there's definitely some association with them and we see elevated arsenic where we see the gold um but it's really not like a heavy mineralized system that we could really pick up with like an IP program for example um we did do like a mag survey over there prior to the drill program last Here we saw what we thought was a big round anomaly kind of in the middle of the project. And we kind of use that to help uh guide the drill program, but we also see like a lot of uh magnetite rich sand in the in the till that covers it that can kind of impact what we see on the magnetics a little bit. Um and when we actually drilled the core, we didn't see a big change in magnetic susceptibility sort of inside or outside the areas where we had gold. Um so unfortunately geoysics not going to be too useful out here. I think a lot of it's just going to be dependent on the drill bit. Um, we do have another till anomaly on the same project about 15 kilometers further to the east of the main one that we've been drilling that remains unrill tested. Uh, if we have the budget for it in the meters, so you know, we'll try to do a drill hole out there as well this year. And then up to the northeast, we have a big arsenic anomaly that didn't have as much gold in it, but it's certainly an interesting area for us. Um, so that could potentially be another target and that's at least, you know, five plus kilometers to the northeast of the main anomaly. So, we've definitely got uh some other things going on within the system here that we could potentially test this year. Um, but really the plan is to, you know, get back in within those drill fences that we did last year, looking for some more consistency in gold grains, uh, gold grades and, uh, you know, focusing some more of those meters towards the west where we saw some more interesting geology and some higher grades of gold last year. >> I'd love to switch gears and talk about your Argentinian projects. Um, El Sanhan, that has never been drilled before as well, correct? That's correct. Very very similar setup to Aanaka in terms of uh it's never been drilled previously. Uh and the targets there are largely you know a combination of uh geochemistry and geoysics. Um because at Alzen Han similar to Aanaka so we don't have any bedrock on the project even less than at Alanaka. Aanaka at least we have some sporadic bedrock here and there. At Alzen Han right now the project covers 57,000 hectares. So it's almost the same size as Aanaka, but there's only outcrop in one location in the northwest area of the project at the bottom of a lagoon when the water level's low. You can see a little outcrop area, but other than that, the whole project is covered in a tertiary sediment. So that's a postmineralization sediment. Uh probably a marine sediment of some kind. Half of it's gravel and sand and the other half of it sort of a a marine mud, if you will. And it's about, you know, 40 to 50 meters thick depending on where you are on the project. So, it's very much uh relying on geochemistry and geophysics again to to pick our drill targets out there. >> You just announced some of your um first results from there, which are pretty outstanding. Start the drill program off. Um congratulations on that for you to go dive deeper for investors and following. >> Yeah, so we've got the drill program underway right now. Um we only just completed the second hole over the weekend. Um but what you're referring to what we announced I think on Tuesday last week is uh when we're drilling the the very first hole which we don't have assays from yet but samples have been sent to the lab is the presence of of visible gold that we saw in the very first drill hole. Um which was incredibly exciting for for the team to see and really why that stands out. Obviously visible gold means at least some visible there's some gold in the system. Three key questions. We're 30 kilometers away at the Sarahardi mine. There's a very big system out there. They produced over 6 million ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver. We're looking for one of those at Alzanhan, but because no one's ever seen any of the bedrock before, no one knows for certain if there's going to be epiothermal systems. And we were able to definitively say yes, we do have an epiothermal system here. We can tell from the geology and minology what we're seeing in that core. Question number two is, is any system that we find going to be fertile with precious metals? Again, we don't have assays back yet, but seeing the presence of visible gold and what we believe is also electrum um in the drill core. Electrum being a natural alloy of silver and gold uh certainly answers that question of whether or not we're going to find fertile ground somewhere on the project already. Uh and you know question number three is really the strategy uh that we're employing to develop drill targets in an area where we can't see any of the bedrock. Is that ultimately going to be effective in in producing, you know, quality targets that result in mineralized hits? Uh, and I think the fact that we drilled our first target here and that first target hit visible gold, you know, directly where we expected the target to be, uh, I think obviously that's only one data point, but that's a pretty pretty pretty strong observation to to support our our process and our methodology for using geoysics and using this geochemistry to generate targets on this project. Um, that that geochemistry that we're using is called ionic leech geochemistry. So, we're effectively taking a soil sample. Um, but since this gravel and and the soil that we're sampling is not a decomposing bedrock like it would be in in in other sorts of environments, like really representing the the bedrock there, um, we're looking for gold and and silver ions that are potentially leeching from the bedrock below that overburden through water cycles and making their way up to the surface. And so, we're looking for like, you know, a few parts per billion uh, of gold and silver. So really really, you know, weak signals that that could indicate that there's something down there, you know, is obviously a big risk to get out there and and and drill the first couple of holes to to test these series. But I think even with with just that first drill hole, you know, we've either definitively answered or very strongly supported both of those questions that we're seeking to answer with this drill program. what was um the reason or like what really draw drew you to the two projects in Argentina to add on to target exploration and can you talk a little bit I guess about both of them and the size of the land package and they're both an option agreement is that correct >> that's correct so we have the option to earn up to an 80% interest in both the Alzen Han and the Vanadera project both of them located in Santa Cruz Argentina Elzen Han is about 57,000 hectares today um we actually added on to the project earlier this year in January to sort of protect some of our boundaries. So, it's grown since our the first option agreement. And then Mandadero is around 10,000 hectares or so. Uh it's a little bit more to the west in Santa Cruz. Um and it's a bit of an earlier stage project. So, we'll be working on generating some drill targets at that project over the next one or two years for for a future drill program and sort of bring it in the pipeline. Um but so these projects came originally from rugby resources. uh the early stage work that that geopysics that geochemistry that was all conducted by them over the last several years um and this was a you know rugby resource was a company that was sort of spearheaded by Bryce Roxburg who has actually recently joined our board of directors and brings 50 years of discovery making experience with them fantastic to to have him on our team but rugby resources got acquired by what is now Indina comper last year uh to get a hold of a discovery they made in Colombia called kabrasco um so Alen Han and were sort of the next projects they are lining up for Joe programs after they made that discovery. And so as part of that acquisition of Rugby Resources, uh these two projects were were spun out into another unlisted company right now called Aegis Resources has a few other assets in the company, but really they were looking for a group to come and option these Santa Cruz projects from them. Uh Alenhan being pretty much already drill ready when we optioned it. Um and so we were kind of front of the line to to get our put our hands up and go after these projects. And the reason why we really like them, particularly Elen Hong, because it's a little more advanced, but Santa Cruz is a fantastic jurisdiction for for mining and exploration, very supportive of provincial government. In Argentina, the resources are really managed by by the provinces. So, it really depends province to province where you are in in terms of uh you know, local support and uh and supportive laws and things like that. Santa Cruz very good mining uh province and then the Desiatam seif which is the sort of Jurassic age volcanic geological environment that we're sitting in for both these projects uh is very well known for hosting tier one type epiothermal low sulfidation epiothermal gold and silver deposits. Um so some notable mines in this district would be the Sarah Vanguardia mine just 30 kilometers north of Elzan Han. Um, Sarah Negro, which is owned and operated by Numont. That one's closer to our Benadero project. Um, you know, these are multi-million ounce mines. As I mentioned before, Sarahuardia has produced over 6 million ounces of gold and 80 million ounces of silver. Uh, and so really what drew us to Elan Han is that being so close to Saraveia, it actually sits on the same regional structure. And as that major fault zone passes through Saranguardia, it makes a big bend. And as it makes this bend, it creates sort of a dilation zone around the elbow of that bend. And it's in that dilation zone where you get all the mineralization, the the epiothermal vein systems uh coming up that form the Savanguardia deposits. There's got to be at least like a 100 silver and gold bearing veins that have been discovered in that area. But that same regional fault then continues to the south and as it passes through our Alenhan property, it makes another big big bend like that. So we believe we have the potential for another one of these sort of elbow dilation zones down there and we're looking for a repeat of the structural and geological conditions that hosts Sanguardia but down at Elzan Hong now they're lucky up at Sarah Vaguardia they sit within an erosional window so the bedrock is actually exposed up there so decades ago you know those veins were prospected and discovered and it's been in operation since the late 90s and Han has not been drilled or looked at because no one could see any bedrock there. Um, so we think we have the potential to sit on a similar style system at Sarah McGuardia and that's what we're trying to prove with our drill programs right now. So that's what really drew us to there was the potential to host, you know, one of these big systems had a lot of good supporting data at a regional and local level, you know, to support the drill targets and to support that theory. And I think we're off to a very good start with the visible gold and things that we've seen in just the first couple of holes. Assuming that you continue to see fantastic results and those drill holes um come out with some great results. Is that going to be your main focus going into the summer to expand that drill program and then Aanaka after or are you going to simultaneously do both? >> One of the reasons to why we have them on sort of projects at opposite ends of the Americas is you know when it's prime time summer season for drilling up in northern Canada it's it's it's winter down in southern Patagonia. They do get snow down there on those projects. Um, so ideally we'd be kind of going back and forth between the two, but it really depends on the results of this first program as well. Uh, in terms of timing for Aanaka, we're looking at kind of late July and into August for for that drill program. Um, which is really heavily dependent on Kendall's uh, team schedule as well since they do a lot of exploration throughout Canada uh, throughout the the good season here. Um, so we kind of have to work with their team schedule as well for when they can fit us in. But in terms of you know right now we're drilling about 2250 meters for this drill program at Elen Han. It's probably going to take another 45 days or so depending on drilling goes to to complete that. It is going a little bit slower. This overburden is a little bit challenging to drill through. Um but the drill crews are are working on that and and making some good improvements on on drill progress. But whether or not we expand that drill program or pause and wait to come back later will will really be dependent on uh what the results from the lab look like over the coming weeks. We should see a turnaround time of about 3 to 4 weeks we believe for for assays down there. That's what they've told us, but we haven't actually gotten any assays back. So, we don't have anything to go on there. But hopefully they can stick with that 3 to 4 week schedule. Um, which would mean that we could potentially see some assays back from the first few holes before we complete the last few holes. So we could potentially make some some decisions then whether or not we want to add a few extra hundreds of meters, put a couple extra drill holes in there as part of this program or something much bigger if obviously we have some spectacular results. Uh so we'll just have to wait over the coming you know one or two months to see what those look like. >> Can you talk a little bit about the team that you have in place? I know that today you even just announced a new VP of exploration and then um anything the like background or history that management has worked in Argentina as well. >> We got a great team that we've assembled over the last couple of years um you know kind of adding adding the right pieces along the way obviously kind of at the board and advisory level. We've got some great people behind us not just from Invented Capital but also from Discovery Group. So Jim Peterson's our chairman. He's one of the co-founders and principles at Discovery Group. um his partner there, John Robbins, is one of our strategic adviserss. Uh and then we've also got uh Craig Perry joining us from Invented Capital as one of our strategic adviserss as well. And you know, the these gentlemen have done a tremendous amount of business in this industry, not just in making great discoveries, but also making sure that those discoveries translate to value creation success for their shareholders uh and big exits for their shareholders and takeouts. Um, you know, John and Jim were were part of uh the Great Bear Discovery and the and the sale of that to Ken Ross and Kamak, which they sold to Gold Corp. Uh, Bryce Roxberg, who's our newest director that I mentioned, he just joined us back in March. Uh, he's been making discoveries for the last 50 years, uh, including in Argentina. So, he actually him and his team advanced the Sarah Mororrow discovery sort of back in the early sort of 2012 2013 era, I believe it was. Um, they ended up selling that to Yana Gold for over $400 million. and Sarah Mororrow is in that same district that we're in down in Santa Cruz. So definitely got some good local experience and then on the ground um we're working with the same local geological team, Argentinian team that helped them advance that cereamoro discoveries and they also did all the early stage work at Alzenhan and Benadero and even kind of originally st the Alzenhon claim. So we've got a lot of good incountry experience uh at the at the board level and at the local level as well. I myself lived in Argentina once upon a time to study Spanish. Um, so we have a lot of Spanish- speaking professionals in our team. Myself, our new vice president of exploration, Ryan Weston, who just joined us today, has spent several years working in Peru, so he speaks Spanish as well. Um, we've got a our new CFO and corporate secretary are both native Spanish speakers. And then Bryce with all of his experience in Latin America as well. We've got uh I think a really solid team from the board level and advisers uh through management on down to the people that we have on the ground there in terms of uh discovery success, discovery history and and you know doing a lot of that work in Latin America. >> Uh share structure and then financials what you have in the bank. I know there's a great time to raise capital this year and raise 4 million. Is that correct? >> Yeah, that's right. We did a $4 million financing uh back in February. That was all the hard dollar financing. And the purpose of those funds is to to fund this drill program that we have active right now and cover all of our corporate and marketing overhead, you know, into next year pretty easily. Uh so we still got about $3 million in the bank right now. I think I just got a cash call this morning for the for the project in Argentina. So we'll send some more funds down there to keep the drills turning. Um you know, in terms of Aanaka, you know, we would likely do some sort of financing to to support that program uh a little bit later this year. uh last year, you know, we we we um funded most of that with either charity flow through or or regular flow through financings, uh which are fantastic that you can take advantage of that here in Canada. Uh really helps keep the dilution down when you want to do those big drill programs. So, we'll likely do something like that to support APanaka here in the near future. Um but yeah, right now we've got about 3 million in cash in the bank. Uh we have 66 million shares outstanding right now and uh I think this morning we were trading around.7 to 75 cents Canadian. Uh so market cap sort of 40 to 45 million Canadian right now. Obviously has a big bump from where we were uh two weeks ago, but after the news last week, people getting excited about our drill program uh in Argentina and the you know the early stage success that we're having down there. Uh we've seen our share price appreciate quite significantly since that February financing. >> What What's the difference in the cost of drilling down in Argentina? I'm assuming it's a little cheaper than here in Canada. >> Some things can be cheaper, some things not. um you know it's probably going to be similar price or maybe even a little bit more expensive actually for this first Elenhun program compared to our Aanaka project last year. Uh even though Aanaka was heli supported program um we had really efficient drilling up there drilling up in that archan rock we averaged I think it was almost 114 meters per day in terms of drill production from a single drill rig which is which is really quite high. And so when you have that really hydro production, you can really spread out a lot of those other costs per meter like your helicopter and personnel costs. Um down in Argentina right now, we're going a lot slower than that. Um you know, trying to get through this overburden has been has been a challenge for sure. Even the ground itself, a lot of it's very oxidized and so it's a little bit slower drilling. Um they did make some good improvements on drill progress for hole number two. We were typically seeing an average of about 50 mters per day uh going through hole number two. So hopefully we can kind of keep up that progress uh over the next um nine or 10 holes that we have left in this program. Um but you know seeing that big difference, you know, drilling almost twice as many meters per day uh in Quebec as we are in Argentina, that kind of drives up some of the cost. So I believe we averaged about $550 per meter Canadian at Alanaka last year. Uh budget this year is probably going to be somewhere around $600 a meter for that. But down in Argentina, we're probably going to end up spending, you know, closer to 700 or 750 a meter. um especially because it's a smaller drill program, so we're only set up right now to do about 2200 meters. Uh we just set up a bit of a camp, but it's nice that it is road accessible. We're renting like a farmhouse down there. Uh they've got a well that we can use to pump water out of to support the drill rig. Um so everything's kind of kind of right on site there. That that's nice from our Canadian standards where we don't have to use a helicopter, but it still takes a while to get down there and it takes a while to bring in supplies. Um you know, it's a bit of a long drive. Um so I would expect cost to be a little bit higher per meter down there than up in Canada. What's the long-term story for Target? Like what are you looking to develop these like to the place that and obviously a major would take over or obviously you're looking at discovery stories that no one's even drilled on? Is that going to be your plan going forward to acquire more projects that are just brand new? >> Yeah, I mean we want to be in this discovery making business, not the not the mining business. Maybe that's like taboo of a mining engineer to say, you know, usually geologists like to say that, but uh you that's the the treasure hunt. That's what get gets me excited. Um, so we're very much focused on discovery making, growing those discoveries, drilling them out, you know, working through feasibility, but ultimately looking for somebody else to purchase those or acquire the company to get access to those projects. That's our business model right now. Obviously, things could change way down the road depending on what we find. And really developing what we consider to be a gold discovery pipeline. So, right now, we've got three projects in that pipeline. Aanaka, since we've already made a drill discovery out there, would be the most advanced. Elen Han sort of right in the middle because we're actively drilling for the very first drill program there. And then we've got Venadero sort of at the early end of that pipeline. We did some early stage mapping there um back in February. We'll probably end up doing some soil sampling would likely be the next step for for Venadero, you know, after the Patagonian winter finishes. Um but we already know there's gold at Venadero. Earlier stage prospecting, they actually had bedrocketed that project, which is a nice change of pace for us. Um they've identified uh what's called the Gorgonola vein over about two and a half kilometers it's been traced at surface and samples from that vein have come back bearing gold and silver I think up to about 4 and a half grams per ton gold. Um but it seems like it's a bit high up in the epiothermal system. So the better sort of silver and gold targets we would expect to be maybe another 150 m below surface. So that could be a future drill target over there. From the mapping that we've done we've identified some other areas of interest in silica caps and areas that could represent upper areas of other epiothermal systems. So, we'd like to get out there, do some soil sampling probably before the end of the year, follow that with some geoysics, uh, and basically prepare that to be the next maiden drill program, you know, maybe sometime late next year. >> Um, any key takeaways that you want investors to remember from our conversation? >> Yeah, a couple of those would be, you know, again, we're focused on making gold discoveries. I think as a team a huge track record of making those sorts of discoveries but also just as you know with target we've proven back in January when we announced that discovery that you know we do have what it takes terms of the team and the right investors and the right people supporting the business to take a project which was essentially moose pasture when we first acquired it uh and bring it through in a very short period of time to making a gold discovery. We're looking to do that same thing at Elzen Han. I think with the results that we had last week or the observations that we made, we're heading very much in that direction to to repeat that success again on another project. Um, and we've got a lot on the go. So with an active drill program now, another drill program planned for up a little bit later this summer. Uh, you know, and then we'll be following up with the next drill program at Zenhan. Again, we plan on generating a pretty u, you know, steady flow of exploration and discovery related news going forward. Um, so I think investors can can look out for a lot of potential rerating milestones as we release that news and as we advance these drill programs. Um, so certainly very very good time to to keep an eye on target. Uh, look out for those that news flow and and and look out for those future assays and results coming in just in the next couple weeks probably. >> It's nice to actually hear a real like actual exploration discovery story because like they don't happen anymore. >> Well, people try to say, well, the best place to find a gold mine is under a head frame, right? So they keep drilling under old projects and it's true you can pretty much always find some gold down there but you know I I find there's you're accomplishing two things when you're doing mineral exploration and people usually talk about one of them. People talk about what you find. Um but the other thing that you're doing as you're exploring is you're also sort of determining what's not there. So you're finding what is there but as you find out what's there you kind of determine what so you're reducing the potential of what you could potentially find. Right? So you're like oh we know there's not cold over here. Okay X off that part of the area. Okay we know that's not good geology over there. Okay, nothing like there's only low grade stuff over here. So, you're kind of shrinking in the potential of any project. Um, but when you start on these big grassroots projects like we've been working on at Opanaka uh and Elen Han, there's no history of that exploration. There's no history of that drilling. Um, so there's nothing on the what's not there list yet. Um, so that keeps the optimism high and the potential still out there for making these big multi-million ounce discoveries. I find a lot of people or a lot of companies that are drilling on more legacy assets or areas with a lot of history of exploration. You know, they've got a lot of potential for finding gold out there. They're successful at finding gold, but you know, again, because a lot of that area has been sort of drilled off elsewhere, you're kind of shrinking in what the ultimate potential is. And so, you know, they might have potential to make a million ounce discovery and, you know, which is exciting, but you know, these days I think which what really moves the needle in the market is the multi-million discoveries. you, you know, the 2 million ounces or 3 million ounces is kind of the new 1 million ounce sort of thing. So, if you're drilling in these older areas, you know, a lot of them you you kind of know that you're not going to make a 5 million ounce discovery out there. Um, but we could very much make those types of discoveries on the assets that we're working on at Target >> and best ways to reach out to you and the company. >> Yeah, anybody interested in in having a chat or asking any questions on the company or our projects can reach me at targetexploration.com. Um, you can also just go to our website, targetexploration.com. I will be uploading, uh, a new deck there either today or tomorrow. So, um, watch out for that as well. Uh, and yeah, you can get our sign up for, um, for our newsletter to to make sure you receive our news releases as they get released as well from our website. So, I encourage people to do that.