Two Emails from Dave Webb Today.

Dave gave me permission to post these two emails that he sent me today. The one in blue was the more recent. Italicized letters are mine...I thought it would help.

Cheers,

Baires

The Con Mine started in 1936. Their first ore reserve was released in 1938 when they reported 85,000 tons grading 0.85 ounces of gold per ton. Much of their operations were based upon minimum width stops (1.5m). They ended up consolidating adjacent properties, including the Negus and Rycon Mines. Both mined veins that were less than 1 foot wide but graded multiple ounces per ton until 1948 when the Campbell shear zone was discovered.

Between 1948 and the early 1950's, the Con Mine encountered 3m to 10m sections grading 20 to 40 gpt in the 101 Zone. That petered out until the late 1960's to early 1970's when the 103 zone was encountered 300 m beneath the 101 Zone.

The Giant Mine was much the same way, with narrow high-grade intercepts predominating until 1944 when the hugh ore bodies were found. Again, their discovery of large high-grade ore bodies came in fits and starts through to the late 1970's, and for the last 30 years it was mostly reclamation mining.

"The Giant Mine was a large gold mine located at Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Gold was discovered on the property in 1935 by Johnny Baker, but the true extent of the gold deposits were not known until 1944 when a massive gold-bearing shear zone was uncovered beneath the drift-filled Baker Creek Valley. "(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Mine)

So, in summary, the Con Mine intersected broad high-grade intersections 10 years AFTER they started mining, and Giant, which had several exploratory operations going, hit the broad high-grade zones before they had significant production, but 8 years after production had commenced on the adjacent properties.

Exploration and development in Yellowknife has for decades been about finding shear zones, confirming mineralization, and then grid drilling at ever decreasing spacing as mineralization is found. The first pass drilling is typically done at 200 m sections to a depth of 100 m or so. This type of drilling typically blanks, but once a gold-bearing shear zone is found, success might be in the order of 1 economic hit in every 10 holes or so. A second pass of drilling around the hit might be at 100 m (either side and to depth), or 50 m spacing. One might expect 1 economic hit every 3 to 5 holes. The drilling narrows down to stop definition, which might be down to 10 m sections where one could get economic hits in 1 out of every 2 to 3 holes.

Today, we are starting to apply geochemistry, geophysics, and geology (structural, metamorphic). Some shear zones are more prospective than others based upon these features, so we HOPE to hit better. We might be wrong, or have overlooked something, but we shouldn’t do any worse than those that went before us. As well, little first or second pass exploration ever looked below 100 m. This is universal in exploration, so you end up with deposits such as the world-class Louvicourt Mine (copper zinc) which was found in the 1990’s in an area of existing mines, but at depths below that which the first pass explorers had looked.