I do l agree with some of your response, it feels good to actually have an actual discussion forum here.  You said every effort was made to make a deal by now.  The JV deal they were looking for was too restrictive to parties interested.  Hence no deal.  Lots of money spent and shares sold to the market to fund these trips.  Planning and development doesn't cost as much as you think when you already have the schematics in place.  We have the claims, drilling permits in hand, and a potential deal with drill/truck company lined up.  Everything has been ready to go for about a year now, with the exception of renewing our permits in AZ.

 "Hay Mountain, while immensely important, is not everything.  It IS the most important prospect at the moment, but any sane CEO and BOD is looking a few years ahead, not just for the next month.  The fact is that claims elsewhere will add value over the longer term...especially if HM ends up diluted with a JV."

It is our best prospect, and beg your pardon, Hay mountain is going to take 5-10 years to fully develop, not "just for the next month".  Its great to have claims elsewhere, but the only reason we still have those claims is that we as plebes buy up shares on promises that are sold to us by Tangiers each quarter.  We have no money!, we have no revenue!, we will not have any profit for at least 2 years from now, no matter what happens!  We don't need to prospect further.  If we were Freemont, or Newmont then we could roll the dice all we want.  We have debt, and claims on a really good spot called Hay, and have invested our money into ZTEM and roadtrips to make it so.  I don't give a crap about Utah right now; maybe once we can prove the ability to drill at one location, then the sky's the limit, but right now, concentrate what we have permits for. 

 "And, while much of NP was sold off, a still-substantial portion remains."

Ummm... first off, we didn't sell anything off, we didn't renew our claims once the deal fell through.  If I reading the 10Q from a couple/few quarters ago correctly, we had over 200+ claims, now we have less than 10 or so.  So what substantial portion do we have?  I'm confused. 

And again the Obama admin., the new Trump admin, has nothing to do with what failed to do over the past 3-4 years.  We did the science, got the state's approval for agricultural and drilling permits long ago; the failure was in execution in deal making.  If the conditions of the JV were more agreeable to a suitor as opposed to the 10 year stipulation put forth, we would have had all the means to drill during the Obama admin.  If that's not true, then why did our company waste our shareholder funds going on these selling trips.  Clearly that wasn't a factor at the time, or we're just suckers.  I agree that the new admin will help get funds churning for many start up companies, but to use that now in an argument is just an excuse for failure for the previous number of years.  I don't remember the impending election discussion being brought up over the past few years while we were trying to get funding.  Its just good fodder now, since the PP didn't go as well as management thought it would.

And again, someone please comment on the free renewal of 93M shares for board members another 3 years without any more insider money put in, and the newly assigned 10 year options by our CEO and new board member, without any insider money put in. 

Wesley, I love this talk, and really appreciate this banter, this is what this forum is for.  I am frustrated like the poster I responded to.  But at the end of the day, I just bought more today (again, cause I believe in the science of our findings, and have held for about 6 years now.  I see a lot of flaws in execution, but we're all on the same team.   Happy new year and go team.