Thanks for this post RST. Really appreciate this great info. I had suspected that the Scotia guy had not bothered to contact Dave before he released his hasty analysis (on the same day the press release came out nonetheless - what was the rush Mr. Hocking?)

I found the Scotia report to be suspect in a number of ways but the one the stands out the most for me is how they used a length weighted average grade of the intercepts to arrive at an overall grade of around 2.4g/t (which was below the Scotia model requirement for underground operations). Had they bothered to call Dave or reference the updated presentation to get a visual on the structure of the deposit they would have realized that many of the intercepts pierced only the deposit halo (1-2g/t) - this material would never be mined so why include it in an average grade estimate? So with this simplistic approach, which low-grades the minable ore, they not only tossed out the 600m extension, they permanently ruled out any significant improvement in the grade! Absurd!!! I wonder if they took this same grade averaging approach to come up with their estimate for the first 1km of the HGZ? (in which case they probably underestimated the grade and overestimated the tonnage = higher model costs).

I would think that most other (professional) analsyts realize that, although further drilling is required to properly delineate the HGZ extension, the results were very positive in that they confirmed the extension of the gold bearing structure and that for now we're in a holding pattern until further infill drilling is completed or we get the updated Resource Estimate.

GLTA longs.