Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) CEO Michael Hudson on the Shareholder-Friendly Option Agreement for the 150,000 Hectare Western USA Gold Project in Oregon

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW)(OTC: MWSNF), Mr. Michael Hudson. Mike, how are you this morning?

Michael Hudson: Top of the world as always. Thank you, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Interesting bit of news this morning. You optioned a large epithermal gold project here in the U.S. of A. I would love to catch up, get an update on everything company-wise, and then talk about this morning's news. It's interesting.

Michael Hudson: It is interesting. Something a bit out of the ordinary that we've been working on behind the scenes over the last year or so. There's no doubt that Mawson is sharply focused on our flagship property in Finland. We've got a small drill program ongoing at the moment, but a large drill program planned, subject to permitting, starting in January there. We've got a resource that's being worked on as we speak, a maiden resource, and so much more to do and focus there. That is focus number one.

This asset came to us. We're opportunists in many respects in our business. We create opportunities out of essentially nothing as geologists. You know, we go in and walk into a property like we did in Finland six or seven years ago and now we're putting a maiden resource around it, whereas it was completely unknown that time ago.

In a similar way, we've got a project here that we like a lot. We're drilling straight up as you've noticed. That's unusual. We look forward to seeing what we find here and then we'll look at what kind of corporate structure we can put this in to allow focus on Finland but give shareholders a bonus optionality.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Now, drilling has commenced. Is that accurate? Can we talk about the targets?

Michael Hudson: Yes, absolutely we can. Yup, absolutely. We've got two areas we'll be testing. This is a big area, okay, so this is very unusual. This is fee-simple land in the U.S. In my opinion, probably the best form of mineral tenure in the world arguably. The landholder owns the land rights and owns the mineral rights. It's a one-stop shop if you like, if you've got a landholder who you can work with. In this case we've got a fantastic landholder. We've optioned a very large area. In metric terms it's just over 150,000 hectares. This is a big regional play.

But importantly there's a couple of areas that were worked on very slightly. This has been behind locked gates from when the west was really developed. There was a little bit of work done on some properties. We've done some early-stage mapping and soil sampling, come up with drill targets immediately.

There's two areas that we'll be looking at. One is called Huckleberry. It's a high sulfidation epithermal gold system, has all the right geological and geochemical characteristics at surface. Gold develops at telescope levels in these systems so we're drilling down below what we see at surface. There will be gold there somewhere. Let's hope we can find it in a couple of scout drill holes.

Then another area which is intriguing also, it's an area over a couple of kilometers. Eight kilometers west of Huckleberry, so a fair distance away. It's a system we know not a lot about because we haven't found many rocks there with gold in them, but the soils over two kilometers are exceedingly high. There's a 400-meter core radius area that has soils regularly exceeding a gram per tonne, up to 5 grams per tonne. That anomaly's coming from somewhere. It's all in very altered rocks that we can see around this area. That two kilometer long anomaly will have three or four holes put into that, just to learn about the rocks underneath and hopefully find the source to those very, very high-grade soils.

Gerardo Del Real: Can you talk about the structure of the deal? Because it's very shareholder friendly, not much dilution for another shot on goal.

Michael Hudson: No, for commercial reasons we put in what is the front end of the deal and what Mawson is obliged to spend. We have the opportunity to earn 100% of the mineral rights on this project over the larger area. We've got to put in a minimum of half a million US dollars in the first year, then expenditures do increase in the following years if we choose to continue. If not, we walk. There's a relatively small lease-holding payment and then money in the ground. There's simply money in the ground and not a large number first up. No share-based payments, and there is a sliding scale royalty with some callback provisions based on gold price. That's where that landholder will benefit if we find something together.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. When do you believe we'll start seeing results?

Michael Hudson: I think we'll start to see results ideally before Christmas. Everything is coming up very quickly now. We're at nearly the end of the first week of November. We started drilling a couple of weeks ago. We're a couple of holes in. It takes three or four weeks to get turn-around on assays, so we're pushing it before Christmas. If not, early in the new year.

Gerardo Del Real: Positive results would be a heck of a way to kick off Christmas, Mike. Anything else that you'd like to add?

Michael Hudson: No. I think we've covered it, Gerardo. Focus on Finland. Huge opportunity by going into a new frontier but in a jurisdiction that is better and better to explore in now. We're very happy to be working in the U.S. at the moment. Certainly there's a lot of gold to be found there.

Gerardo Del Real: Mike, thank you so much for your time. It's appreciated.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo.

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