Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: Gold Stocks

Renegade Gold (TSX-V: RAGE)(OTCQB: RENGF) CEO Devin Pickell on Advancing the Flagship Rebel Gold Deposit & District-Scale Portfolio in the Prolific Red Lake Region of Northern Ontario, Canada

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of a new story to our audience. I'm talking with Mr. Devin Pickell from Renegade Gold (TSX-V: RAGE)(OTCQB: RENGF).  

Devin, it's a great time to have one of the largest and most strategic land packages in the Red Lake area. Welcome to the show. How are you?

Devin Pickell: I'm doing well, Gerardo, thank you. Happy to be here and excited to talk with you.

Gerardo Del Real: Let's get right into it. You just put out a Maiden Resource Estimate (MRE) that I think took the market by surprise.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the stock is up triple-digits over the last several months despite the fact that you have a tiny market cap given the quality of that resource estimate — the grade, the jurisdiction — and the last box that I love that you guys checked off beautifully during tougher markets, I should say.

This isn't a new story that you just made up two months ago to take advantage of the gold price. You really have been able to put together a land package that has scale. That has got to be envious to a lot of the neighbors so I want to start by talking about the flagship and about that resource estimate and the quality of it.

Devin Pickell: Right, so to back the story up even further, that's where I got my start with Renegade — at the Rebel deposit. I had spent a good amount of time at Rebel before taking the reins as CEO.

I sat out there in the tents, went through the core myself, looked at the thing, and thought, ‘This is an asset that's really undervalued.’ That was something I recognized pretty early on.

So we spent a lot of time at Rebel itself. Beyond that, we completely dissected the project. We went through all of the drilling and brought in around 75 holes that hadn't been included since the last resource. We had some new LiDAR data that helped us really understand the geometry of some of the structures, and we completely dissected it and rebuilt it.

The last round of drilling, too, went unnoticed. They doubled the depth with the most recent drilling so we included all of that. That's where we're sitting with the MRE — with a completely new geological model and a new team behind it.

I think the MRE speaks for itself: 370,000 ounces in the Indicated category is a pretty strong base to start from, plus the 439,000 in the Inferred category.

Gerardo Del Real: I think it's important to also touch on the grade. Those 370,000 ounces that are open-pittable are at above two grams at 2.07 grams per tonne gold (g/t Au).

The remainder is at 2.42 g/t Au — that's 194,000 ounces there — and then you have 245,000 ounces at 4.91 g/t Au. 

So you have a neat open-pit/underground component and a clear path toward getting above that one-million-ounce threshold pretty quickly.

How were you able to put together this big of a land package, given the fact that your neighbors have market caps in the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, and here you sit with a market cap sub-C$30 million right now?

Devin Pickell: Right, and that was the thing. We wanted to back that land package with a solid resource so now we've got that under our belt.

When we looked at the larger land package, we wanted to put in a plan to advance it. The plan we put forward was: while we advance our more advanced projects, let's build a new pipeline of drill targets — good ones we believe in.

We have controlling interests on three major structures throughout that land package, and they all have low-hanging fruit associated with them. If we step through them in sequence, we have the main continuation of the Red Lake Mine package, which comes through our Gullrock targets.

Our team has done an excellent job going through the historic geochem data there, as well as interpreting the new mag data. You can really see the continuation of these folded ultramafic units onto our ground, which is a ringer for analogous geology to what's going on in the Red Lake camp.

Then you move to the south and look at the Arrow trend. That Arrow trend is one that has specifically been looked at. There's active drilling in the camp in that area. You look on either side of that, and we control the same ground.

We have historic showings there. Our copper load has run up to 8% copper in drilling. We've seen high silver grades, up to 100 g/t Ag in that area. And recently, with the Belanger acquisition that we did, we just brought a near-surface gold target into the mix as well, with 60 g/t Au right at surface in trenching.

So lots of targets to work out. That's the thesis here — bring the advanced projects up to a new baseline and really build a pipeline of good drill targets that we can hang our hat on and go drill test so that we have the best chance for success.

Gerardo Del Real: You've had some great hits at Rebel. You've had 9 meters of 19.7 g/t Au, seven meters of 15.4 g/t Au. I could go on with the high-grade hits but what's really interesting to me is the fact that it's open in all directions and not much drilling has happened below 300 meters. Is that correct?

Devin Pickell: Correct. At Rebel, we did drill some holes down to 700 meters but there is lots of room for expansion between that 300- to 700-meter horizon — and then obviously beyond. There's nothing beyond that. And the lateral extensions need more definition as well. It's not closed off along strike.

Gerardo Del Real: Rebel is, of course, the flagship, but again, you have a portfolio of really prospective projects. What does it look like as far as advancing those? And just prioritizing the emphasis — Rebel deserves the emphasis and the attention — but the other projects, what are your plans there?

Devin Pickell: Yes, so our plans are to continue to build out this list of drill targets, then rate and rank them, choose the best ones, and move them forward.

The only other one we haven't touched on that we're going to build out going forward is the LP Fault, which is the controlling structure at Great Bear that comes through the southern portion of our land package. This is a lot of underexplored ground — no drilling and hardly looked at.

We just flew high-resolution mag over that entire structure. From there, we're going to plan out some geochemical surveys and follow the likes of what's happened at Aurora Nova and what Great Bear has done with their high-res mag and define better targets there.

Really, what you're going to see, I think, are some good greenfields drill targets coming together in the fall that will be set up to drill.

Gerardo Del Real: You just closed just over C$4 million. How's the treasury looking?

Devin Pickell: It looks good. And the good thing about that raise was it was a short list of people — a lot of people who believed in the project and were willing to put their money up on a one-year hold. It looks good. I'm excited to move this thing forward.

Gerardo Del Real: I absolutely love the fact that you all put a one-year hold on that stock. It shows commitment. It shows you have the right type of shareholders.

Again, you have a sub-C$30 million market cap, you're in the right jurisdiction, we have $5,200 gold, and you have a lot of targets to work through. I'm looking forward to having you back and talking about the drills turning and seeing what turns up.

Devin Pickell: Yes, it's a really exciting story, Gerardo. 

Gerardo Del Real: Awesome. Devin, thank you so much for your time. I’m looking forward to doing it again. I appreciate it.

Devin Pickell: Great, thank you, Gerardo.

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