RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Reality of a deposit like thisBX, I will do this in two parts.
1. I Hope I have never said "Mined out" I have suggested that the longer vein sets that had significant grade have most likely been mined. I base this in the idea that the old historical mining was actually done quite well. they used to drift along parallel to known ore bodies, or predicted ore bodies to do exploration. They would then dig a cross drift to see what grade was doing. Also, logic would dictate that if you found a a vein set, and it had grade, you would keep mining that vein set until it petered out. Though much information is not available, the web site does provide several long sections showing historical workings with known or previously known ore bodies. I think I have mentioned before, old mines like this did not acurately report mined oz's, grade and tonnage... see previous comments.
I don't buy that the mining stopped because of gold prices, or other issues, at least not in the longer term of the mine. I honestly believe that the old timers had a pretty good handle on this orebody and developed quite extensive workings in which to mine and do exploration. I think they had a handle on what vein sets they could mine at a profit, and which ones would not cary the grade and tonnage to make it viable. BGM has used the old workings to do extensive underground drilling from, and may have even drifted into a few areas to see what may actually be happening. I have no doubt that extensive underground mapping has been done, samples taken etc.
I honestly believe the 1M oz Ind. amount. I also honesly believe the Inf. amount. It is converting those inf to ind that I think will be hard. The reason being is that I think most of the remaing vein sets that still exist in the project that are reporting these quite nice grades are probaly small pods or have short lengths or they would have been found and mined from the workings that were in place. Don't get me wrong, I am sure there are a few remaining longer vein sets that have the gold, I just think the majority would have been found.
I would assume the next staTEMENT WOULD BE, well, they are not going to underground mine this. I understand.... But, if these smaller vein sets are what contain the intercept as reported, it may even be hard to open pit mine these because of the small size and narrow width. Keep in mind, when open pit mining, ore control is extremly important. You don't want to mix waste with grade. the nature of these vein sets is that they are rather narrow (please refer to drill intercepts, most likely are dipping at an odd angle relative to a bench type mining process, and in all reality, don't have much length. What do you do to minimize dilution? What happens to grade? ( the only reason they can mine open pit many of these low grade deposits in NV is because the nature of the huge area that actually contains gold. ORE control is why).
Lets say from a resource standpoint that quite a bit of the Inf. is converted to Ind. I am willing to bet when you apply a PFS and more so a FS study, the open pit model will be near impossible to justify because of ore control issues. I understand that some new gold is being found by assaying previously thought "dead rock" is returning some numbers. This is most excellent, but I will just about bet you anything (my bet is based on the 1 twin hole reported, plus the idea that the supposed "dead Rock" just didn't show much sign of life) will return grades that over the length of the drill hole will be sub 0.5 grams. What this does to the deposit... It lowers the over all grade. We are no longer talking about a few meters that have half oz.... We are talking about when you don't average, but actually do a weighted mean breaking out it section of some really low grade intercepts. IMO, not economic.
Within industry, there has been a huge effort to actually report intercepts showing each significant intercept against the total. If you read a PR and it says something like 30 meters of 2 oz and it doesn't show the probable high grade portion (read nugget effect) over this length, you are probably dealing with a project that is having a spray can paint job over the reality. Those high grade intercepts are nice, but you need to medel them and justify the interp. of the intercept correctly or it doesn't add up.
Believe me, this is not just an issue that BGM has or needs to deal with. It is an industry wide problem. I was at a seminar recently and heard comments from multiple "experts" as to the current 43-101's that are out. The comments made were basically that more then half are truely not reporting the actual reality of the deposit.
I would encourage you to look at all the recent company failures when they go to the next step or start mining. International Tower Hill... check it out.
Look at Heclas Grouse Creek project that failed about 10 years ago... Look at Copper Fox...
Look at Nova and Teck with Galore Creek.
The list is huge.
Shreaded lettuce - I think some of my comments addressed this, but l will restate. I think the lettuce (gold) that is remaining is in small short narrow areas and will be extremly hard to mine do to ore control. I don't think in the big picture of bulk open pit mining that the occasional Shread of crispy high grade will save this. Some suggest that you process all the rock (PG did I believe) but I think the grade to tons will kill this when you actually get a handle on this.