Vizsla Copper: High-Grade Drilling Expands the Palmer Story

Trevor Hall (0:19)

Ever since Vizsla Copper has taken the Palmer Project over really this year, the company continues to publish some headline holes, including some latest holes here, early September, including 49.2 meters of 4.7% copper equivalent. And actually, we're going to talk to one of the people responsible for that, Senior Vice President of Exploration in Alaska, Mr. Peter Mercer. Peter, welcome to the podcast.

Peter Mercer (0:45)

Really appreciate it.

Trevor Hall (0:46)

Yeah. How has the last few days been?

Peter Mercer (0:48)

It's been busy. Whole week, how?

It's an excitement, and there's just a feeling here that it's really in the beginning of a good market, but just seeing everybody again and shaking hands with people I haven't seen in a few years, it's been pretty good.

Trevor Hall (1:01)

Yeah, very good. Well, OK, so obviously we're going to start with Palmer. Palmer's 2026 program was built around growing that Zone 1 core, testing high-grade, stepping out into AG.

Of those, excuse me, HG, and then stepping into AG, of those three, which was delivered the most relative to you and what you expect is going on?

Peter Mercer (1:24)

Well, really, like you said, we're looking at our high-grade core in Zone 1, which by and large, the 49 meters and the type of grades we're looking at, that's pretty exciting. If it was all like that, then it would be easy. So really part of this year would be understanding why that high-grade core is situated the way it is, some of the reinterpretations that we've done over the last couple of years, understanding some of the syngenetic faults that are controlling some of that mineralization. So we've really kind of took a step forward or 3D modeling and understanding of what that zone was and why it's sitting the way it is. Now, a part of that and understanding is, how can we apply it to other parts of the project? Like on the AG deposit, which is the other resource that we have. So we'll take that knowledge and take that new interpretation, bring it over to the AG and then test that, which really haven't been drilled since 2018

It was pretty exciting for us this year. And then taking another step back and say, we got two deposits, we've got the South Wall deposit, and we've got the AG deposit. What is in between these guys? And overall, in the whole property, we've got about 15 prospects, but only four of them are in our deposits. So how many of those other prospects could potentially be mineral resources, or like the discovery like we saw in HG, and then how can we build that up and sort of bring that into our overall thinking of what this property could potentially be?

Trevor Hall (2:41)

Okay, it sounds like you got a number of holes still penning. You promised, I think, 15 holes for the rest of the fall, which is winding away here. What's the cadence here of news with these drill results over the next few weeks?

Peter Mercer (2:55)

We're getting pretty close to finishing up our project now up on Palmer. Snow is getting real close on the mountain, so we've done a great job in terms of drilling this year. Only three of our holes that we've sort of got completed now, we've got announced. So we'll see assays come out over October, November and into December, so we'll have a whole period of news results that are going to be coming in. Some will be exciting, and some will more will be infill drilling, and some more will be areas that we're testing that could be lots of smoke, and then we can understand what that means, and how that means to the overall geological model. But I think again for this year, and part of what we've done is taken a step back, and there's been a real laser focus on just the resource areas over the last number of years. So taking that step back, looking to understand what the geological model for the whole district is telling us, what is the geological model specifically around these deposit areas, and then what else can we kind of pick up in between these two other deposits?

Trevor Hall (3:48)

What have you learned, or what surprised you the most in the last few months since getting your hands on Palmer?

Peter Mercer (3:53)

What surprised me? That's an interesting question in terms of how you would approach it.

I think again, when it comes back to the laser focus of the two deposit areas that have already been defined.

This project is situated right next to the Canadian border, but really about 50 kilometers from the Windy Craggy deposit, from in geological terms, and the resource that's been defined there sitting in the park right now. But it is pretty significant resource. So what really surprised me the most is how much focus has been just the deposit areas. And so looking at it at a very focused view, but they're not stepping back and saying, what else is in the region? What is the Copper Coal Ball that we're seeing over on ESP in Nogoli's prospect? What is that telling us? What are some of the high-grade stuff we're seeing over on Mount Hidden Clay? What is that telling us about the story? And in incorporating that in terms of the overall plan, in terms of how we advance this project.