Brad Kitchen, President and CEO of Eagle Hill Exploration at the New  Orleans Investment Conference

When investors look for junior exploration companies, their expectations are set a little lower. They don’t expect big plays. They don’t expect a lot of discoveries. These investors are taking a risk and hoping to see some interesting discoveries.

But investors with that mindset might need to rethink their worldview because Eagle Hill Exploration (TSXV: EAG) is a junior exploration company with a big piece of land that seems to have a lot of gold.

We spoke to Brad Kitchen, President and CEO of Eagle Hill Exploration, recently and learned more about their property and the successful exploration they’ve enjoyed so far.

We started by talking to Mr. Kitchen about his background and how he started Eagle Hill Exploration. His background is the kind of mix you’d hope to find in the CEO of a junior exploration firm – equal parts engineer and financier. He said: “I’m a Vancouver boy. After taking an engineering degree in UBC, I took an MBA at McGill University where I majored in International Finance. Then I moved to Toronto where I was VP and Director of Investment Banking and Structured Finance at CIBC-Wood Gundy. I seized the opportunity to move back to Vancouver about 12 years ago and have been working in the venture capital world since then.  I started Eagle Hill in June 2006, we went public in 2007, and we acquired the Windfall Lake Property in September 2009.”

The Windfall Lake Gold Property is located in the Abitibi region of Quebec, and it was a previously developed as an advanced stage exploration project before Eagle Hill Exploration acquired it. Mr. Kitchen explained: “Prior to us acquiring the property, there had been about $25 million spent on exploration, over 330 drill holes completed, and 71 kilometers of coredrilled. There is a 1400 metre underground ramp – 5 metres in diameter, big enough to drive large trucks through, a full camp for up to 58 people, an infirmary, and kitchen, all in very, very good shape. The infrastructure is super; there are two power lines that go through our property. And there’s a good gravel road for access; we were driving about 100 kilometres per hour on it.”

The property’s footprint is impressively large: They have over 360 claims and a 1200 hectare footprint. “That’s very large for the Abitibi gold belt,” said Mr. Kitchen. “Usually you’re talking about 6-10 claims.”

So, what have they done with this property when they acquired it? To understand where they are now, we first talked about where the property had come from. Mr. Kitchen described the property’s history: “The property itself, historically, has had some very high grade results,” he said. “For example, the previous owner] had 52 ounces of gold over about 5 metres, but despite very significant results they had never done a model or a resource calculation.”

At the time, it seemed like enough for the previous owners. “When we first looked at the property, we examined some of the historic information. We could see that the old company was chasing high grade vein structures. When we had a chance to look at the core, we saw that not only were there the high grade veins, we realized there was gold over larger areas also ,” Mr. Kitchen said.

It was a paradigm shift for Eagle Hill – and a positive one at that. “Our first objective was to bring all the historic data into a 3D model. That helps us decide where our new holes will be drilled. We now see Windfall Lake as a bulk tonnage property rather than only narrow gold veins. That was a fundamental shift.”

And the results have proven that their insight was accurate. Mr. Kitchen described the two drill programs they’ve performed on the property since they acquired it: “We’ve had the property for about a year. One of the first holes we drilled, in our first drill program, we hit 14 grams per ton over 52 metres… there was gold found in every single one of those 52 meters! Then we had huge success on our [second] drill program. We drilled 14 holes and the intention was to prove the gold continuity in one of our zones... and we hit gold on all 14 holes. Not only that, but we also discovered a new gold zone, bringing the total [of gold zones] to five quite near the surface, only about 60 metres from the surface.”

Now they are poised for even greater success. They have a team that is rich in experience, with over 450 collective years of industry experience. As well, Mr. Kitchen added: “We’re also working with Dr. Jean-Philippe Desrochers, who is one of the top minds in structural geology. He’s had extensive success in Canada and in South America and that will help translate into a better program for us.”

Going forward, Mr. Kitchen has a series of goals to bring the project into production. He said: “The intention for us in the next six to nine months is to start to develop a resource calculation, then a 43-101 compliant resource estimate, which we should have available in late spring of next year. We will concentrate on our strengths, which are in exploration and management. We’ll look for a senior partner to develop the mine.”

The company is well funded to move through this process. They have approximately $4 million in the bank and do not plan to go into the market to raise additional funds in the near future to avoid  diluting their stock. But should there be a need for additional funds, they have a letter of intent from IBK Capital, committing to help them raise up to  $30 million over the next four years.

Eagle Hill Exploration is an interesting story for investors. They’re not the kind of company who has to bang away at the ground with a drill, hoping to find something. On the contrary: They know the gold is there and now their best effort is spent understanding the gold structures and preparing to bring the property into production.

REFERENCES

Eagle Hill Exploration Corporation:

http://www.eaglehillexploration.com/

Suite 750, 999 Canada Place Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6C 3E1

Phone: 604.638.8072

Email: info@eaglehillexploration.com