If Lucky Shot lives up to its name, it could net Vancouver, British Columbia-based junior Full Metal Minerals millions of dollars. But the chances are slim. Less than 1 percent of exploration projects eventually develop into operating mines, according to Full Metal's vice president, Rob McLeod. Still, McLeod hopes that this or one of his company's other Alaska projects will be as lucrative as Pierina in Peru, which his cousin Catherine McLeod-Seltzer discovered and sold to Barrick Gold for a not-so-small fortune.

The Lucky Shot property is one of the few Alaska exploration projects that can easily be accessed by road. It is just a few miles away from Independence Mine, which was the biggest gold producer in the area before World War II. Full Metal has begun an eight-hole drilling program covering 1,200 meters at Lucky Shot, which the company leased recently from Scott Eubanks, owner of the Lucky Shot Bed & Breakfast.

Eubanks is an underground miner himself, having worked at the Lucky Shot mine when it was operated in the 1980s by oil and gas company Enserch. "They just threw money at it, like most oil companies deal with a problem," Eubanks told Mining News. "Based on a couple of drill holes they drove tunnels and built a mill to start producing gold, and they did produce some until prices crashed," Rob McLeod added. There was also a gold mine here between 1908 and 1951.

Lucky Shot a low-sulfide system

Full Metal got involved with the property when they hired Eubanks to do some blasting at their nearby Gunsite copper-gold project. Eubanks told them about Lucky Shot, and this summer Full Metal is using the Bed & Breakfast as its base, for four drillers, a geologist and an assistant, as well as consultants from Alaska Earth Sciences. Full Metal's employees come from Canada, as there aren't enough drillers in Alaska to accommodate all the projects that are under way this season.

Lucky Shot is a very low sulfide system, which means it doesn't conduct electricity, and there isn't enough contrast between the rocks for IP (induced polarization) geophysics to be effective. So the work here is fairly straightforward. The drillers ride ATVs up to the top of the ridge which everyone calls Lucky Shot Ridge, although Chief Ranger Pat Murphy has officially named it Black's Ridge. They return with core samples, and the samples are inspected visually for the elusive traces of gold, before being sent to the assay lab in Fairbanks. When the hard facts about the core samples come in, Full Metal can issue a press release on its results.

Full Metal serious about finding a mine

Full Metal completed a C$2,875,000 IPO in May 2004, and in July of this year the company completed a C$1 million non-brokered private placement. "Success in the junior mining game is very nebulous, you can be considered a success if you don't find a mine but you made your shareholders a lot of money," McLeod said. However, Full Metal is serious about finding a mine. "The ambition for us is to find economic deposits that we could hopefully sell to a major mining company," he added.

Since the huge Bre-X scandal in the 1990s, when the junior Canadian mining company by that name was found to have made fraudulent claims about a property in Indonesia, boosting its stock price from one penny to C$286.50, the people who invest in mining are much more educated, according to McLeod. "Exchanges in Canada have reformed, they look at our press releases under the microscope," he said. "It is a quite heavily regulated industry now. Resources have to be audited by an independent qualified person."

McLeod himself comes from a mining family. His cousin, McLeod-Seltzer, is an advisor to Full Metal Minerals, and McLeod's father was an underground miner in Stewart, British Columbia. Rob's uncle, Don McLeod, designed and built three mines. Other members of Full Metal's senior management team have an impressive track record. David de Witt, a director of Full Metal, was also a director of the company that discovered the massive Voisey's Bay nickel, copper and cobalt deposit. John Robins, chairman of Full Metal, staked millions of acres of diamond claims in Nunavut.

Few U.S. states pro-mining

Only a few U.S. states are pro-mining, and Alaska is one of them, in McLeod's opinion. The others are Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. "One of the main selling points for us in Alaska is that all the Native land claims have been settled," McLeod said. Last January the company entered into an agreement with the Bristol Bay Native Corporation to explore 565,000 acres on the Southwest Alaska Peninsula. Full Metal has a previous agreement with the Aleut Corporation to explore in the Aleutian Islands. The company will also be working closely with Native corporations at its Pebble South property.

"Alaska is a great place to invest because of its size and mineral potential," McLeod said. "The amount of mineral endowment is very impressive, and it's under-explored compared to other places in the world."