Armed with an improved understanding of the "stratigraphic complexities … and the importance of low angle structures and their contribution to gold deposition" at Red Hill, NuLegacy's management team is eager to follow-up recent high-grade drill hits at the Serena target immediately. But it will also continue to drill widely spaced targets elsewhere in a bid to replicate the results and apply its expanded knowledge kit as broadly as possible on the 98sq.km property.

"We will be drilling more holes to follow up on the excellent results in SR18-02 [including 8.7m at 16.9gpt from 283.7m), but that same set-up of structure and stratigraphy can be seen in numerous places on the property," NuLegacy president and CEO Anderson told Mining Journal.

"So we feel it would be a big mistake to focus on only one area."

Anderson said all junior companies had a geological analogue of what they were looking for.

"Ours just happens to be [Barrick Gold's] Goldrush - the best gold deposit found on planet Earth in the last decade, which sits just five miles away from where we are working. Our ambition is to find something similar on our ground, where we know the same geologic setting exists, and where we are now encountering similar grades."

Anderson said at the Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit in Colorado NuLegacy had three key former Barrick executives on its board in Alex Davidson, Alan Hill and Barrick's ex-North America exporation vice president, Edward Cope.

They'd been joined on NuLegacy's senior management team by Charles Weakly, the former Barrick district exploration manager overseeing work at Goldrush and Goldstrike, who is working with ex-Newmont senior exploration figure, Derick Unger.

Anderson said NuLegacy was restarting drilling this month and would push to complete at least another 10-12 core and RC holes before Christmas.

"Having Charles Weakly join our team on January 1st of this year has been incredibly helpful," Anderson told Mining Journal.

"Charles worked with Barrick for many years, and spent the last four years working at Barrick's 10 million ounce Goldrush deposit just five miles across the valley from us. With that experience and knowledge, Charles has been instrumental in forming our new, more detailed understanding of the stratigraphic complexities of our deposit, and better understanding the importance of low-angle structures and their contribution to gold deposition across the entirety of our Red Hill property.

"We have re-logged over 100 drill holes in the last several months with these new insights to guide us, and we are now re-working our geological model. However, simply stated, we want to follow these newly identified low-angle structures to where they intersect the Devonian Wenban5 stratigraphic unit, which is the best host rock in the district, and which contains 85% of the gold across the valley from us at Goldrush.

"It was this methodology that led us to drilling SR18-02 [Serena] … and we are confident that we can locate additional high-grade intercepts in this fall's drilling program."

NuLegacy has about C$6.5 million in its treasury and that will shrink to just under $4 million as it heads into 2019. The company's market value was about C$54 million at the start of this week.

NuLegacy lined up against a strong list of Nevada-focused gold explorers and developers at Beaver Creek, including standouts such as Gold Standard Ventures, which has enjoyed a powerful run-up in its shares since mid-year, Corvus Gold, and a host of others.

Anderson showed a ‘highlights' table of drill results from Serena since its discovery last August that included the high-grade hits that are getting more of the market's attention, and a smattering of the more typical, wider Cortez-Carlin 1.5-2gpt intersections.

"I would put those results up against almost anything that is being drilled in Nevada today," Anderson said.

"We've seen a lot of the lower grade material. To be fair that's what NuLegacy has encountered over the last several years in most of its drill holes.

"But within these Carlin-type deposits you also get these low-angle structures that carry the gold fluids and when you encounter those in drilling the grades can go up exponentially.

"And now that we are getting better at exploring our property we are getting more and more of those higher grades.

"We can identify the low-angle structures that come up through mafic intrusive units. Prior to Charles being with us we always had a sense that the intrusive bodies were important in gold deposition, and we had a sense that there were some low angle structures here. But having him on board has really upped our game in terms of our targeting abilities.

"We think we've just turned a corner with [the latest drill results] and we've got a much better handle on being able to target that kind of higher grade in this camp going forward.

"It's much more reminiscent of the type of grade and tenor our friends at Barrick are getting across the valley."

Barrick, ASX and TSX-listed OceanaGold and New York investment fund Tocqueville are major NuLegacy shareholders and they are three companies that have bought a number of tickets in the Nevada gold lottery - backing juniors to make the next multi-million-ounce find.

"That's the type of discovery [they] continue to encourage us to go after," Anderson said.

"That [Cortez] trend has Pipeline with 20Moz [endowment], Cortez Hills with 15Moz-plus, and the newest of the giants, Goldrush.

"Twenty per cent of the gold production of the largest gold mining company in the world comes from the Cortez Trend."

On the market waking up to the potential on NuLegacy's ground, Anderson was sanguine.

"Rick Rule likes to say that bull markets follow bear markets as day follows night," he said.

"I think a new day has arrived in precious metals, but the market has missed its alarm clock, and slept in a little.

"When it wakes up, it will jump into a bull market very quickly."