I agree that the rate of milling will have to be speeded up. SFMI has a 15 year lease extendable by 5 years. At 400 tpd, it will take almost 4 years just to process the previously mined ore! But at 1 or 2 or 2.5 oz/t, they will have plenty of revenue to expand their milling capacity, as well as build up a large mining operation to extract new ore. Outside money may speed the process up even more, as you mentioned. Not sure if drilling will make much difference- everyone knows the potential in War Eagle. The mountain is huge, and I'm not sure a few drill holes will even begin to define the resource. Really defining the resource will take years of intense drilling. If a major is really interested, do they take the chance of waiting? What if another buyer comes along, or SFMI really hits the motherlode? Any potential buyout price can only go up as the resource is defined and the prices of gold and silver go up.
