The surface work is done being quiet about Copper Springs. Coyote Copper Mines' October 28 update put high-grade copper at surface, a much bigger land package, and a firm drilling date on the same page — three weeks before the rigs are due in Arizona's Copper Triangle.
- Best surface results: 19.25% copper over 0.60 metres at West Gibson (rock chip, with 17.85 g/t silver) and 13.79% copper over 0.30 metres around Gibson (with 28.85 g/t silver). A Maher rock chip returned 0.54% copper and 4,841.8 ppm molybdenum over 0.50 metres.
- Bigger ground: 214 additional claims staked, bringing Copper Springs to 1,100 claims covering approximately 22,086 acres (89.4 km²), up from 886 claims, near Globe and Miami in the belt that hosts Pinto Valley, Miami and Resolution.
- Drilling date: Major Drilling scheduled to begin around November 16, 2026, from 37 permitted Phase 1 drill locations, each capable of accommodating multiple holes, testing shallow oxide and deeper sulfide targets. Road construction is advancing, the company says.
- Work still in the lab: assays pending for 1,056 soil samples, 117 rock samples and 46 channel samples; a further 679 soil samples are planned over the Santa Ana chargeability anomaly. Copper assays are in hand for 2,729 of 3,948 rock, channel and soil samples collected.
- Geophysics: a strong chargeability response near Santa Ana in preliminary IP results; TMC Geophysics and Zonge Geophysics continue IP and electromagnetic surveys, drone magnetics and radiometrics began October 19, and the geophysics budget was raised from US$200,000 to US$1,500,000, funded in part by the accelerated warrant exercise.
- Outside interest — as the company states it: Coyote says it has signed confidentiality agreements with six major copper mining companies, some of which have visited multiple times. No agreement, investment or transaction is announced.
Why the chargeability high matters more than the chips
The rock chips show where copper reaches surface. The drill plan is being built where the geophysics points underneath it. The strongest chargeability response lies west of the main surface occurrences, reaches surface at two locations that coincide with copper oxides, and exposed sulfide mineralisation at MF Creek and Santa Ana correlates with an intermediate response. Field mapping — 3,614 structural measurements: 3,428 veins, 145 faults and 41 other structures — is being used to connect the surface picture to that response at depth and place the first holes.
CEO Dan Weir framed the scale plainly: with 37 permitted sites and "so many viable targets being revealed," the Phase 1 program is a prioritisation exercise across a large porphyry search space, not a single-target test.
The honesty box
Every grade in this release is a surface sample — rock chip, channel, selective grab or dump grab — not a drill intercept, and the release itself states that grab, dump and selective chip samples may not represent the average grade of the mineralisation. Sampled widths are not true widths. The project's November 23, 2025 technical report contains no current mineral resource or mineral reserve estimate — there is no compliant resource at Copper Springs to grade these results against. The "potential for multiple porphyry copper deposits" is the company's exploration interpretation of geophysics and surface geochemistry, most of it still preliminary or awaiting assays; the six confidentiality agreements are disclosed by the company without counterparty names or terms and imply no deal. The November 16 drilling start is a scheduled date, subject to the usual contractor, road and weather risks.
What to watch
The November 16 spud, which of the 37 permitted sites Phase 1 tests first, and the pending soil, rock and channel assays — especially over the Santa Ana chargeability high, where the first deep case will be made or lost.