I'm a big fan of Kookynie and have done a fair bit of work on...

I'm a big fan of Kookynie and have done a fair bit of work on the area.
To the best of my understanding and to cut a long story short, MCT/NME are a concentrated Kookynie explorer and have about a 5x larger tenement holding in Kookynie than CAV.They are also more advanced exploration-wise than CAV.
The MCT JV also has a number of historic mines on their tenure, including the largest historical Kookynie producer, Cosmopolitan (360k oz @ 15g/t).
Much of MCT JV tenure is outside their self-defined "mineralised trend".In contrast, all of CAV's tenure is in the "mineralised trend", however it is much more greenfields than MCT JV, with no historical production.Also, much of CAV's tenure is under transported cover.
CAV has an outstanding geo team & they are methodically vectoring in on what they hope/believe to be auriferous targets on their tenure.
CAV also has a number of additional projects that diversify them from Kookynie both geographically and in terms of metals being explored. When looking at Kookynie, you should remember that it's patchy but very high grade (historically 1oz/t dirt).The old timers saw the outcropping, followed it and took what they saw.The question is, how much did they leave behind? I believe, plenty. Assuming any of these companies find a pod of high grade gold (20-50k oz) it could be very valuable, as it will probably be very high grade and there are a number of mills nearby in need of feed where the ore could be toll treated. Re your merger question, Kookynie definitely needs to be consolidated, although I feel a CAV/MCT /NME 3-way won't occur. For starters, MCT needs to merge with NME so that 100% of their tenure is under the control of 1 entity. This would be best for all involved, IMHO.Once JL reconciles how to best achieve that, then perhaps he could start to wrap his head around how to get into bed with CAV should CAV show some interesting results from its latest RAB programme. Don't forget, RAB drilling is basically glorified geochem so I'm not expecting anything earth shattering, although I'd like to be surprised. To me, should CAV move onto RC drilling following the AC results, it'll be an enormous sign of confidence.Bottom line: CAV don't need MCT JV and MCT JV don't need CAV. Would a merger make sense? Probably, but given the parties involved, I don't see it happening any time soon, if at all.Hope this helped.