I'm not the master here,
@GeoFiji worked the area so he can share a lot if he has time,
@eastwest101 also knows a huge amount.
But from what I've learnt from them and elsewhere...
Yes - lots of mines in the area - generally speaking these are all historical mines that began with on-surface outcroppings of ore, and delivered small volumes (by today's standards) of huge grade copper.
@mhkforevermci - from a nearology standpoint you do have to be very careful playing this game. I have lost on this more than won! Think of it this way... the biggest mines out there, the superpits, might be 1.5km long and 0.5km wide. There are often additional areas nearby of worthwhile ore. But it's not common to find an area of many km2 that you can simply dig into.
That then gets into the geology. Clearly there's a pattern of on-surface outcropping from Nil Desperandum area, up north 1.5km to Lady Fanny and the surrounds, and continuing up north from there... and hopefully south from ND too. CNB is talking about a clear 5km corridor they want to focus on.
You then have the Duchess area which CNB had also focussed on. And jammed between it all is HMX, again with historical near-surface mines, and recent drill hits (although not yet as good as CNBs).
So when it comes to HMX, purely looking at their opportunity I'd say that for a current $50m market cap it isn't a bad idea (I'm doing it myself). It wasn't long ago that it hit a $100m market cap, purely on the potential of its own land - before CNB hit anything of note.
As for whether or not they've got the goods - they clearly have SOMETHING. But something to be excited about? At the least they might one day be able to mine small areas and process in the now-likely-IMO-Carnaby plant. They might, if they're lucky, have broad but low grade copper resource (let's say 0.8-1.x%) or a collection of small high grade near-surface feeds that could result in them going into a JV with Carnaby on a plant, or paying a milling fee. Or they might be really bloody lucky, like CNB, and find economic and broad high grade feeders to their historical mines, and then the world's their oyster - go it your own or JV, both would be considered.
One thing is for sure - the more that both companies find, the better for those with shares.
(20min delay)