Matador Mining uncovers high-grade gold during auger drilling at Big Pond
Diamond drilling is now following up the auger program and will test six targets across Big Pond.
Matador Mining (ASX: MZZ) has uncovered gold grading 55.4 grams per tonne during power auger drilling at the greenfields Big Pond target within the Cape Ray project in Canada.
Systematic drilling across the 4 square kilometre Big Pond area has delivered what Matador describes as “exciting” bottom-of-hole gold anomalies.
From 330 power auger holes across the target 40 return bottom-of-hole gold anomalies.
Highlight gold hits were 55.4g/t, 1.6g/t, 3.8g/t and 0.6g/t.
“Following the strong extensional drilling results at Window Glass Hill, this is a very promising start to our first greenfield exploration program in the Big Pond region, in line with our strategy of testing greenfields targets across our Cape Ray tenements,” Matador executive chairman Ian Murray said.
Mr Murray noted that similar to the majority of the wider Cape Ray project, Big Pond had received little historic exploration.
“We believe [this] is due to the thin till cover which covers nearly all of the region.”
Diamond drilling underway
A heli-magnetic survey across Big Pond identified a number of structures, which combined with the auger and till sample results have generated six diamond drill targets.
Mr Murray said diamond drilling was now underway at these targets.
Recent encouraging gold assays
Today’s results follow on from high-grade gold assays arising from outside the Window Glass Hill resource within Cape Ray.
Diamond drilling at Window Glass Hill returned highlight results of 8m at 5.1g/t gold from 62m, including 1m at 36.2g/t gold; 22m at 1.2g/t gold from 91m, including 1m at 5g/t gold; and 4m at 3.6g/t gold from 74m, including 1m at 5.2g/t gold.
Mr Murray point out that most of this drilling had intersected the gold mineralisation within 100m of surface.
Advancing Cape Ray
All-up five rigs are active across Cape Ray.
The project covers 120sq km of tenements along the underexplored Cape Ray Shear in Newfoundland.
This current exploration program across Cape Ray comprises more than 45,000m of diamond drilling.
Mr Murray said he was “blown away” by the prospectivity of the project.