Exploration
Fox West has a favourable geological position in the area - Southern Fox West straddles the Destor-Porcupine Fault and Davidson Tisdale is situated north of this prolific fault, together with the great majority of the mines in the Timmins Gold Camp. In addition, Davidson Tisdale lies approximately 5 km along strike from the Hollinger, McIntyre and Coniaurum mines, which have produced over 31 million ounces of gold at average grade of 7.7 grams per tonne.
Exploration drilling in early 2000s at Buffalo Ankerite outlined a pit design between surface and 400 feet depth on the south limb of the fold. Historical work indicated additional potential on the property below the pit resource. Exploration drilling by McEwen confirmed that significant potential for underground high-grade gold mineralization continued to a depth of approximately 4,000 feet.
Exploration programs on the Fuller property successfully identified gold mineralization, at both shallow elevations and to depth. Drilling programs obtained favourable results with good widths in a quartz-feldspar porphyry as well as the surrounding volcanics. The figure below exemplifies these results (for corresponding drill data see press releases here).
Hole VGP-09-20 intersected mineralization including 1,390 grams per tonne gold over 0.9 metres
Paymaster is located immediately west of the Dome Mine, which produced to a depth of 5,500 feet, while other neighbours in Timmins have been mined to 7,000 feet. Limited drilling in the 1950’s at the 1,500-foot and the 2,500-foot levels encountered good grades and widths, indicating excellent potential at depth.
The Company’s interest in the Paymaster property was acquired from Goldcorp (now Newmont) through a 2008 option and joint venture agreement. The requirements of the agreement, fulfilled during an option term of four years, included $6 million in exploration expenditures and 27,000 meters of core diamond drilling on the property. This exploration work expanded the gold mineralization zones of Fuller, Buffalo Ankerite South and Buffalo Ankerite North into the Paymaster Property and developed a resource at the Paymaster West Project.
The Davidson Tisdale Property is a high-grade gold project adjacent to Pan American Silver to the north and Newmont to the south. Exploration at Davidson Tisdale focused on the vicinity of the historical underground workings, concentrating primarily on the Main Zone and the S-Zone.
Several shafts have been developed on Davidson Tisdale with a decline ramp driven to a vertical depth of 200 metres. Diamond drilling was successful in extending the known gold mineralization to a depth of 400m, and remains open to depth and along strike.
Key north-adjoining mineral claims acquired in 2014 added to the Davidson Tisdale land package. The known geology of these claims encompasses favourable structures, such as four parallel hydrothermal alteration zones of over 2 km strike length. This northern land addition is relatively unexplored, with very few known drill holes completed by predecessors. Intriguing historic assay results from these claims include a surface grab sample that returned 31.2 gpt gold and a drill intercept, DBK-87-6, of 26.1 gpt gold over 1.0 m at 39 meters below surface.
Significant Drill Intercepts at Davidson Tisdale.