Strickland Metals Ltd (ASX:STK) has intersected wide high-grade gold from near surface at the newly identified Konik prospect within the Horse Well area of the Yandal Gold Project in Western Australia.
The discovery hole (HWAC1488) at the Konik trend in the company’s ongoing aircore program, returned a 58-metre intersection grading 1.7 grams per tonne gold from 17 metres, including 10 metres at 4.2 g/t, and 4 metres at 1.7 g/t from 2 metres.
Shares have been as much as 7.25% higher to $0.074 this morning, a new 12-month high for the gold explorer.
About the drilling
The discovery, termed 'Konik', was made during the current “aggressive” and now expanded 50,000-metre aircore drilling program. The company has so far completed about 30,000 metres of drilling, with the initial phase focused on mapping the Horse Well shear structures.
Previous exploration across the area focused on drilling areas of outcropping mineralisation identified from historic surface geochemical techniques. This work led to the existing 148,000-ounce inferred mineral resource at Horse Well.
Strickland CEO Andrew Bray said, “The discovery highlights how fertile the Horse Well prospect area is, and also the area’s potential to deliver additional gold mineralisation with strong grades and over large widths. Most pleasing about HWAC1488 is its proximity to surface.”
Bray explained that using geophysical datasets, the shear zone could be traced approximately 600 metres to the south of the discovery hole.
A second discovery at Horse Well
This near-surface Konik discovery is the second gold discovery by Strickland at Horse Well, the first being at Marwari (31 metres at 5.6 g/t gold).
Strickland drilled two additional holes 200 metres to the southeast of the Marwari discovery hole, that have intersected similar alteration and veining, which suggests the mineralised structure continues. Strickland expects to receive the assays from drilling south of the Marwari discovery hole within the fortnight.
The new Konik trend had not been identified or drilled by past explorers. Previous explorers had drilled three historical holes proximal to the Konik shear structure, however, the drill rig orientation was parallel to the shear structure meaning the holes missed the target.
Strickland has planned closer-spaced aircore drilling to map the Konik shear structure 600 metres to the south in preparation for RC drilling.
“Given we’re a little over halfway through the aircore program, it is an incredible result to have thus far delivered two new discoveries at Konik and Marwari, as well as identifying a large, undrilled prospective corridor to the north-west at Pegasus, which appears to be the extension of Marwari,” said Bray.
More drilling ahead
The aircore rig has now arrived at the Pegasus target and will shortly begin drilling a number of aircore fence lines to map the geology and test for extensions to the Marwari discovery.
After completing the fence lines at Pegasus, the rig will move to Konik and complete four short fence lines before moving back to continue the southern extensional drilling of the Marwari structure. These aircore fence lines should accurately map the mineralising structures in preparation for substantial follow-up RC drilling.
Bray said there also remained large parts of the Horse Well prospect area away from these discoveries that Strickland planned to continue systematically testing, that had “significant potential remaining for additional discoveries”.
The company expects an RC rig to arrive towards the end of this month to assist with an expanded drill program leading into Christmas.
Having sold its Millrose gold deposit to Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST) for about $61 million in July, Strickland remains extremely well funded to continue its exploration plans.
Read more on Proactive Investors AU
