Maple Gold resumes drilling at Douay
Maple Gold Mines Ltd. has resumed at the Douay Gold Project in Quebec, following a short break to prepare for fall and winter operations. Douay is held by a 50/50 joint venture between the Company and Agnico Eagle Mines Limited.
Fall 2021 drilling is underway at Douay with the first drill rig now on site. A second drill rig is expected to arrive in early December to commence a planned Phase I drill program at the Company's 100%-controlled Eagle Mine Property ("Eagle") (see news from October 7, 2021). Drilling will continue with two rigs through Q1 2022 to test additional targets as part of the JV's planned winter 2022 drill campaign.
Matthew Hornor, President and CEO of Maple Gold, stated: "We are incredibly excited to get the drills turning again at Douay and also look forward to testing high priority targets at Eagle in a matter of weeks. In addition, we are working closely with our JV partner to refine drill targets for the winter 2022 campaign, with up to 20,000 metres of planned drilling during the next six months across our 400 km² property package. Based on the JV's exploration success last season, we anticipate generating compelling drill results that advance the Company's mineral potential across multiple deposits."
Douay Drill Targets
Initial fall drilling at Douay (see Figure 1 for hole locations) will be focused in the Nika and 531 Zones to follow up on exceptional results from the JV's maiden winter 2021 drill campaign, including 1.6 g/t gold ("Au") over 132.5 metres ("m") in mixed intrusive and basaltic rocks and 8.8 g/t Au over 28.5 m in basaltic rocks, respectively (see news from May 26, 2021 and September 9, 2021). These two intercepts, which are over 4 km apart, are among the top five ever drilled on the property in terms of gold accumulation (grade x thickness).
Fall 2021 drilling will also include multiple holes located approximately 600 m to the east of the Central Zone conceptual pit limits as defined in the RPA 2019 mineral resource estimate, with an additional 700 m of strike to the east that remains untested. The Central Zone is on the northern flank of the Douay mineral resource along a major structure or shear zone (Casa Berardi North) where previous drilling both to the east and to the west has returned numerous multi-gram sediment-hosted gold intercepts with limited follow up. The Central Zone's eastern extension was previously drilled in 2017, with reported intercepts of 4.5 g/t Au over 9 m and 4.7 g/t Au over 4.5 m (see news from July 17, 2017).
Figure 1: Fall 2021 drill sites. Six holes are planned to test: 1) the sparsely drilled gap between the Nika and Porphyry Zones; 2) the eastern continuity of gold mineralization in the Central Zone; and 3) the up- and down-plunge continuity of the best intercept drilled to-date in the 531 Zone.
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