Wildcat Exploration (TSXV: WEL) drilled strong zinc-lead over broad widths in New Brunswick improving notably over very limited historic drilling nearby on the Island Lake project, which it manages in a partnership with Doe Run Canadian Exploration.
Wildcat reported two closely spaced intercepts one showing 3 metres @ 6.57 percent zinc, 2.78 percent lead, 0.46 percent copper and 68.1 g/t Ag and then, doing quite a bit better, 9 metres @ 14.51 percent Zn, 5.86 percent Pb, 0.57 percent Cu and 139.9 g/t Ag.
The intercepts respectively started 389 metres and 398 metres downhole and are estimated to be about 90 percent true width of mineralization hosted in volcanics on a property that is about four kilometres south of the Heath Steele past-producing zinc mine.
Speaking with Mineweb Wednesday Wildcat CEO John Knowles along with vice president exploration Tom Lewis – both veterans from the Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company (i.e. Hudbay) – described the latest intercept as a “pretty bold step out” along trend previously known, but lower grade, mineralization.
The intercept was 70 metres north of drilling by Wildcat earlier this year in which it hit 2.38 percent zinc, 0.55 percent lead, 0.11 percent copper and 19.11 silver over 8 metres with a 2-metre intercept of higher grades therein.
That drillhole, in turn, was a follow up to a lower grade hit by previous explorers in the 1990s, Lewis said.
Last year Wildcat was drilling to the south of the latest intercepts but decided to move north targeting prospective contacts between volcanic units as the narrow, but high grade mineralization it was hitting was fairly deep, in the 500 to 600 metre range.
That decision has paid off with the latest intercept that is the first – if highly tentative – indication of both broad and very high grade zinc lead mineralization at Island Lake.
More drilling could come before the onset of winter but will depend on budgeting with Doe Run Canadian Exploration. Wildcat Exploration manages a project alliance with Doe Run Canadian Exploration, a company registered in B.C. that is presumably owned by Missouri-based base metals company Doe Run.
Wildcat can earn up to 30 percent of projects the alliance – funded completely by Doe Run – works on by matching spending on a project, a decent deal that limits expenses but opens it to a fair bit of exposure to potential discoveries.
