On October 6, Scottie Resources Corp. (SCOT:TSX.V) released the first assays from its 7,040-meter summer drill program at the past-producing Scottie Mine in British Columbia's Golden Triangle, and the results included the high-grade intercept of 109.4 g/t gold and 32.4 g/t silver over 2.53 meters.
"The hit is from the O-Zone, which was known about from the past-producing Scottie Gold Mine that ran in the early 1980s," Scottie's VP of Exploration Dr. Thomas Mumford told Streetwise Reports. "In the first hole that we released, we tested the lower extension of the O-Zone to see if it continued at depth, and we drilled it from surface instead of underground, drilling it in an area that they couldn't test before. We hit this big intercept, super high grade, and comparable to what they found in the O-Zone historically, and it's still open at depth. So we're pretty excited about this one. That's a lot of gram meters for even a deposit like this."
"The original Scottie Mine shut down due to economics, but it was primarily mining one main vein called the M-Zone. Late in the mine life, the miners put an adit over to the O-Zone and had just started to produce from it when the mine shut down. Because all the drilling that's been done on the O-Zone has been done underground off of these adits, it was pretty restricted on where they could actually drill from," Mumford explained.
This summer's drill program has tested five or six major targets. "Three of those were the ones that we drilled last year and we're following up because they were very successful," Mumford said. "Then there were a few new targets, and one of them was the O-Zone. The O-Zone target was developed because we took the historical drilling and created a revised geological model, created wireframes, and then made projections from that of where the mineralization would likely continue. And we drilled off of that information. Some of our holes actually test the O-Zone and then try to tag in the M-Zone as well, so they do double duty. We have another three to four holes coming from the drilling that we did this summer on the O-Zone."
Another target this year is the Domino Zone, which was discovered last year through surface sampling. Samples assayed as high as 536 g/t gold. The first ever drill test program on that area occurred this summer when Scottie drilled 18 different holes into the structure. The answers are all at the lab.
Scottie drilled 45 holes in total this summer.
This year, Scottie also conducted geophysical surveys. "We did an induced polarization (IP) survey over a number of targets late in the season. And then we also did a full airborne survey. Those will be used to guide drilling for next season," Mumford explained.
The original Scottie Mine only ran for about 3.5 years in the mid-1980s and closed down under the weight of low gold prices and a $20 million loan at 22% interest, but the exploration conducted at that time has been a useful starting point for Scottie Resources. "They did a fairly good job of surficial sampling the area around the mine, which is a big area of our focus now. Since 1984, there's been very little detailed work done on any of the surrounding land, or even a major drill program to expand resources," Mumford said.
A small drill program of a few thousand meters was conducted around 2004–06. Drilled from underground, it tested the lower part of the mine with an eye to prove up the main vein to reactivate the mine. "That drill program was largely successful, but with low gold prices at the time, it wasn't enough to turn the dial to reopen the mine," Mumford noted. "But that certainly improved the quality of the historical resource that was available."
The focus back then was on restarting the mine. "They never did what we're doing, which is to step back and ask, is there a bigger system at play here? And can we show a pathway to one million ounces or more?" Mumford said.
Scottie's geologists have been rethinking the geological model of the area. "We've been working toward a fairly substantial change in the model," Mumford explained. "Because there's so much ice in the area, little exploration has been done there. Things weren't exactly fitting with the regional map for the area, so we've done a lot of reinterpretation. We have a number of samples being age dated to confirm a larger scale hypothesis for the area, which could change people's perception on where we fit the stratigraphy and explain why we have so much of the mineralization that's evident in our project."
Scottie has around 120 million shares issued and outstanding, 144 million fully diluted. Institutions control around 25%, board and management 12% and retail investors 63%. Investor Eric Sprott owns around 9%—15% partially diluted—of the company, and a Swiss family office owns 9.9%.
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