Company executive describes hole as “geologist’s dream”

A 600-ft-wide zone of strongly sericitized and sheared felsic tuffs containing 1% to 10% pyrite and, locally, visible gold, has been intersected right in the middle of Toronto-listed Wilco Mining’s 6-km- square property in Rouyn, Twp., Que.

The hole, numbered 86-4, “is a dream for a geologist,” says Jacques Bonneau, vice-president of exploration for Mazarin Inc., the Montreal-listed company that can earn a 30% interest in the property from Cambior Inc. and Noranda Inc. by spending $2 million on exploration by the end of February, 1989. Wilco has a 15% carried interest in the property.

One section of 60 ft of hole 86-4 contains 30% pyrite. The whole section of sericitized rock is geochemically anomalous in gold, the best value being 0.13 oz gold per ton over 2 ft.

The HEM and IP anomalies indicate that the favorable zone is 1.5 km long. Mr Bonneau says a second hole is being put down approximately 600 ft to the west of 86-4.

Two other drills are at work on the Wilco property. One, located in the north, is aiming to verify the southern extension of the Delbridge deposit located 300 metres north of the property.

Another drill is in the northwest corner of the property and it is testing for the possible extension of the known gold deposit to increase the re serves which currently stand at 200,000 tons of 0.19 oz. These reserves were drilled-off back in 1979 by Soquem, now Cambior.

Mr Bonneau expects to have spent about $700,000 by the end of this February with some 20,000 ft of drilling completed. So far, about 10,000 ft of drilling has been done.

There is also a copper zone near the centre of the property, but Mr Bonneau says drilling is not planned on that area this year.