North Country finds more high grade in Nunavut

The fourth set of drill results from North Country Gold‘s (NCG-V) 2011 drill program in Nunavut further demonstrate the continuous nature of the high-grade zones along the Walker Trend, a 4.1 km stretch of land in the Committee Bay Greenstone Belt that hosts the company’s Three Bluffs gold deposit as well as a number of other targets.

So far drilling has focused on four areas within the trend: Three Bluffs, Three Bluffs West, Antler and Hayes and shows potential for further expansion to the west, the company says. The 300-km-long Committee Bay greenstone belt northeast of Baker Lake is the only greenstone belt in Nunavut that is not owned by a major mining company and where North Country holds a 567,000 acre land package.

The latest assay results from six diamond drill holes completed at Three Bluffs include 9.59 grams gold per tonne over 18 metres and 6.65 grams gold over 4 metres in holes within the new high-grade trend at the western end of the Three Bluffs zone, which has now been traced for at least 600 metres along strike and about 100 metres down-dip, and remains open at depth.

“North Country Gold has also determined that the Three Bluffs and Three Bluffs West Zones are one continuous zone of mineralization which extends for at least 1500 metres along strike,” the company’s president and chief executive, John Williamson, said in a statement annoucning the results.

Highlights from the Antler Zone, meanwhile, include 4.99 grams gold over 13 metres and 3.06 grams gold over 13 metres. Mineralization at Antler has been delineated over a strike length of 1,000 metres and the zone has been tested to a nominal down-dip of 100 to 150 metres.

Indicated resources at the Three Bluffs deposit amount to 2.7 million tonnes grading 5.85 grams gold per tonne for 508,000 ounces of contained gold, and inferred resources add 1.27 million tonnes of 5.9 grams gold for 244,000 ounces of contained gold.

The deposit is hosted within about a 50-metre-wide, steeply dipping banded iron formation unit that can be traced for more than 10 km.

According to the company’s management, there is potential for five development centers along the Committee Bay belt including: Inuk, Four Hills-Cop, West Plains and Anuri-Raven, which could each have a similar profile to that of Three Bluffs.

“North Country Gold believes that significant potential exists along the Walker Lake Trend and has developed a strategy to identify additional near-surface open-pittable gold resources along the strike length of the trend, which will incrementally add to the existing high-grade resource inventory underpinned by the Three Bluffs deposit,” the company outlined in a press release.

At presstime in Toronto North Country was trading at 95¢ per share within a 52-week band of 67¢ and $2.05. The junior has about 97.2 million shares outstanding.