Big Hits: Lac Gold, American Tungsten & Antimony and Breakthrough

LAC GOLD (ASX: LAC) Project: Rouyn gold project, near Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, Canada. Hit: 5.65m at 141.29g/t gold from 148.15m, including 0.5m at 1580g/t gold. Lac Gold has burst into this week’s Big Hits frame with a spectacular bonanza-grade gold result from the Astoria deposit at the company’s Rouyn gold project in Quebec, where one drill hole punched through 5.65m at 141.29 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 148.15m, including a staggering 0.5m at 1580g/t gold. Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits looks at notable drill intercepts recently reported to the ASX. The headline result confirms Lac’s recently reported visible gold between 152.05m and 152.20m downhole in quartz veining in the pre-assay core. Other drilling results weren’t too shabby either. A second hole, 385m east-southeast of the headline hit, returned 9.1m at 6.31g/t gold from 123.4m, including 4m at 10.41g/t, while a third hole 240m southwest of the big hit delivered 9.5m at 2.25g/t from 178m, including 3m at 6.72g/t gold. The collars of the top three holes outline a triangular area of 3.7 hectares, indicating the broad extent of the high-grade gold occurrence across multiple structures. Notably, a pair of holes put in to test the deeper mineralisation from a common drill site, this time 140m north of the big hit and outside the northern margin of the 3.7-hectare area, also returned long intercepts. One of those holes intercepted a healthy run of 97.5m at 1.04g/t from 554.65m, including 17m at 3.58g/t, while its partner hole gave up 49.95m at 1.12g/t from 623.15m with several higher-grade internal zones. Viewed in concert, all the results suggest that the Astoria deposit is not just randomly throwing up isolated gold spikes but rather pieces of a jigsaw steadily building a picture of a large, structurally controlled gold system with broad mineralised halos enclosing steeper, higher-grade shoots. That style of gold distribution is consistent with Rouyn’s position on the renowned Cadillac-Larder Lake Break, one of the biggest and best-known gold-bearing structures in Canada’s Abitibi Greenstone Belt. The Abitibi Belt spans the Ontario-Quebec border and is recognised as one of the world’s most prolific gold mining regions, endowed with immense quantities of gold, silver, copper and zinc. The belt has developed over eons from ancient folded volcanic and sedimentary rocks through tectonic and submarine volcanic activity. It has provided Canada with more than 90 per cent of its gold production and has yielded more than 190 million ounces of gold since the first discoveries in the early 1900’s.