The McConnell’s Jest project is located in the Yukon Territory about 65 km northeast of the town of Mayo. The project is composed of 172 contiguous quartz claims covering approximately 3,371 hectares and is accessible by a helicopter, trails and a road on the eastern edge of the property.
The project is located within the Tintina Gold Belt which stretches across Alaska and the Yukon and is host to a significant number of large deposits including Donlin Creek (32 Moz Au), Dublin Gulch (6.3 Moz) and Fort Knox (4.7 Moz) with the latter two classified as Intrusion Related Gold Deposits. McConnell’s Jest is adjacent and east of the Dublin Gulch Project of Victoria Gold, where Victoria has achieved commercial production at the Eagle mine which has a 3.3Moz a reserve and forecasted to produce on average 200,000 ounces of gold per year for 10 years at an all-in sustaining cost of USD $950-$1100/oz Au over H2 2020 (Victoria Gold News Release).
The project has had minimal exploration carried out on it, including a soil grid on the upper half of the project and a 3=month exploration program carried out by the Company in 2017. To date there are eight targets within the project. A short drill program in 2017 resulted in the discovery of gold in drill core at the 2-4 target.
Much of the pluton is covered or poorly exposed and the majority of exploration and all the drilling during the summer of 2017 focused on the Hill – Two Four – Pink Mountain target areas. Drilling on the Two Four target (illustrated in more detail below) successfully intersected intrusion related gold mineralization over significant lengths as illustrated in the table below.
Note; MJ-04 was drilled to 148m.
Drilling intersected a series of quartz-arsenopyrite veins in both holes, with the bottom part of hole MJ-04 showing high relative portions of pyrite compared to other mineralized zones.
The picture above is a pyrite-arsenopyrite-quartz vein at 141.50 metres in MJ-04.
On September 15, 2022 Victoria Gold released their maiden resource on the newly discovered Raven Deposit. The Raven Deposit, which remains open along strike, sits just 2.3 km from Zonte's border. Victoria Gold's Raven Deposit resource was recorded at 1,070,000 ounces of gold at 1.67 g/t and a 0.5 g/t cut off. A map illustrated below shows the Raven Deposit in relation to Zonte's project. The intrusion hosting the Raven Deposit may be related to the intrusion on the MJ project, highlight the potential within Zonte's claim.
Exploration beyond the focus area this summer was successful in identifying two additional targets called the Tea Zone and J Z0ne.
A number of other targets that was sampled by Zonte in 2017 include;
- Tea target which sits adjacent to Victoria Golds project. One vein returned 129 g/t Au. The multi-element anomaly measures 390 by +200m and open in a number of directions, including to the west extending on Victoria Gold claim.
- The J Zone, which is characterized by heavily fractured zone in the pluton hosting mineralized veins. The target sits in a 150m by 500m long structural zone which is mainly soil covered. Grades at the J Target range from anomalous to 5.35 g/t gold.
A number of other known targets within the project have yet to be visited, such as the Big Quartz Target. This target was identified in soil geochem profiles which outlined a multi-element target measuring 400 by 500m and open to the west on Victoria Gold's project (see image below). The target is also potentially open to the south.
To view the recent NI 43-101 click here.