Drilling To Commence On Taylor Gold Targets
RENO, NV - Silver Predator Corp. has received permits for 14 drill sites designed to test newly identified gold targets to the east and southeast of the existing 1,320 tpd mill and silver resource at its 100% owned Taylor Project, located in White Pine County, Nevada. This is the first time the previously unrecognized gold targets will be drill tested.
The drill program will commence immediately to test the new Carlin type gold target areas identified at South Taylor, Antimony Pit, Crescent and Enterprise. Surface alteration and mineralization mapped and sampled in the Enterprise Crescent area covers a larger footprint than the current silver resource and has yielded high grade surface results with soil samples up to 1.7 g/t gold (Au) and 58.0 g/t silver (Ag). The Company anticipates receiving initial assay results in the second quarter of this year.
In 2012, a detailed mapping program covering eight square miles was completed that included the existing silver resource area and newly developed targets shown on the attached map. Initial mapping in the open pit areas found that silver mineralization was confined to specific, but predictable host rocks and fault zones. In fact, the best silver grades were found at the convergence of north-south and northwest-orientated fault zones; structural controls that are repeated at Taylor and typical of other gold districts in Nevada, including the northern Carlin Trend. In addition, the Company found that silty carbonate rock types, as in other Nevada sediment hosted precious metals mines, are key host rocks in the Taylor resource area. Extensive intrusive igneous rocks mapped as dikes and sills are also closely associated with the higher silver grades at Taylor and represent a third characteristic common to other Nevada sediment hosted deposits.
As the mapping was expanded outward from the resource area, silica alteration, intrusive, and antimony prospects related to N-S and NW faulting was found to the east and southeast of the resource area. This mapping was the first indication that previous mining was focused on only a minor portion of a much larger District-scale precious metals system. In the newly mapped areas, however, the highly favorable silty carbonate host rocks of the upper Guillmette Formation are not exposed at the surface as they are in the resource area and require drilling to test.
In order to prioritize and rank the newly identified target areas, a soil geochemistry program was designed and implemented in late 2012. This soil sample grid consisted of 1,166 samples and provided broad overall coverage with additional detail over some of the better areas as defined by the mapping program. The soil program identified highly anomalous gold, silver, antimony, arsenic and mercury in mapped areas coincident with favorable host rocks, intrusives, jasperoid silica and the patterned N-S/NW fault sets. The soil results include: Five samples assaying over 1 g/t gold (Au), including values of 1.3, 1.5 and 1.7 g/t Au; 126 samples (11%) assaying greater than 0.2 g/t Au; 224 samples (19%) assaying greater than 0.1 g/t Au; and the 1.3 g/t soil sample was located approximately 15 feet from a small outcrop of Pilot Shale that was weakly silica altered, but assayed 5 g/t Au and 12 g/t Ag.
The combined mapping and soil geochemistry programs confirmed that Taylor is a newly recognized classic Carlin-type precious metals system with a significant gold component. The upcoming reverse circulation drilling program is designed to test some of these target areas that combine mapped faults, intrusives and alteration, and favorable soil results at surface, with a deeper projection of the upper Guillmette host rocks. This upper Guillmette silty carbonate horizon varies in depth from one area to another, but is expected to average approximately 300-750 feet below surface.