NTR minesite piece...
From www.minesite.com
June 11, 2009
Northern Tiger Has Grabbed A Strong Position In The Dawson Range Gold Rush
By Charles Wyatt
The two words ‘gold rush’ send a frisson of excitement down the back of anyone interested in mining. Those who are a bit older will remember the rush at Hemlo near the town of Marathon north of Lake Superior after three prospectors discovered gold there in the early 1980s. Two companies, Golden Sceptre and Goliath Resources, secured rights to a large land package in the area, and were subsequently acquired by Noranda. Noranda permitted and built the Golden Giant mine and peak production of 500,000 ozs/year was achieved in the early 1990s. During its 21 year life the mine produced over six million ozs gold. The point of this little bit of history is that there were a lot more junior mining companies who staked ground around Hemlo and, as the excitement grew, the share prices of many rocketed.
Now there are signs of a gold rush developing in the rapidly developing Dawson Range, south east of Dawson City in the Yukon. It is still at a fairly early stage, but more and more companies are showing interest, although they’re not after the alluvial gold that caught the eyes of the old timers as they trekked up from Whitehorse to Dawson City on their way to the Klondike goldfields. Some of these old timers stopped their journey long enough to pan rivers and streams in the Dawson Range, but greed for the supposed riches of the Klondike usually drove them on. Dawson Range is on the unexplored eastern end of the Tintina gold belt. This contains at least three big mines to the west over in Alaska. Pogo and Fort Knox are near Fairbanks, and Donlin Creek is further west still.
Northern Tiger Resources, the gold-copper-silver exploration company which split off from Firestone Ventures last year, has a prime position on the Dawson Range at its Sonora Gulch project, and it also has an exploration alliance with Capstone Mining, the company which owns and operates the producing Minto mine only 35 kilometres away. Other listed companies with properties in the Dawson Range are Western Copper, Northern Freegold Resources and Underworld Resources. All are reporting successful exploration. Underworld has recently reported an intersection of 104 metres at 3.4 g/t gold at its White Gold project, Northern Freegold’s 2008 drilling results included 9.4 metres at 70.2 g/t gold and 0.21% copper. Western Copper for its part is awaiting permitting of its Carmacks copper mine and has finished a pre-feasibility study on the Casino project.
Through its exploration alliance with Capstone Mining, Northern Tiger benefits from a wide range of capabilities, from expertise in early exploration through to mine production in this particular area. It will therefore be able to use Capstone’s proprietary technical expertise to explore for additional Minto–type deposits as well as deploying its extensive historic data to generate additional Dawson Range targets. Capstone has also set up significant infrastructure around Minto and all is being made available to Northern Tiger to reduce local costs. As Greg Hayes, president of the company points out, the Yukon is not the easiest bit of country in which to operate, so the Capstone alliance is vital.
Sonora Gulch is Northern Tiger’s prime asset. It’s situated between Underworld Resources and the Minto copper-gold mine, where a hefty increase in the measured and indicated resources of copper and gold has just been reported. Exploration at Sonora Gulch has indicated the existence of a strongly altered system hosting multiple styles of mineralization over at least two kilometres. Two significant zones of gold mineralization have already been discovered along this trend, at the Nightmusic and Amadeus zones, so some geologist must be a lover of Mozart. One hole at Nightmusic hit 26.6 metres grading 5 g/t gold, 11.9 g/t silver and 0.23% copper, and this included 4 metres of 25.8 g/t gold and 6.5 g/t silver. At Amadeus a 15.3 metre intercept graded 6.2 g/t gold and 3 g/t silver including a 5 metre zone of 12.2 g/t gold and 4.8 g/t silver.
Northern Tiger also acquired 5 other projects from Capstone with the unlikely names of Bond, Dad, Del, Led and Mel, and it is interesting to note that all are close the Yukon River in what could be crucial positions as the gold rush proceeds. The company has budgeted C$1 million for exploration this year and has just raised C$500,000 towards this by a private placement. The funds will be used for more drilling on Nightmusic as well as for drill testing the Allegro anomaly. More surface exploration is being carried out at Sonora Gulch to delineate future drilling targets and, according to Greg Hayes, a close look will be taken at two of the Minto-style properties to get at least one ready for drilling next year. It will clearly be worth keeping a close eye on news from Northern Tiger as the year proceeds, as this gold rush has a way to go.
We have an exciting gold/copper play in the central Yukon that may be of interest to you. Some highlights of Northern Tiger include:
· Excellent early drill results, including a 26.6 metre intercept grading 5.0 g/t gold, 11.9 g/t silver, and 0.23% copper.
· Focus on the Yukon’s Dawson Range - an area that is under explored and has excellent geological potential, as evidenced by Capstone Mining Corp’s Minto Mine (put into production in 2007), Western Copper’s Carmacks Project (currently in the permitting stage) and Western Copper’s Casino Project (recently announced positive pre-feasibility study). In addition to these, a number of other significant exploration programs in the region are having excellent results, including Northern Freegold and Underworld Resources.
· We have assembled a strong management team, with many years’ experience in the industry and the Dawson Range.
· Strategic alliance with Capstone Mining gives us a great combination of exploration and mine development expertise.
· Access to Minto Mine infrastructure allows us to control our exploration costs.
· Settled First Nations’ land claim agreements
· Developing area infrastructure, including a new power transmission line into the Minto Mine.
Background
The company was started in June, 2008 when Firestone Ventures spun-off its Canadian assets into a new public company – Northern Tiger (TSXV: NTR). The spin-off allowed Firestone to concentrate its efforts on its more advanced zinc project in Guatemala, while Firestone shareholders also received shares in Northern Tiger – a new company focusing on exploring the Yukon’s very active Dawson Range. In combination with the spin-off, we also entered into an agreement with Sherwood Copper Corp. (now Capstone Mining Corp), owner of the operating high-grade, copper-gold Minto Mine located in the Dawson Range. Under the agreement, we received five mineral properties (prospective for Minto-style deposits) and an extensive regional exploration data-base. Northern Tiger and Capstone also entered into an exploration alliance to cooperate in exploring the region for additional mineral discoveries.
Capstone is our largest shareholder, holding about 14% of the outstanding shares. We also received significant support from Haywood Securities out of Vancouver and three funds out of Toronto. In addition, Anglo Pacific plc from London has a significant position in the company.
Management
We have assembled a strong management team. I am a Chartered Accountant and the other 4 members of the Board (Lori Walton, Pam Strand, Brad Mercer and Jesse Duke) are all professional geologists. Our Board (and our VP Exploration) is very familiar with exploring in the Yukon and Northern Canada. Please see our website for additional information on the Board: www.northern-tiger.com.
Properties
Sonora Gulch in the central Yukon is our primary property and 2008 was the third consecutive season of drilling on the property (the previous two being under Firestone’s watch). We drilled just over 2200 meters in ten holes in the current program, and also did an extensive regional exploration program, covering Sonora Gulch and the properties we obtained from Capstone. We had some excellent results in the current program, including 26.6 metres of 5.0 g/t gold, 11.9 g/t silver, and 0.23% copper, including a 4.0 metre sub-interval of 25.8 g/t gold. This was in a newly drilled area that we have called the Nightmusic Zone. The details of all of the significant 2008 intercepts are included in the attached information package. In prior years, we also had some strong interceptions in the Amadeus Zone, including 6.21 g/t gold over 15.3 m and 1.0 g/t gold over 64 m.
In addition to Sonora Gulch, we have our other Dawson Range properties that we acquired from Capstone, and which are very prospective for Minto-style copper mineralization.
Plans
We are planning a $1 million program for the upcoming year. Our best hole in the Nightmusic Zone (26.6 metres of 5.0 g/t gold, 11.9 g/t silver, and 0.23% copper) was the furthest to the west, and the focus of our 2009 drill program will be to demonstrate the continuity of that mineralization by stepping out further to the west. We believe that proving this discovery has some size to it will be an important catalyst in attracting increased attention to the company. In addition, we plan to drill test one additional geochemical/magnetic anomaly along the trend at Sonora Gulch, and do more detailed prospecting and sampling (and possibly geophysics) programs on two of the properties we obtained from Capstone.
Financing
Fortunately, as a new company we are not locked into a lot of ongoing expenses, and our G&A burn rate is approximately $30,000 per month. We have just completed a $500,000 private placement and are now fully funded for the current year’s planned exploration program plus have a comfortable cushion for G&A expenditures. |
