Wishbone Gold shares surge on developments at Red Setter

Wishbone Gold announced on Friday that preparations for drilling at Red Setter had started, with independent consultants reporting that the geochemistry programme recently conducted, although only 60% complete, had defined four new high-priority target zones for follow-up drilling.

The AIM-traded firm said the Red Setter Project lies on the 57.4 square kilometre wholly-owned EL45/5297 exploration licence, 13 kilometres southwest of Newcrest Mining's Telfer Gold-Copper Mine, and 60 kilometres west of Newcrest and Greatland Gold's Havieron discovery in the Paterson Range of Western Australia.

As it announced in May, Wishbone had obtained approval from the state government's Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) to drill up to 30,000 metres at Red Setter.

Detailed access, logistics and drill site planning were now in the final stages, and would target the magnetic geophysical targets as refined by the geochemistry analysis.

The company said the magnetic geophysical targets were covered by the 400 by 100 metre spaced geochemical sampling programme, but due to sand dunes, just two sample sites were appropriate for sampling, with both samples returning positive results.

It said the geochemical surface sampling programme used ‘Ionic Leach’, a proprietary technique using partial digest assaying by ALS Global Laboratories.

That technology had previously been used “very successfully” by a number of companies in the Paterson Range in areas with overlying sedimentary cover, to identify potential gold and copper mineralisation at depth.

The swale - the area between sand dunes - is geochemically sampled as part of the regolith, whereas sand dunes are not representative of the regolith and are not geochemically sampled, the firm explained.

In areas where sand dunes are closer, that could cause reduced sampling, as occurred over the main magnetic geophysical target.

The company said the Telfer Mine Corridor was characterised by responses in gold, copper, silver, tin and tungsten, both with and without bismuth.

Geochemical sampling programmes by several companies in the Paterson region had announced positive results, and anomalies consistent with those being seen at Red Setter.

At Red Setter, through 30 to 100 metres of Permian cover, the ionic geochemistry was seeing coherent multi-sample responses in gold, copper, silver, molybdenum, tin, tungsten and titanium, as well as other chalcophile elements, Wishbone said.

Those responses variably overlapped, both partially forming distinct target trends within the overall target zone areas.

The board said that importantly, the titanium geochemistry plots suggested new magnetic anomaly target zones now occurred along the eastern contact of an “extensive” mafic unit.

Wishbone said its consultants three-dimensionally remodelled and plotted previous drill holes using Voxler program at exact depth in relation to the target.

The gold grades in drill hole EPT2176 increased from one to six parts per billion between 142 and 146 metres, and copper grades increased from an average 34 parts per billion between 100 and 142 metres, to averaging 213 parts per billion from 142 to 147 metres.

It said the deeper the holes penetrated, the gold and copper grades increased when it touched the side of the anomaly.

“This work extends and enhances the previous magnetic survey and new technology clearly enhances the magnetic anomaly which shows preceding green drill holes missing our intended deeper targets,” said chairman Richard Poulden.

“The similarity of the results to known deposits in the region is very encouraging and enables more detailed targeting of our drilling programme.

“Unfortunately, this year has been hampered with delays which were out of our control but we are happy to be finally drilling some of our many targets in the coming weeks.”

At 1342 GMT, shares in Wishbone Gold were up 35.8% at 11p.