Venus Metals has stumbled across a new gold discovery after getting the drill rods spinning again in the hills around Youanmi, Western Australia.
The Hope prospect, within the Youanmi JV area, turned up gold mineralisation in fresh granite adjacent to the area’s classic granite-greenstone contact, with one RC drill hole hitting 1m at a solid 9.3 g/t gold from 103m downhole.
A second hit returned 3m at 1.5 g/t from a shallower 45m at Hope, just 2km north of Venus’ and JV partner Rox Resources’ high-grade Youanmi mining leases. The company’s first pass RC drill program at Hope was targeting historical drilling and soil anomalies on behalf of the Venus-Rox JV, chasing a granite-hosted gold target of several hundred metres in length.
Venus Metals Managing Director, Matt Hogan said: "We are very excited about the discovery of gold mineralisation in fresh granites adjacent to the Youanmi shear at the Hope Gold Prospect, located a few kilometres north of the high-grade Grace gold discovery.”
Venus is drilling up a storm as it tags a swag of emerging prospects across the fertile gold ground, all within yelling distance of the mothballed historic gold operation at Youanmi.
Follow-up RC drilling at its Taylor’s Reef prospect, within the Currans JV area, has also bagged a bunch of solid hits with one hole hitting 3m at 4.29 g/t gold from 132m downhole, including 1m at a solid 7.98 g/t gold. Two additional, more shallow hits came in with one of 1m going 5.10 g/t gold from 12m and another of 2m at 3.09 g/t gold from 47m downhole.
Importantly, the fresh hits at Taylor’s Reef extend the limits of known gold mineralisation at the prospect.
Another solid gold hit has been landed at the Sovereign prospect in the JV area, located along the Penny West-Youanmi shear zone. The best result to date at Sovereign was 2m at 4.87 g/t gold from 75m, including 1m at 8.55 g/t gold.
Exploration at the Sovereign prospect, 1.5km east of Taylors reef, is testing the depth extents of the discovery and the newly interpreted extensions to the mineralisation, northeast of the discovery.
Previous drilling at Sovereign turned up a bevy of results including 10m at 3.64 g/t gold, with 2m at 10.64 g/t gold from 79m and 8m at 5.03 g/t gold, with 2m at 15.83 g/t gold, from 160m.
Venus said the current test drill sites at Sovereign were targeting an interpreted ground magnetic anomaly and discovered gold mineralisation in bedrock 70-120m southwest of previous gold intercepts. Results to date point to a new and exciting exploration play with Venus suggesting the bedrock mineralisation is open and continues along strike to the southwest.
The Youanmi region previously produced over 667,000 ounces of gold and has a history of mining and exploration that dates back over a century. Not surprisingly, exploration across the Youanmi greenstone belt was revitalised in recent times, driven by the high gold price.
Interest has also been aroused by the high-grade discoveries at Penny West Deeps, south of the JV’s tenure and the Grace prospect, which Rox discovered next to the Youanmi mill in late 2019.
With the Venus-Rox JV having already bagged more than 1 million ounces in gold resources at Youanmi and its heightened drilling tempo bearing fruit, Venus will be hoping for bigger and better things at its resurgent gold mining terrane.
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