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Andrew Todd
A successful maiden drilling program by Manhattan Gold Corporation at its Hook Lake project in Canada has potentially exposed a district-scale system, with high-grade gold at its flagship Jaws almost eclipsed by high-grade polymetallic discoveries at newly emerging frontiers in the largely untapped mineral province.
The company says its 25-hole, 4592-metre campaign tested five separate prospects, delivering standout hits up to 41.15m at 4.66 grams per tonne (g/t) gold at Jaws, including 7.62m at 18.67g/t. The drilling blitz has now stretched the known Jaws strike extent across a 1.25-kilometre zone, including a 490-metre portion of higher-grade gold, with the open mineralisation now confirmed down to a depth of 223m.
Manhattan Gold’s maiden drilling at its Hook Lake project in Nunavut, Canada, has returned significant gold and base metal results.
Other eye-catching hits included 74.67m at 1.61g/t gold from just 21.34m, featuring 15.24m at 5.35g/t and 51.82m at 1.88g/t. With thicker, higher-grade results emerging than historic drilling and a second mineralised system uncovered at Spectre, Manhattan’s first pass has done more than breathe life into an old gold target, raising the company’s hopes of a much bigger discovery story across Hook Lake.
With assays from two more holes at Jaws still pending, the company is looking to test a potential strike length of more than 2.25km for Jaws. Meanwhile, maiden drilling at the Spectre – 26km to the southwest – has opened up an entirely new front for white-hot copper-gold exploration. Drilling there intersected massive sulphides, returning a 19.81-metre intercept grading 1.77 per cent copper, 0.8g/t gold, 84.3 g/t silver and 2.30 per cent zinc from 42.67m.
‘Spectre has given us a second front, with our maiden drillholes returning high-grade copper, gold, silver and zinc from surface.’
Manhatten Gold Corp technical advisor Sam Vaughan
Notably, the Spectre hole also hit a separate zinc-rich upper zone of 3.05m going a remarkable 29.50 per cent zinc from just 12.19m deep.
In what was a busy first field season, Manhattan also completed the first-ever drilling at its Lotus, Quantum and Omega targets. While the first two returned anomalous gold, assays are still pending for three holes at Omega, which is targeting a banded iron formation (BIF) system. BIFs are a significant source of high-grade gold in established mines throughout the region.
Manhattan has backed up its drilling with extensive project-wide surveys, completing a high-resolution LiDAR and an orthophoto survey alongside a 12,600 line-kilometre airborne magnetic survey.
The company says it has now also established a permanent camp at Hook Lake, which it says will allow for resupply over winter and an earlier start to drilling in the 2027 season.
Manhattan Gold technical advisor Sam Vaughan said: “Spectre has given us a second front, with our maiden drillholes returning high-grade copper, gold, silver and zinc from massive sulphides that start at surface. With the first-ever drillholes now drilled at Lotus, Quantum and Omega, and five drillholes still to report.”
The company’s expansive 665-square-kilometre Hook Lake project lies in the underexplored Rankin-Ennadai greenstone belt, home to Agnico Eagle’s 6.7 million-ounce Meliadine gold mine to the project’s northeast.
Manhattan’s exploration at Hook Lake previously zeroed in on the orogenic gold potential at its flagship Jaws, where historical drilling outlined a non-JORC-compliant resource of 3.4 million tonnes grading 2.38g/t gold for 285,000 ounces.
After a comprehensive and evidently successful first pass, Manhattan appears to have substantially broadened its horizons for discovery at Hook Lake.
With high-grade gold at Jaws, a fresh polymetallic hit at Spectre and a growing pipeline of untested targets, Manhattan is giving itself plenty of shots on goal across Nunavut’s emerging mineral frontier. The bigger prize could be just how far the discovery story runs, with high-grade gold already in the mix and the potential for copper-rich discoveries to add another serious dimension to its Canadian landholding.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au
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