NevGold (NAU.V) has received the approval of the Exploration Notice permit by the Bureau of Land Management for its Nutmeg Mountain gold project in Idaho. While 85% of the currently known resource (1.07 million ounces in total of which 910,000 ounces are in the indicated category and 160,000 ounces of gold are in the inferred resource category) is on patented mining claims, there are some high-priority targets on the unpatented land. The recently received permit will allow NevGold to complete work on those federal unpatented claims (the green area in the image below), where historically very little drilling has taken place.
The company didn’t wait for the approval to drill on unpatented land as it had already kicked off a maiden core drill program at Nutmeg Mountain. The company is attempting to achieve three things in this initial 2023 drill program. First of all, it wants to increase the resource to the north and the south with near-surface drilling while it also wants to drill-test the potential for high-grade feeder structures at depth. The third priority is to identify parallel structures that host additional mineralization to the east and to the west of the 2020 resource calculation.
As drilling has started and the first samples have likely already been shipped to the lab, odds are we will see the initial batch of assay results in March. Likely not in time for PDAC but it shouldn’t be too long there after.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in NevGold. NevGold is a sponsor of the website. Please read our disclaimer.
