HighGold Mining continuing to advance a "great deposit" at Johnson Tract, Alaska

Aiming to be a Top Tier gold explorer Working in highly favorable mining jurisdictions Johnson Tract asset is very high grade and akin to advanced-stage discovery What HighGold Mining does: HighGold Mining Inc (CVE:HIGH) (OTCMKTS:HGGOF) has two wholly-owned projects, which are found in the well-established mining jurisdictions of Alaska and Timmins, Ontario, while anagement has a track record of finding, growing, and advancing resources. The company is a spin-out of the gold assets of Constantine Metal Resources and its shares began trading on Toronto's Venture exchange in September, 2019. Shares also began trading in January, 2020 on the US over-the-counter market. HighGold's flagship asset is the high-grade, polymetallic Johnson Tract gold project in southcentral Alaska, which was acquired as part of a lease agreement with CIRI, a native Alaskan firm. HighGold is targeting a potential multi-million ounce, multi-deposit system. in 2020, HighGold published an NI 43 101 maiden resource for Johnson Tract which positioned the property as among the highest-grade undeveloped gold projects in North America. Notably, it is open for expansion. The higher confidence Indicated resource was put at 2.1 million tons grading an impressive 10.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for 750,000 gold equivalent ounces. The Inferred resource was pegged at 600,000 tons of 7.2 g/t for 134,000 gold equivalent ounces. Notably, nearly 80% of the total resource tonnage is in the Indicated category, including 85% of the total gold equivalent ounces. Under the lease deal, HighGold must pay US$10 million over 10 years with a minimum of US$7.5 million payable in the first six years. Upon completing a feasibility study and a positive decision to construct a mine, CIRI has a one-time buy back-in right to a 25% participating interest. Elsewhere, at the famous 100-plus million ounce Timmins gold mining camp in Canada, HighGold has a strategic footprint of  200 square kilometres (km) in an area along the Porcupine-Destor Fault, which has generated over 110 million ounces. The firm wants to apply new exploration ideas to a mature district. Its main Munro Croesus property area in Timmins now spans 32 square kilometres, or 3,187 hectares, and includes the past-producing Croesus mine that yielded some of the highest grade gold mined in Ontario. The company's Golden Mile property covers 8,600 hectares on the Pipestone Fault System and lies 9km from Newmont's multi-million-ounce Hoyle Pond deposit, while its Golden Perimeter property covers around 12,000 hectares and played host to around 10,000 meters (m) of past drilling in the 1980s. How is it doing: It's been a busy 2021 for HighGold so far. On June 23, it announced it had increased the size of its planned drill program at Johnson Tract (JT) to 20,000 meters (m), a 25% uptick from the previously planned 16,000m. This will be the largest exploration effort in the flagship project’s history, the company noted. The ultimate goal of the 2021 program will be to increase the JT deposit and make new discoveries within the Johnson district. There will also be an emphasis on definition drilling and metallurgical work as part of a future resource update. It said 50% -70% of its current efforts will be on the JT deposit area, and the remaining 30% -50% on other regional prospects. HighGold will also target the Footwall copper zone with step-outs, the GAP target northeast of the JT deposit and the New 2020 VMS zone, which returned positive intercepts last year.  Additionally, several prospect zones will be tested, including DC, Milkbone and Kona. The expansion and ongoing exploration will be funded from the C$1.9 million it recently received from the exercise of 2,709,027 warrants held by key strategic shareholders. In March this year, HighGold said it had reached a 'turning point' after drilling at its Northeast Offset (NEO) target at Johnson Tract, had shown the area to be a distinct mineralized zone separate from the JT deposit. The NEO target lies between 500 and 800 meters to the northeast of the JT deposit. Two holes were sunk there, which showed, significantly new VMS-style mineralization in one, with highlights including 7.8 meters (m) at 6.1% zinc, 1.6% lead, 0.2% copper, 0.7 g/t gold and 36 g/t silver. HighGold said it now recognized that the mineralization is far more widespread between the JT deposit and the NEO target within the prospective Dacite Tuff stratigraphy than had been previously understood. Also in March, HighGold revealed it planned to systematically explore and generate multiple drill targets at its Munro-Croesus gold project in Timmins, Ontario, having consolidated its ground, such that its asset area now spans 32 square kilometres or 3,187 hectares. And in June this year, the company said it had struck an exploration agreement with the Matachewan First Nation and Mattagami First Nation in the Timmins area in a bid to promote a “cooperative, collaborative and mutually respectful relationship” for HighGold’s exploration activities in areas where the two First Nations’ members exercise aboriginal rights. Inflection points: More exploration results from Johnson Tract, Alaska Exploration at assets in Ontario Precious metals moves What the boss says: HighGold Mining's CEO Darwin Green spoke to Proactive's Steve Darling following news of the 25% increase to its planned drill program at the Johnson Tract project to 20,000 metres (m). "We've got a great deposit, it's open to expansion. We're going to keep stepping out on that and growing that with an objective of generating an updated mineral resource at the end of this season's drilling so that will probably come out early in 2022. But in concert with that, we will also be testing other prospects on the property. One of the really neat aspects about Johnson is that the deposit itself clearly sits within a very big, multi-kilometre scale system,” he said. Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com.