Cashed up Strickland ready to launch into gold and zinc drilling blitz

Cashed up on the back of the $61m sale of the Millrose gold project to Northern Star, Strickland Metals is about to start exploration at its Yandal East and Earaheedy projects.

Over the coming months base metals and gold explorer Strickland Metals (ASX:STK) will drill a number of highly-prospective gold and zinc targets — including Horse Well, Cowza and Great Western (gold), as well the Rabbit Well and Iroquois zinc prospects in the Earaheedy Basin.

Rabbit Well: an exciting zinc target

Looking to prove up zinc at Earaheedy, ongoing exploration has identified a new look-a-like prospect to its Iroquois discovery, called Rabbit Well.

Rabbit Well is directly along strike from Iroquois in a 2.7km long gravity anomaly of the same tenor as Iroquois, with coincident base metal anomalism.

Drilling at Iroquois has pulled up thick, high-grade zinc, including 58 metres @ 4.3% Zn from 173m and 10m @ 12.2% Zn from 221m.

Strickland CEO Andrew Bray says Rabbit Well “has the potential to be a much larger and more coherent prospect” than Iroquois.

“An IP survey is commencing later this month, with follow-up diamond drilling anticipated to commence shortly thereafter,” Bray says.

It’s gold baby

At the 150,000oz Horse Well prospect, a 40,000m aircore drilling program will kick off shortly “to developing a coherent exploration model” and subsequently deliveran increase in mineral resources.

“Despite being well known for a number of years, the Horse Well gold mineralisation remains poorly understood and significantly underexplored,” Bray says.

To the west, the Great Western prospect is showing great promise, and Bray reckons the underlying magnetic feature is “interpreted to be in the flexure of a regional granite body, which is an ideal structure for large, high-grade orogenic gold deposits”.

“There is strong Au-Co-Mo anomalism at surface, along with Cu-Mo anomalous gossans. Initial aircore programs will commence over Great Western upon receipt of heritage approval.”

At Cowza, Strickland is hoping to repeat the success it had at nearby Millrose.

Cowza looks to be in a very similar setting to Millrose, with the same footwall gold mineralisation.

“Historically, all drilling has been focused on the western side of the BIF marker unit, whereas at Millrose, the primary mineralisation is all to the east of the BIF unit,” Bray says.

“This analogous location remains entirely untested by historical drilling. Strickland intends to follow up this eastern position in the coming month.”

Bray is very upbeat about Strickland’s exploration programs and says it’s going to be a very exciting run into the end of the year.

“We are looking forward to a very exciting finish to the year with potentially numerous additional gold and zinc discoveries in the offing,” he says.

“Importantly, the company remains extremely well funded as a result of the Millrose sale, meaning that major drilling campaigns at any future discoveries can be easily handled with the existing balance sheet.”

IP surveys are on their way this month and diamond drilling of Rabbit Well, Iroquois and several Horse Well targets are set to commence in ~5 weeks.

This article was developed in collaboration with Strickland Metals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.