Eastmain Resources Inc. announced that Honey Badger Exploration Inc. ("Honey Badger") has commenced a 1,000- to 1,500-metre drill hole program on prospective gold targets identified on Eastmain's Radisson Project, located within the emerging James Bay Mining District of Northern Québec.
The Radisson gold property lies within an Archean-aged greenstone belt approximately 120 and 165 kilometres north of the Éléonore (Roberto) and Clearwater (Eau Claire) gold properties respectively. Radisson covers over 25 kilometres of favorable precious metal-bearing corridors hosting multiple gold occurrences in rocks similar to those forming Goldcorp Inc.'s Roberto Deposit, slated for production in late 2014 and Eastmain's high-grade Eau Claire Gold Deposit, the region's second largest deposit.
Radisson is a district-scale property with promising and widespread gold, copper and silver occurrences, located within an emerging gold district with excellent infrastructure nearby (paved roads, commercial airports and low cost hydro electric power). The project is accessible via winter logging roads from the LG2 Hwy, a road system connecting the towns of Matagami and Radisson (La Grande).
Honey Badger can earn a 50% interest in the Radisson property by completing $2.5 million in exploration expenditures, including 6,000 metres of drilling, over a three-year period. Honey Badger has also issued approximately 5.4 million common shares and made cash payments of $50,000 as part of its earn-in requirements to date in the project.
The Radisson project is characterized by regional greenstone belt geology and associated major structures found throughout each of the major gold mining camps in the Canadian Shield. Geological interpretation of previous surface exploration work indicates the Radisson property is highly favorable for hosting several types of deposits, including:
- shear-zone hosted gold deposits, similar to Hemlo (ON);
- banded, folded iron formation hosted gold deposits, like Musselwhite (ON) and Homestake (ND); and
- potassium-altered intrusive related gold deposits, such as McIntyre and Hemlo (ON).
The eastern half of the property is a complexly folded and sheared area, very prospective for gold mineralization. Previous soil and rock sampling outlined extensive zones of enriched gold coincident with interpreted structures. Anomalous concentrations of other pathfinder elements such as copper, potassium, arsenic and barium have also been detected with gold.
Honey Badger has selected three prospective gold targets for testing during this program. Other key targets will be evaluated by additional prospecting and trenching during the summer field season.
According to Dr. Donald J. Robinson, President and CEO of Eastmain "The Radisson Project is an extremely under-explored property underlain by highly prospective geology for gold ore deposits. Previous senior company explorers spent over a million dollars proving-up high-priority gold targets, which have never been drill tested. We are very pleased to see Honey Badger begin drilling this significant project."