RE:RE:Porphyry-Epithermal deposit TBANot quite right. 2021 drilling followed the "main zones" NW and discovered a new (probably epithermal) zone under a landslide. Thunder zone is a discrete ore body that was searched for for over 100 years but never found until last summer. These zones are almost certainly related to the intrusive target but the drill program in 2021 was not targeting that feature.
Targeting the intrusive requires deep geophysics. That drilling will be very deep and needs to be precisely targeted. It is a very large, district-scale target. Other intrusives similar to this that I have seen needed holes over a km in length and often intercepted hundreds and hundreds of meters of low grade. The holes drilled this summer maxed-out around 150m deep and hit high grade epithermal veins:
(6.42% Combined Cu+Pb+Zn, 253.8 g/t Ag, 0.61 g/t Au Over 3.96 m).
The epithermal zones are nearer the suface than any intrusive target would be.
MGMT says assays from the Thunder Zone were delayed by a cyberattack at Bureau Veritas. All the work had to be redone so it's taking forever. You can read about it here:
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/12/02/2345318/0/en/Update-on-the-cyber-attack.html
My guess is that all the data was encrypted by ransomware and the lab has to re-do all the assays because they didn't pay the ransom. Not fun.
Looking forward to the exploration work seeking a porphyry target! The epithermal zones have built a nice resource but the intrusive target would blow that out of the water by sheer scale and volume of mineralized material.