TAL could be the next Hemlo!!! One of the best stories coming out of this year's Prospector's & Developers (PDAC) convention may have been from Barry Coughlan, Chairman of Tri-Gold Resources (TSX: V.TAL, BullBoards).
Tri-Gold was created from another company started by Coughlan and Don MacKinnon, co-founder of the original Hemlo discovery. The Hemlo deposit was the major gold discovery in Canada during the 1980's, and is still responsible for almost one third of Ontario's annual gold production. Tri-Gold's Duck Lake property, which the company calls the Hemlo West project, generated some buzz at this year's PDAC gathering.
"The interesting thing about this property is the historic work that's been done on it," says Coughlan. "Since 1906, there's been over 100 holes drilled (on the property) from such companies as Falconbridge and Battle Mountain, all of which were looking for base metals."
Coughlan adds that all of the holes were drilled shallow, meaning no more than 50 to 100 meters. Tri-Gold acquired the property from Battle Mountain, which was taken over by Newmont in 1997. "Often when one (mining) company takes over another it will ignore the projects of the company being acquired. The property was Battle Mountain's #1 exploration play and Newmont left it wide open," he said. Tri-Gold then grabbed the property and proceeded to do prospecting, geophysics, trenching, mapping, drill holes, etc.
Coughlan claims the property itself is 10 kilometers by four kilometers and is 100 kilometers from Hemlo on the main highway. Historically, he says, there are 40 gold occurrences on the property already. Previous drill results showed almost five meters at 17 grams.
"They weren't, however, looking for Hemlo-like structures because they really didn't understand it at that time," he suggests. The Duck Lake property contains metal combinations, such as moly, copper, barite, etc., much like the mineralogy of Hemlo. "Metals in (the Hemlo) combination have never been found except on our property," Coughlan adds.
Coughlan says one of the most interesting aspects to the Duck Lake property is that it had never been mapped properly. Nobody knew it was a shear zone (a geological structure similar to a fault) that ran 5.2 kilometers in length. Tri-Gold Resources recently raised almost $1 million for a drill program, which will commence in May or early June of 2006.
Coughlan says one of the company's greatest strengths is its board of directors, which includes George Cavey, creator of the National Instrument 43-101 (a rule developed by the Canadian Securities Administrators and administered by the provincial securities commissions that governs how issuers disclose scientific and technical information about their mineral projects to the public) for the TSX and William Harper, former CFO of Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: T.IVN, BullBoards).
When asked what advice he has for those who want to speculate in junior gold exploration companies, Coughlan says look to companies that are "going where there are elephants (previous large discoveries such as Hemlo). As far as juniors are concerned, consider companies that are well structured, and have good properties in good locations with no questions in respect to (land) titles." He believes Canada has the best miners in the world and a government that is most favourable to mining exploration.
For more nuggets of wisdom on natural resources, check out Prospecting for Profits in 2006: The StockHouse Natural Resources Supplement. https://www.stockhouse.ca/featuredsector/index.asp