Hunt hits promising intercepts at La Josefina

Vancouver – Argentina-focused Hunt Mining (HMX-V) has hit encouraging gold hits at the Sinter zone of its La Josefina project in Santa Cruz province.

The company has previously hit a number of high-grade gold hits from the project but most were fairly short. The latest results, however, included hole D11-278 that hit a 19.5-metre true width interval carrying 18.83 grams gold per tonne almost from surface.

Other results from the latest 10 holes included hole 11-282 that returned 3.5 metres carrying 4.83 grams gold, hole D11-286 that cut 7 metres averaging 3.01 grams gold and hole D11-287 that returned 1 metre grading 40.97 grams gold. The holes were all true width and also returned varying grades of silver, copper, lead and zinc.

The results were good enough to propel the company’s share price up 12¢ or 42.9% to 40¢ on 2.5 million shares traded.

The latest results were all from the Sinter zone of Josefina, while only days earlier Hunt released results from the Amanda-Cecilia vein structure in the Veta Norte zone.

Results from Veta North included hole D11-271 that returned 1.2 metres carrying 38.31 grams gold, 150.92 grams silver per tonne and 12.66% lead from 13 metres depth, hole D11-272 that hit 0.9 metre returning 18.94 grams gold, 184.44 grams silver and 1.04% copper from 65 metres downhole, and hole D11-275 that cut 2.4 metres grading 3.56 grams gold and 63.94 grams silver from roughly 35 metres depth. All holes were reported as true width.

Finally, at the Veta Ailin structure in the Central zone of the La Josefina project, Hunt hit a true width of 2.4 metres carrying 188.52 grams gold, 171.88 and 14.84% lead from 12 metres downhole.

The flagship La Josefina project spans 528 sq. km in the Deseado Massif mineral district. Overall Hunt controls 2,867.9 sq. km of land in the area thanks to the recent addition of 248.6 sq. km. Hunt can earn 91% of La Josefina from Formicruz S.E., a government-owned entity, by completing a positive feasibility study.

The project is characterized by abundant middle- to late-Jurassic age volcanic and volcaniclastic rock units dominated by rhyolitic to rhyodacitic ignimbrite flows and lava domes. Mineralization is sulphidation-type epithermal, with gold and silver occurring in fissure vein systems localized by structures often a meter or more wide and hundreds of meters long, comprised of quartz veins, stockworks and breccias.

The current resource at La Josefina, which Hunt released in October 2010, stands at 5 million measured tonnes grading 0.72 gram gold and 16.6 grams silver and 1.5 million indicated tonnes grading 0.83 gram gold and 1.81 grams silver for a combined total of roughly 197,000 oz. gold using a 0.2 gram gold equivalent cutoff. The inferred resource stands at 452,000 tonnes grading 0.45 gram gold and 1.21 grams silver, using the same cut-off. The resource was based on 37,500 metres of drilling in 240 holes completed between 2006 and 2009.  

The company plans to release an updated resource, a prefeasibility study and metallurgical work later this year.

Hunt is also planning to drill 2,000 metres at its wholly-owned El Gateado project, a contiguous land block on the eastern edge of La Josefina.