TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Canadian exploration firm Murgor Resources has secured 44 claims near miner Aurico Gold’s Young-Davidson mine, in Ontario, saying the property holds the potential for a discovery of similar magnitude.

Kingston, Ontario-based Murgor said that the claims covered an area of 4 693 ha, located 6 km west-northwest of the Town of Matachewan, Ontario, where the Young Davidson mine is located.

The Young-Davidson mine currently has compliant reserves and resources totalling 5.5-million ounces of gold at an average grade of 2.66 g/t. The Young Davidson complex also includes a 10 000 t/d mill.

Murgor had acquired 27 of the Wydee claims through staking and 17 claims through cash agreements with previous claim holders. Only 15 claims (944 ha) of the property are subject to a 1% net smelter return (NSR) royalty of which Murgor can buy back 0.5% NSR at anytime for $500 000. Murgor also has a right of first refusal on the remaining 0.5% NSR.

“We believe the Wydee property holds great potential for the discovery of a another Young Davidson-type deposit. Our conceptual geological model is substantiated by a number historical gold occurrences already and we can't wait to start fieldwork next week,” Murgor president and CEO Andre Tessier said.

Murgor's Wydee property covered two types of exploration targets, including syenite-hosted disseminated gold deposits such as the neighbouring Young Davidson deposit, and shear-zone hosted disseminated-type and quartz vein-type lode gold deposits common in the Abitibi belt of Ontario and Quebec.

The Wydee property was mainly unexplored, with only 43 historical drill holes testing to an average depth of 95 m. The property covers an 8 km strike extent of the Galer Branch fault, a splay off the Larder Lake-Cadillac deformation zone to the east.

The western part of the property also covered a 10 km strike extent of a north-west-trending fault that is also believed to be a splay off the Larder Lake-Cadillac deformation zone.

The property hosted several gold occurrences that have yielded potentially economic grades of gold mineralisation, yet the property remained underexplored.

Murgor said that at least 14 gold showings, assaying more than 1 g/t gold had been located on the property by previous workers.

The best reported historical assays included grab samples assaying 3.29 g/t, 3.41 g/t, 10.46 g/t, 12 g/t, 12.1 g/t and 26.3 g/t gold taken from quartz vein-type occurrences; channel samples of 4.6 g/t gold over 8 m, 6.2 g/t gold over 6 m and 22.6 g/t gold over 3 m taken from the Galer fault zone; and drill intercepts of 67.6 g/t gold over 700 mm, within a mineralised section assaying on average 1.49 g/t gold over 34.75 m. There was inadequate historical information to determine the true widths of the drill intercepts, the company said.

Murgor also owns a 100% interest in two gold/copper deposits in the Snow Lake and Flin Flon mining districts of Manitoba, and a 40% interest in the Golden Arrow gold mine, in Ontario.