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60 www.resourceworld.com F E B R U A R Y / M A R C H 2 0 2 0 Visible native gold in quartz from Aston Bay's Buckingham Project in central Virginia. Photo courtesy Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. Aston Bay shifts focus from Nunavut to Virginia gold project by David Duval O perating in diverse environments is nothing new to explo- ration companies including Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. [BAY-TSXV; ATBHF-OTCQB] which has gold and base metal projects in the state of Virginia, USA and Nunavut, Canada. The company is currently focused on its 4,953-acre Buckingham Gold Project in Virginia which hosts sub-cropping quartz veins contain- ing visible gold that have yielded up to 701 g/t gold (20.4 oz/ton) in surface grab samples. Last September, the company acquired exclusive rights to an integrated dataset of geophysical, geochemical and geo- logical information over certain prospective private lands at the Blue Ridge Properties in central Virginia held by Jack's Fork Exploration. In addition, it signed agreements with timber and land companies that grant the company the option to lease the mineral rights to 11,065 acres of land in central Virginia. These lands are located within a gold-copper-lead-zinc miner- alized belt prospective for Carolina slate belt gold deposits, as well as sedimentary VMS, exhalative (SEDEX) and Broken Hill (BHT) type base metal deposits. A six-hole, 878-metre drill program completed last year at Buckingham (purchased from private landholders) intersected significant gold mineralization in quartz veins. Targeting gold- bearing quartz veining and disseminated mineralization, the program returned 35.61 g/t gold over 2.03 metres in hole BUCK19- 001, 20.44 g/t Au over 3.30 metres and 34.25 g/t Au over 0.5 metres in hole BUCK19-003, and 24.73 g/t Au over 3.57 metres, including 62.51 g/t Au over 1.39 metres in hole BUCK19-004. Broad zones of gold mineralization associated with sericite- quartz-pyrite alteration were intersected at Buckingham as well, including: 2.16 g/t Au over 18.07 metres, including 17.45 g/t Au over 1.57 metres and 1.90 g/t Au over 22.22 metres, including 19.30 g/t Au over 1.5 metres in BUCK19-005. Based upon mul- tiple vein intersections, estimated true width is 80% of the core interval. Located within the Carolina Slate Belt, these lands are known to host gold deposits such as the Haile gold mine as well as the Virginia Gold-Pyrite Belt, the most notable gold mining region in the US prior to the California Gold Rush. Don Taylor, the 2018 Thayer Lindsley Award winner for his discovery of the Taylor Pb-Zn-Ag Deposit in Arizona and the former president and founder of Jack's Fork, has joined the com- pany's Advisory Board and will be directing Aston Bay's Virginia exploration activities. According to Taylor, "The high-quality Virginia dataset and projects identified at the Blue Ridge Properties have highlighted a very prospective base and precious metal terrane that remains under explored. Based on the early drill success within the ter- rane there are high expectations for a significant discovery." "Current plans by Aston Bay are to follow up on that early suc- cess as well as expand exploration to investigate the numerous targets already generated," he emphasizes. In the fall of 2019, the company initiated a soil sampling pro- gram with over 2,000 soil samples collected covering an area of 8.5 km 2 . In the course of this sampling, a new zone of outcrop- ping quartz veins approximately 500 metres of strike length was discovered 3 km east-northeast of the previously drilled main Buckingham gold-bearing quartz vein. Multiple placer gold flakes were identified in panned alluvial gravels adjacent to the newly discovered quartz veins. The company believes the discovery has significant size potential and is analogous to the Haile gold mine (+4 million oz.) which is producing 150,000 oz/year. The company is also the 100% owner of the 414,537-hectare Aston Bay property located on western Somerset Island, Nunavut which neighbours Teck's profitable, past-producing Polaris (Pb- Zn) Mine 200 km to the north. The Aston Bay Property hosts the Storm Copper Project and the Seal Zinc deposit where drilling has confirmed the presence of sediment-hosted copper and zinc mineralization. In summer 2018, the company drilled 3,135 metres in nine holes targeting high-grade copper mineralization in the vicinity of Storm Copper and adjacent prospects, as well as Polaris-type zinc mineralization at the Seal Zinc deposit and the Seal South prospect. Copper mineralization from the Storm Zone in drill hole AB18-09 from 39 to 83 metres downhole returned 1.5 metres grad- ing 4.39% Cu and 9.76 g/t Ag and, from 62.5 to 83 metres, 20.5 metres grading 0.56% Cu including, from 74.0 to 76.0 metres, 2.0 metres grading 2.54% Cu. n MINING