Walkabout Resources Ltd (ASX:WKT) has acquired the remaining 25% ownership of JDH Exploration for a one-off payment of GBP100,000 (A$186,854).
The acquisition gives WKT 100% ownership of more than 750 square kilometres of highly prospective exploration licences in southwest Scotland, which includes the Blackcraig Lead-Zinc-Silver Project within the Crown Estate in Dumfries and Galloway.
Furthermore, JDH will receive no further milestone payments for the assets, which includes the two JDH Exploration licences – Newton Stewart and St Johns Town of Dalry.
JDH’s assets, which span 500 square kilometres, will be added to WKT’s 100% owned Gatehouse of Fleet licence and will give the company a commanding wholly-owned exploration footprint in the region.
JDH licences Newton Stewart and St Johns Town of Dalry (blue) and Gatehouse of Fleet licence (red). Yellow dots indicate known mineral occurrences and or historical workings/mines.
“The relatively early buy-out of the remaining 25% of JDH Exploration supports the company’s view on the mineral prospectivity of the region,” Walkabout Resources’ CEO Andrew Cunningham said.
“Complete ownership will give the company much more flexibility and leverage to execute its strategy in the region.”
JDH known for strong mining history
WKT’s new wholly-owned projects consist of two licences covering 500 square kilometres of highly prospective ground in southwest Scotland, known for historic lead-zinc-silver mining.
The area is, however, yet to be explored by any modern mining techniques.
A regional program was conducted by the British Geological Survey (BGS) in the 1980s when several anomalies were identified in addition to the numerous old mines and historical mineral shows in the region, leaving the region ripe for potential discovery.
WKT has conducted a review of historic data and reconnaissance exploration and identified several prospective areas for both precious and base metals, including two drill-ready projects.
The company has already begun a maiden drilling program at the Blackcraig Lead-Zinc-Silver Project.
Read: Walkabout Resources kicks off maiden drill program at Scottish lead-zinc-silver project
Interesting, historic mining dated back more than 250 years and has shown that mineralisation occurs in two steeply dipping, sub-parallel veins with historical reports indicating that mineralisation is represented by stringers to massive sulphides up to 18 metres wide over a strike extent of 4.5 kilometres.
Prior to the current drilling program, recent exploration over the area includes geological mapping and rock chip sampling, supported by a ground geophysics (magnetic) survey and soil sampling. Rock-chip sampling (float) from spoil heaps around Blackcraig returned assay results of up to 30% zinc, 9.1% lead, 7.4% copper and 36.1 g/t silver.
Work at Glenhead Gold Project
BGS has also had a hand in WKT’s Glenhead Gold Project, which was identified during BGS’s Mineral Reconnaissance Program in the 1980s.
Limited, shallow drilling was undertaken by BGS (approximately 394 metres of diamond drilling over seven holes) primarily targeting outcropping auriferous veins.
The best results recorded were approximately 1-metre at 5.9 g/t gold, 1-metre at 4.6 g/t gold and 4.5 metres at 1.5 g/t gold.
Recent exploration over the area included detailed geological and structural mapping and rock-chip sampling and identified the main gold-bearing vein identified by BGS which returned gold values of up to 12.8 g/t gold.
What’s next for WKT
Having started diamond drilling at the Blackcraig project in October, WKT has already completed six holes with samples for the first five holes sent to the laboratory in the Republic of Ireland for assaying.
Results are expected in early 2022.
Drilling is targeting potentially mineralised areas beneath the old underground mine as well as potential parallel structures to the main historical mining trend as identified through geological mapping and a close-spaced ground magnetics survey completed in 2020.
The program is expected to continue into February 2022.
Regional soil sampling (250 by 250-metre grid, total of 469 samples) was completed over several key areas along the Talnotry-Greymare’s Tail trend where several historic lead-zinc trial workings (gold-silver-lead-zinc targets) are known located along a regional scale structure, as well as a historic nickel working nickel-PGE target).
The soil sampling covers an area of approximately 24 square kilometres.
A detailed soil grid was undertaken on the Glenhead Gold project covering an area of approximately 700 square metres (50 by 20-metre grid, total of 653 samples) to expand the area covered by historic soil grid/ shallow drilling undertaken by BGS in the 1980s.
Sampling was recently completed and has been sent for analysis, with results expected early in 2022.
Results from all programs will be announced once the assay results are available and the interpretation has been completed.
Finally, a regional, drone borne aeromagnetic survey planned for approximately 150 square kilometres was partially completed during the allocated “flying window”.
The survey was conducted by UAVE Ltd using the Prion Mk3 UAV, a purpose-built fixed-wing drone but due to a combination of equipment failures (including damage to the drone upon landing early in the survey), adverse weather conditions and the unavailability of key operating staff during the approved survey period, only a portion of the planned survey area could be completed.
The results of the completed survey area will be interpreted and WKT is accessing its options on how to complete the remainder of the survey area within an acceptable timeframe.