BTU Metals de-risking a huge land mass in famous Red Lake gold district, where its neighbor is Great Bear Resources

Large land package adjacent to Great Bear Resources' asset Dixie Halo is historically underexplored Experienced management team What BTU Metals does:  BTU Metals Corp has put together a large land package in the famous gold mining area of Red Lake, Ontario, and drilling is currently underway. Red Lake is famous for its high grade-deposits and has churned out over 30 million ounces of the precious metal in the past 85 years. BTU's flagship project is the Dixie Halo property, which covers 19,723 hectares and is contiguous with, and surrounds well-known gold explorer's Great Bear Resources' Dixie project which has seen considerable, well-documented success with the drill bit. The asset is close to all infrastructure needed to build and operate a mine, such as highways, power, gas, water and labor. The project has seen limited drilling historically compared to the Great Bear asset and BTU has identified three priority targets. These are the 'Gold in till' target, which lies along a trend that mirrors geology of the LP fault discovered by  Great Bear. Elsewhere, the Dixie Creek target is on trend with the LP Fault and a sampling program is underway. At the TNT polymetallic target, initial work has indicated a large gold-bearing VMS-style alteration system. The LP Fault structure hosts Great Bear's most recent discoveries, with drill assays such as 31.33 grams per ton (g/t) gold over 20.55 metres (m) uncovered.  BTU has noted that in greenstone belts, it is not uncommon for splays off the main fault to contain just as much gold. BTU Metals' management has good form. Chairman Vic Bradley, in a career spanning decades, has founded, financed and operated several mining companies, including the original Yamana Gold. Meanwhile, vice-president of exploration Bruce Durham has been involved in exploration for 40 years focusing on precious and base metal deposits in Ontario and Quebec. How is it doing: BTU Metals has made good progress so far in 2021 having in December 2020 announced that it had found visible gold in one hole on the northern portion of its flagship Dixie Halo property in Red Lake, Ontario. The company's last exploration update was on June 1, when BTU said it was looking forward to receiving lab results after the completion of drill hole BTU-21-66 in the TNT target area, which was drilled to 589 meters on its Dixie Halo property. The company said the hole was currently being “logged, cut, and samples are being sent for fire assay (gold) and geochemical analysis (multi-element).” Of the 10 drill holes targeting gold in the recently completed program, all have now been logged, and all but two have been sampled and are in the lab for analysis, said the company. Samples from the remaining two holes would be in the lab for analysis shortly, it added. Drill holes BTU-21-56 to BTU-21-65 were drilled in the Dixie Creek northeast corner targeting gold mineralization. The company noted that Dixie Creek area is ‘up-ice' from several high gold-grain-in-till anomalies, many of which have “a high proportion of pristine gold grains indicating a potential bedrock source is nearby.” Sulphide mineralization and quartz carbonate veining was intersected in all holes. Arsenopyrite mineralization was intersected in holes BTU-21-58 to BTU-21-61, along a magnetic low trend that follows the Dixie Creek topographic lineament and extends into Great Bear Resources' LP Fault area. This structure has never been drill-tested before and every hole in it has intersected at least some arsenopyrite mineralization with the most extensive intersection of around 40 meters of pyrite-arsenopyrite in quartz veining coming in hole BTU-21-59.  In May, BTU had announced that drilling was underway and designed to test various new targets at the TNT area. The company said the drill targets had been defined using all available geological information as well as all available geophysical data including recently completed surveys. All newly developed geochemical data and analysis were also used in the extensive re-interpretation of the area to develop the new targets, the company added.  In an earlier statement that same month, BTU had said that winter geophysical surveys had also successfully identified new targets on the Pakwash North property that also warrant drill testing. In March BTU revealed that it had expanded its already commanding position in Red Lake by striking a deal with GoldON Resources Ltd to earn up to 80% of the neighboring Pakwash North property. The 3,000 hectares asset is next to the east and southeast boundaries of BTU's Dixie Halo project and also neighbor Great Bear Resources' Pakwash property. BTU said it sees the potential for copper silver and gold mineralization on the newly acquired property and was kicking off desktop and geophysical work immediately. To earn an 80% interest in Pakwash North, formerly called the Bruce Lake property, BTU must pay C$75,000 in cash, issue 1.4 million of its shares and incur expenditures of C$1 million over three years. BTU may elect to stay at certain, fixed percentages over the course of the option at which time a definitive joint venture agreement will be entered into. And in a January statement, BTU revealed that it had over C$2 million in cash as it set out its exploration plans for 2021, which included the restart of drilling at its flagship Dixie Halo property to focus on several high-priority gold targets and a 3D geochemical-geophysical interpretation of the TNT polymetallic target.  Inflection points: Further drilling and exploration results Precious metals moves News from exploration firms nearby What the boss says: in June's exploration update, BTU Metals CEO Paul Wood said: "We are looking forward to receiving lab results from our most recent drill program, particularly from the holes which intersected the arsenopyrite-bearing structure which appears to be structurally connected to the LP Fault and that could be a splay off of it. “The drill will be turning again in short order on a number of our already identified targets, and we continue to identify more prospective targets on Dixie Halo, one of the most extensive land packages in Red Lake as the exploration team combs through more of our now 230 kilometers (km) of claims." Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com