SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Terrax Minerals Inc. (TSX.v:TXR) has put out the call for a 5000 metre (expandable to 20,000 metres) winter drilling contract on the company's Yellowknife City Gold project, just north of the city.

Northtech Drilling Ltd.'s Jonathan Paquin releases drill core collected on TerraX Minerals Ltd.'s Yellowknife City Gold project north of the city. TerraX has put out tenders for winter drilling. - Walter Strong/NNSL photo

Drilling is set to start in the middle of January and will focus on targets identified during late fall surface work in the Crestaurum and Barney Shear zones. During this recent field work, a new mineralized shear in the area returned surface samples of up to 126 grams per tonne gold, or 4.4 ounces gold per tonne.

This high-grade shear was discovered approximately half a kilometre south of drilling completed this summer on the Barney shear zone.

TerraX is still evaluating and re-assaying historical drill core from the 15 square kilometre section of the property that is the focus of this winter's proposed drilling program. 

The company did some fresh drilling in the zone this summer which returned core showing up to 22.42 m at 6.35 g/t gold including 5.16m at 18.4 g/t gold. This winter's drilling is expected to expand and confirm historical results showing similar grades.

The historical cores cannot be used by themselves to generate a modern NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate. But if fresh drilling confirms historical core sample and logging, TerraX president Joe Campbell expects the historical records can form part of an eventual resource estimate.

"We would like to do enough drilling that we could anticipate having a million ounces between the Barney and Crestaurum (shear zones) before we put out a 43-101," Campbell said recently.

Campbell anticipated needing up to another 20,000 metres of drilling before putting out an initial resource estimate.

Funding for this winter's drilling comes thanks to an oversubscribed private placement earlier this fall.

Initially, TerraX offered $2.1 million in company shares. By the time the private placement ended, more than $2.74 million was raised. This included shareholderVirginia Mines Inc.'s (TSX:VGQ) purchase of an additional $250,000 in TerraX stock.