Predator eyes reopening Brewery Creek

BREWERY CREEK – Unlike the gold seekers of which the bard Service wrote, Golden Predator Corp. is not content with just finding the gold. This company is also rushing toward becoming the Yukon’s newest hardrock gold miner.

“The corporate goal is to be a gold producer in the Yukon and that is why Brewery Creek has turned into the flagship property,” Golden Predator Chief Geologist Mike Burke explained.

Approaching Brewery Creek by air, there is little evidence of the mine that produced 278,484 ounces of gold from 1996 through 2002; instead the reclaimed land more closely resembles a golf course. Viceroy Resource Corp., the operator of the closed mine, not only left behind a model for reclamation but the permits needed to revive the operation it shuttered during the era of US$300 per ounce gold.

Initially, Golden Predator felt Brewery Creek had the potential to provide up to 1 million ounces of gold in areas in and adjacent to where Viceroy mined, but with the success of the 2011 drill program, the company is thinking much larger.

“We feel fairly strongly there is multi-million ounce (gold) potential here,” Burke touted.

With a 74-meter intercept averaging 7.08 g/t gold, it is not hard to see why Golden Predator has become bullish about the property’s potential. Other high-grade intercepts in the Bohemian-Schooner zone discovered earlier this year includes 28 meters of 5.06 g/t gold and 22.5 meters of 5.5 g/t gold.

These high-grade zones lie outside the currently permitted area and will likely be mined later than some of the zones closer to the past-producing pits.

Initial production could come from the ore on the heap-leach pad. Viceroy only recovered about 60 percent of the some 400,000 ounces of gold it stacked on the pad. Golden Predator recently completed 20 holes on the heap leach pad for assay and metallurgical analysis.

Golden Predator aims to have the Brewery Creek Mine back in operation by 2014

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Predator taps first hole into Harlan

HARLAN – Situated in the Mayo Mining District, Golden Predator’s Harlan gold property is one Burke has had his eye on for several years.

“I first saw field specimens from Harlan 15 years ago while working for the Yukon Geological Survey, and have eagerly awaited the chance to set foot on the property,” said Burke, who left the public sector to become Golden Predator’s chief geologist in January.

Though it is still early, Burke is not disappointed with what he sees at Harlan. Taking a look at core from the initial hole drilled into the property’s Vortex zone, the longtime Yukon geologist points out multiple vein-sets that delivered gold-bearing fluids into the sedimentary rocks.

“It’s been hammered up really good,” Burke observed.

Soil samples over a 1,600-meter-by-700-meter area at Vortex averages 500 parts-per-billion gold. Grab samples taken within the zone have returned assays as high as 6.5 g/t gold.

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Though the property was investigated by Viceroy Exploration Inc. and NovaGold Resources Inc. in the late 1990s and more recently by Alexco Resources Inc., Golden Predator’s nine-hole program is the first drilling ever conducted on the property.