FireFox Gold Corp. announced that it has completed a drilling program at the newly discovered high-grade zone in the East Target of the Mustajarvi Project. The Company drilled nine diamond core holes totalling 1540.6 metres during the short spring 2023 program.

These drill holes were designed to infill gaps in the modelled near-surface gold shapes and test for significant extensions to the west and southwest. The new holes included close offsets and downdip tests of the replacement style gold mineralization drilled in the East Target, but the drilling also included major step-outs of 80m and 220m along strike to the southwest. Assays of the drill core are in progress.

The Company has also received multielement geochemical analyses on the drill core from the fall 2022 drilling campaign. The most recent data are consistent with previous results from Mustajarvi drilling; the gold mineralization is consistently enriched in bismuth (Bi), tellurium (Te), molybdenum (Mo), selenium (Se), nickel (Ni), and cobalt (Co). Silver (Ag), arsenic (As), and copper (Cu) occur at relatively low levels at Mustajarvi.

Cobalt is quite enriched at the East target, reaching maximum values of 0.497% and 0.461% over separate 1 metre samples in the 2022 drilling. Drill hole 22MJ021 recorded the strongest cobalt interval yet drilled, along with one of the best gold results as well: 22MJ021: 15.5m at 13.09 g/t Au, 0.15% Co, and 143 ppm Te from 11.0m depth, including 6.5m at 19.18 g/t Au, 0.27% Co, and 247 ppm Te from 20.0m depth. The Mustajarvi Project lies along the highway between the cities of Kittila and Sodankyla, approximately 17 kilometres east of Kittila.

The property straddles the Mustajarvi Shear Zone (MSZ), a major right-lateral shear zone that has associated second and third-order structures which further dissect the project into separate structural zones. The Sodankyla Group rocks, which are primarily to the north of the shear zone in the footwall, include metamorphosed sedimentary and volcaniclastic rocks. Geophysics and drilling have identified an extensive corridor of albite ­ sericite alteration in the footwall along more than two kilometres of the structure.

The project remains at an early stage as FireFox and predecessor companies have drilled approximately 14,158 metres to date. FireFox's structural model identified repetitive dilatant zones along the MSZ where vein swarms, replacement style, and higher-grade gold are concentrated. Three main areas of gold mineralization have been identified along a 2.1-kilometre segment of the MSZ, namely the Central Zone, the Northeast Target, and the East Target.

The Central Zone and East Target have clear expressions of significant grade and thickness of gold mineralization at surface, whereas the gold at the Northeast Target is concentrated between 100 and 150 metres below surface. Folding and extensive faulting are in evidence, suggesting the potential for locating much more gold around and between these three widely spaced targets. The spring 2023 drilling at Mustajarvi was focused on the East Target with a primary goal to extend known, shallow high-grade mineralization.

FireFox geologists have collected structural geology evidence indicating that a primary control on the East Target mineralization trends to the southwest. The detailed ground magnetics also revealed a subtle corridor of less magnetic rocks trending to the southwest beneath the highway. There is also a chargeability anomaly in the area, immediately SW of the latest drilling, that may mark the presence of sulphide minerals.

The high chargeability zone strikes northeast and dips to the southeast, subparallel with the inferred lithological contact and slightly oblique to the MSZ. The nature of the elevated chargeability was untested until this drill program. The drilling was targeted based on a combination of FireFox's 3D geological model, structural geology, and geophysics.

Due to the near-surface nature of the high-grade target in this area, most of the drill holes in this program were shallow. Drill holes 23MJ001 and MJ002 were aimed at the western side of the shallow high-grade replacement style mineralization and downdip extensions of the Riedel veins that often host high-grade gold. 23MJ001 undercut a bonanza grade intercept in 22MJ024 (3.4m at 50.91 g/t Au from 91.8m depth).

Both of these holes evaluated the downdip continuation of the thicker replacement style zones of mineralization in the centre of the East Target. The team stepped out over 100m to the south with drill hole 23MJ003, which was aimed back to the northwest to probe for a key lithologic contact and shear zone. Drill hole 22MJ025 had intercepted narrow intercepts of 14.53 and 8.75 g/t gold at depth, but it failed to reach the shear zone.