Metal Hawk had a market capitalisation of just A$5 million until Diggers & Dealers last year.

The onslaught of announcements on the first day of the Kalgoorlie conference means good news can sometimes get lost but the market immediately took notice of the news that Metal Hawk had discovered high-grade gold in rock chips at Leinster South.

The company now has a market cap of closer to A$55 million – before even drilling a single hole.

“Metal Hawk, I believe, has got the most exciting early-stage gold project going around at the moment,” managing director Will Belbin told the RIU Sydney Resources Round-up last week.

The Leinster South project spans just over 400 square kilometres and sits halfway between Gold Fields’ Agnew mine and Northern Star Resources’ Thunderbox operation on the southern tip of the Agnew-Wiluna greenstone belt.

“We’re surrounded by multimillion ounce gold deposits and one thing we like about this project is there’s been very little exploration done on it – it’s quite remarkable,” Belbin said.

“For some odd reason, there just hasn’t been the work done on it. There’s no sign of previous exploration, not even any rubbish or broken bottles or rusty tobacco tins that you’d expect to see in the Goldfields.”

Hunting a tiger

The highest-grade rock chip result Metal Hawk reported in August was 20.2 grams per tonne gold at the Siberian Tiger prospect, a tenement that was won in a ballot.

Since then, Siberian Tiger has returned rock chips grading 30.87g/t gold, 18.48g/t gold, 10.13g/t gold and 9.29g/t gold.

“Every time we go to site, the guys seem to come back with more gold – that’s why we’ve been able to build a lot of momentum,” Belbin said.

“I heard rumours around the Gold Fields exploration camp that they didn’t believe there was any gold on the eastern limb of the anticline. We’re pretty determined to keep proving these guys wrong.”

Gold mineralisation has been found over a strike length of at least 800m.

The team has subsequently found even higher grade gold at the Thylacine prospect, 1.5km to the east of Siberian Tiger.

Rock chips from Thylacine have included 62.34g/t gold, 62.29g/t gold, 43.25g/t gold, 32.37g/t gold and 30.35g/t gold.

While the geology is the same at both prospects, Thylacine has a lot more veins.

“It’s just a cracker of a drill target,” Belbin said.

Earlier this month, Metal Hawk completed a heritage survey and should be drilling in early June.

“There’s a lot of anticipation, and also expectation, as we head towards our first drilling program,” Belbin said.

“We don’t have to drill deep holes – it’s all outcropping high-grade quartz vein material.”

Soil sampling will continue in the meantime.

Strong support

Metal Hawk has been able to raise A$5 million in the past six months across two placements and had A$5.6 million at the end of March.

Both placements were conducted at a premium to market pricing and without the aid of brokers.

“Raising money is not the most fun part of the job but when you do it like that, it’s quite satisfying,” Belbin said.

“We’ve got more money than we’ve ever had and we’re ready to drill the bejesus out of two of the most exciting gold projects you could have.”

Successful prospector Tim Goyder has amassed an 8% stake in the company and is its largest shareholder.

“He liked the Siberian Tiger announcements early on and bought a bunch of shares on market,” Belbin said.

Goyder has chipped in A$810,000 to Metal Hawk’s past two capital raisings, in November and March, and acquired A$35,000 of shares on-market in late March.

IGO also has a 5.6% stake, while the directors hold a combined 12%.

Belbin believes Leinster South will prove to be a company maker for Metal Hawk.

“We believe the money we’ve got in the bank will go a long way if you consider that we’ve got two high-grade prospects, let’s say we want to drill 20 or 30 holes at each prospect and the average hole depth is only going to be 60m and 80m and we’re probably going to be spending 15-20% of our current funds,” Belbin said.

“All going well, we’ll probably have a rig out there for the rest of the year and we’ll continue to pump out results.”