A difficult year does not stop Victoria

Despite a year riddled with cold weather, equipment malfunction, and even territory fires, Victoria Gold Corp. maintained a steadfast view of the horizon for its Eagle Gold Mine, doing everything it can to hold true to its planned Project 250 strategy, and contributed toward that goal with the company's largest exploration program to date.

One of the first announcements Victoria made at the start of 2022 was its new strategy to increase production at Eagle to 250,000 ounces during 2023.

While plans to achieve this goal involve additions and changes to operating equipment and procedures, ultimately, it still comes down to having plenty of gold-rich ore, and exploring its 555-square-kilometer (214 square miles) Dublin Gulch property is the tried and true method of expanding a resource.

The 2022 program initially aimed at approximately 20,000 meters of diamond drilling at Dublin; however, the company quickly blew past that mark, resulting in the largest exploration program carried out on the property to date.

"In 2022, we have carried out Victoria's largest ever exploration program, with 25,000 meters of drilling planned to expand Raven along strike and at depth," said Victoria Gold President and CEO John McConnell.

Due to its continued exploration, Victoria announced a significant addition to its resources.

According to a late 2019 calculation, Eagle hosts 148 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 0.64 grams per metric ton (3.06 million ounces) gold; while the nearby Olive deposit, about 3,000 meters northeast of Eagle, hosts another 7 million tons of reserves averaging 0.95 g/t (200,000 oz) gold.

Because of its efforts to expand Eagle resources and eventually reserves to depth – and now for the sake of meeting its new goal of 250,000 oz annually – Victoria spent the last few years exploring the potential of its highly prospective Raven gold target, roughly 13 kilometers (eight miles) east of the Eagle Mine.

Discovered with soil sampling and trenching in 2018, Raven is a large, near-surface gold target associated with Nugget, the second largest known intrusive body on the Dublin Gulch property – with the Dublin Gulch stock, which hosts the deposit delivering ore on the Eagle Gold Mine heap leach pad, being the current largest.

Trenching in 2018 and 2019 quickly began to reveal Raven's potential to host a large gold deposit that is higher grade than what is currently being mined at Eagle. Highlights from this trenching included 124 meters of 3.51 g/t gold, 50 meters of 4.15 g/t gold, and 12 meters of 7.91 g/t gold.

In September, the company announced a maiden inferred resource for Raven of 19.96 million metric tons of pit-constrained inferred resource averaging 1.67 g/t (1.07 million oz) gold.

At 1 million oz of gold in a resource more than double what is currently being mined, Raven will likely contribute to Eagle Mine reserves in the future.

And Victoria has ample room to continue exploring.

Aside from results from Raven, the company has also been examining the Lynx target. Exploration at Lynx continued to expand on work done in the preceding years, with four holes drilled in 2020, to 11 holes drilled in 2021. While final results remain pending from Lynx at the time of this report, Victoria did report results from early 2022 drilling around the current mining areas at Eagle.

In total, 10,342 meters in 23 holes added approximately 500 meters of mineralized strike length from the current Eagle pit boundary. Highlights from the drilling include:

• 301 meters averaging 0.52 g/t gold from a depth of 102 meters; including 69.5 meters averaging 0.72 g/t gold from 244 meters in hole DG22-1006C.

• 215 meters averaging 0.6 g/t gold from 206.5 meters; including 51 meters averaging 0.88 g/t gold from 355.5 meters in DG22-1013C.

• 72.3 meters averaging 1.14 g/t gold from surface; including 32.7 meters averaging 2.24 g/t gold from 50.3 meters in DG22-1017C.

• 240.3 meters averaging 0.63 g/t gold from 254 meters; including 78 meters averaging 1.29 g/t gold from 284 meters in DG22-1023C.

Drilling from the last two years of Eagle exploration has continued to define Eagle-style mineralization along strike and peripheral to existing Eagle Mine gold resources. Importantly, this includes Eagle West and Eagle Extension zones near the current mining.

"Now that Eagle is operating, our team has turned its attention to the systematic exploration of the numerous targets on the block," said McConnell. "We fully expect more discoveries in the future."