ATAC regrouped, builds strong ensemble

Following the denial of a tote road to its Rackla Gold project in the Yukon, ATAC Resources Ltd. diversified its portfolio and got back into the Canadian mineral exploration fray.

"The last two years have provided obvious challenges. However, during this time we have been very active advancing our copper-gold projects and conducting numerous comprehensive property evaluations, while preserving our treasury for the opportunities that lie before us now," ATAC President and CEO Graham Downs penned in a letter to shareholders.

As 2022 got underway, ATAC optioned the Catch copper-gold property from Yukon-based geologist Ryan Burke.

Located in an underexplored part of southcentral Yukon, roughly 56 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Carmacks, the property is ideally situated near an all-season highway and powerline.

"The addition of the Catch property to our growing copper and gold portfolio presents a rare opportunity to advance a brand new copper-gold discovery located at the underexplored northern end of a very fertile geological terrane," said Downs.

Results from early sampling of this fertile property included 52.4 grams per metric ton gold with 0.12% copper and 41.7 g/t silver; 4.4 g/t gold with 0.88% copper; 1.3 g/t gold with 1.36% copper; and 1.9 g/t gold with 228 parts per million molybdenum.

Furthermore, seven hand trenches, totaling 40 meters, dug over a 400- by 250-meter area and 140-meter vertical extent averaged 0.27% copper and 0.41 g/t gold.

"Preliminary results from initial exploration at Catch have already delineated a very significant zone of strongly elevated copper and gold," said Downs. "We believe this is evidence of a large mineralized system with potential for a copper-gold porphyry."

The initial phase of exploration at Catch consisted of prospecting, mapping, soil sampling, and geophysical surveys. Due to the promising results, ATAC had crews return to Catch to initiate a second phase that included prospecting, mapping, sampling, as well as maiden reverse circulation drilling.

Shortly after Catch, the company added the PIL copper-gold-silver project in Northern British Columbia to its portfolio.

Located about 15 kilometers (nine miles) east of Benchmark Metals' Lawyers gold-silver project, this road-accessible property optioned from Finlay Minerals Ltd. covers numerous highly prospective copper-gold porphyry and epithermal gold-silver targets within a prolific and highly active part of BC's Golden Horsehoe.

ATAC's 2022 exploration at PIL turned up samples with as much as 18.4% copper and 111 g/t silver at the Spruce target; 3.89% copper and 173 g/t silver at the PIL South Target; and 78.3 g/t gold and 2,830 g/t silver in outcrop at the Atlas target.

"This initial program at PIL has defined a number of priority targets for follow-up work," said Downs. "Sampling at Spruce returned the highest copper grades ever collected on the property."

While much of its 2022 exploration focused on its new copper-gold properties, the company returned to Rackla Gold with the first drill program in more than four years.

The 2022 program at Rackla included 1,551 meters of diamond drilling focused on expanding Osiris, a Carlin-style gold deposit on the Nadaleen property that hosts 5.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 4.12 g/t (732,000 oz) gold; plus 9.4 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 3.47 g/t (1.04 million oz) gold.

Highlights from the 2022 drilling at Osiris included 33.2 meters averaging 2.63 g/t gold in hole OS-22-283; and 10.8 meters averaging 3.69 g/t gold in hole OS-22-285.

"While we only conducted a small-scale program this year, these results are a great reminder of the high-grade nature of the Osiris deposit and the potential for significant resource growth through systematic step-outs along strike and at depth," said Downs.

ATAC also completed a maiden reverse circulation drill program to test the porphyry copper potential of this property about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Dawson City, Yukon.