Domestic Metals' Smart Creek Project: Geologist sees high-potential gold-tungsten skarn target

Independent consulting geologist Dr Peter Megaw, fresh from a site visit to Domestic Metals Corp's Smart Creek project near Philipsburg, Montana, tells Proactive that the project's western Sunrise area is a very high potential target for an undiscovered gold-tungsten skarn. Historic placer mining for gold and tungsten has been active in the area, but the bedrock source of those placers has never been found. Megaw believes a skarn deposit upstream is the most likely explanation. Megaw explains why the Philipsburg region is exceptionally well endowed with copper, gold, silver, lead, and zinc. He points to the nearby Butte district—home to one of the world's largest copper deposits and at least two major porphyry centers—as evidence that the area sits within genuine elephant country for mineral discovery. Porphyry copper systems, he notes, occur in large regional clusters, and Butte is not alone. The geologist outlines how porphyry, skarn, and carbonate replacement deposit (CRD) systems form part of a single continuum. Where reactive limestone and dolomite host rocks are present, as at Smart Creek and Philipsburg, the same mineralizing fluids that created Butte's giant vein system can instead produce skarns and CRDs. Smart Creek has both the right geological ingredients and the right host rocks. On what makes an old mining district worth revisiting, Megaw says the key is identifying hallmarks of large, long-lived systems and using modern geophysical techniques to locate mineralization the original miners missed. At Smart Creek, he says those signs are present, with an active copper zone already under exploration and the Sunrise gold-tungsten target representing a separate and distinct opportunity. #DomesticMetalsCorp #DMCO #SmartCreek #Montana #copper #gold #tungsten #miningexploration #juniorminers #resourceinvesting