Metal Hawk is restarting drilling at the Numbat lode after its best Leinster South result to date, with up to 10 RC holes planned and diamond drilling scheduled for November. The deeper campaign will be supported by up to $175,000 in Western Australian Government co-funding.
- Up to 10 RC holes targeting Numbat extensions
- 9m at 12.3g/t gold, including 5m at 20.7g/t
- November diamond drilling to test depth potential
- Up to $175,000 in EIS co-funding
- Two Tysons holes returned no significant results
Numbat drilling moves from discovery to extension
Metal Hawk Limited (ASX:MHK) is moving quickly to test whether its standout Numbat gold intercept has the scale to become more than an isolated high-grade hit. An RC rig is due at the company’s 100%-owned Leinster South Project in Western Australia this week, with up to 10 holes planned at the Thylacine prospect.
The holes will target the Numbat lode down plunge and along strike from hole 26LSRC077, which returned 9 metres at 12.3g/t gold from 70 metres, including 5 metres at 20.7g/t from 72 metres. Metal Hawk describes the result as its best drilling intersection at Leinster South to date and says the mineralisation remains open at depth and along strike.
Diamond program adds a deeper test
The more consequential phase may come in November, when Metal Hawk plans to follow the RC campaign with diamond drilling. Up to $175,000 of co-funding from the Western Australian Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme will support that program, which is designed to test whether the Numbat lode thickens at depth.
There is already some evidence for continuity below the high-grade zone. A late-2025 diamond hole, LSD003, returned 1.7 metres at 7.7g/t gold from 338.65 metres within a sheeted quartz vein. Metal Hawk’s structural logging and interpretation place that vein within the same mineralised structure as Numbat, extending down-dip approximately 240 metres from the 26LSRC077 intersection. The company has also said deep drilling indicates the structure continues to at least 250 metres below surface.
Results still need geological scale and width
The next holes will test the interpreted northeasterly plunge of the high-grade Numbat shoot, along with other possible shoots across the wider Thylacine gold system. Hole 26LSRC081 may be re-entered with the diamond rig because it was not drilled deep enough to reach the Numbat lode, offering a potential way to test its structural position without starting entirely from scratch.
The headline grades are encouraging, but the project remains firmly at the exploration stage. The reported intervals are downhole lengths rather than confirmed true widths, and the company’s JORC disclosure says there is currently insufficient drilling to establish geological and grade continuity suitable for a Mineral Resource estimate. Results from some composite samples also await one-metre resplit assays.
The exploration picture is not uniformly strong across Leinster South. Two holes completed at the Tysons prospect totalled 224 metres but returned no significant results, while holes 26LSRC080 and 26LSRC081 targeted hanging-wall structures east of Numbat without reaching the lode. That leaves the upcoming RC and diamond programs carrying a relatively focused question: whether the exceptional 26LSRC077 result sits within a continuous, mineable-scale system or a narrower high-grade shoot.
Bottom Line?
The immediate catalyst is a run of RC assays, but the bigger test will be whether November’s diamond drilling confirms meaningful width and continuity at depth.
Questions in the middle?
- Will the new RC holes extend the 26LSRC077 grade profile along strike and down plunge?
- Does the Numbat structure retain useful width and grade at the depths indicated by LSD003?
- Can the combined drilling establish enough continuity to support a future Mineral Resource estimate?