Horseshoe Lights was originally discovered in about 1946 by prospectors. In those days (still happening though) gossans were the main targets as I understand it. This was a gossan that initially produced gold near the surface and many, many years later copper below. Gold on top then copper below. Sound familiar? Forrest!!
DeGrussa was found while SFR was mainly looking for gold, which it found near the surface - some copper mineralisation too. They put some RCs down and bingo, a fabulous copper/gold deposit.
Monty was virtually found by Talisman in and around 2011 - geochemistry, drilling etc, but the drilling missed the main deposit by about 90 metres. SFR, in the jv, used one of the TLM holes for geophysics (DHEM) and got a weak conductor pulse which, when drilled, turned out to be Monty.
In summary, surface expressions with subsequent drilling found these deposits, except with Monty where geophysics directed the drillers to the right spot.
So far (I'm pretty sure) RNI/AUR has found its gold and copper and silver at Forrest and Wodger without geophysics playing much of a role. All that the geophysics has mainly done is find conductors here and there that have not, most unfortunately, turned out to be concentrations of massive sulphides.
EM is very good tool for identifying conductors. Its use here has had great merit. Given the large amount of oxidised copper/gold/silver mineralisation (plus vms vectors) found by mainly surface or near surface drilling, any reasonable geo would have thought that there had to be a vms deposit down there somewhere. If the diamond holes missed it then try DHEM and drill any identified conductor. The geos have not done anything wrong. I honestly reckon that we have been unlucky so far.
Despite all of the disappointment, HQ still believes in the area - as per this from the last QAR:
There is little doubt that a copper-gold mineralising system is present at Wodger.
Having been an avid student of this area for 5+ years, I not only agree with that statement, but also would add Forrest and Big Billy. It's a guess on my part (but an educated one I reckon), but there could be one big extensive mineralising system way down covering many kilometres and that the minerals have popped up at various places where able to travel up to or near the surface. There, the copper has mainly become oxidised. However, the gold and silver (being noble metals) have not been subjected to corrosion and oxidisation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_metal
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