Canterra Minerals Corp. (TSX-V: CTM) (OTCQB: CTMCF) has just announced that drilling has kicked off at its Wilding gold project, with a drill now mobilized on site. This development follows the identification of new high-grade targets at the Company’s Wilding Gold Project during its summer 2025 prospecting work, which returned record gold samples of up to 535 g/t Au. Together with recent public data releases, these results have led to new geological understanding and greater confidence in these targets.
What’s the big news here?
A: Canterra has started a new drilling program at its Wilding Gold Project in Newfoundland to test fresh high-grade gold targets. They’re doing this because new data suggests there may be richer gold zones that earlier drilling missed, and they want to confirm if those areas hold strong results.
Where is Wilding and why does it matter?
A: Wilding sits along the same 55 km gold-bearing corridor as Equinox Gold’s adjoining Valentine Mine, Newfoundland’s largest gold mine, so any discovery here could be meaningful.
How much drilling are they doing?
A: The plan is 1,200 metres of core drilling spread across 15 holes. That’s a focused, scout-style program to quickly test the best targets.
What exactly are they drilling for?
A: They’re aiming at “extensional quartz-gold” veins, the exact same style of gold-bearing veins that make up the entire 5.1 million ounces at the adjoining Valentine mine. Veins are cracks that opened up and filled with quartz carrying gold. These veins can stack in layers, which is what they hope to hit.
What’s different about this program versus past work?
A: The team re-interpreted the geology and believes the richest veins run at angles that past drilling mostly missed. So they’re changing drill directions and shallowing the angles to target those veins head-on.
Why do they think the targets are higher confidence now?
A: They pulled together everything they learned from their 2025 fieldwork, rechecked older survey data, made new detailed maps, used cameras to look inside past drill holes, and even used drone photos to see the land from above. All of this helped them pinpoint the best spots to drill next.
Does the nearby Valentine Mine tell us anything about potential here?
A: The Valentine mine has similar vein-style gold. Canterra used insights from Valentine’s 2024–2025 work to hone Wilding’s targets, but they caution that results from adjacent properties don’t guarantee the same outcomes at Wilding.
What does “HQ core” mean for me as an investor?
A: It’s a larger-diameter drill core. A bigger core can give better geological detail and sample quality, which helps make more reliable decisions on next steps. (The release specifies HQ drilling for 1,200 m.)
How will they confirm they’re hitting the right vein angles?
A: After drilling, they’ll run an optical televiewer down the holes. That tool images the rock walls so they can measure vein orientations precisely and feed that into a 3D model for follow-up holes.
Have they found high grades here before?
A: Past work at Wilding returned significant gold from shear-hosted veins, and recent prospecting highlighted very high grades in rock samples, but sample grades aren’t averages and may not represent the whole deposit.
What are the risks or caveats I should know?
A: This is mining exploration, and the results are uncertain. The release includes forward-looking statements and notes risks like geology not cooperating, permitting, financing, and that adjacent-property results may not apply to Wilding.
What happens next if they hit something good?
A: They’ll plug the new data into their 3D model, refine targets, and plan follow-up drilling. The idea is to zero in on stacked high-grade veins if the early holes confirm the new interpretation.
Why do this now?
A: Management says stronger gold markets and fresh geological insight from both Wilding work and the ramp-up at Valentine make this a timely opportunity to chase new high-grade discoveries.
What is the bottom line in plain English?
A: Canterra is taking a smarter shot at Wilding, aiming drills differently at targets they believe are more likely to host high-grade gold, guided by new data and lessons from the neighboring mine. Now it’s about what the drill cores show.