Drill Programme Preparation Completed - Eagle Lake
Talon Resources plc has completed site preparation for its maiden 1,375-meter diamond drilling program at the Eagle Lake gold project, with drilling expected to commence in early September 2026 across four priority targets: East Fornieri Bay, West Fornieri Bay, Cedar Trench, and Moss Knoll. This program has been accelerated and expanded from an initial 1,000-meter scope due to promising Phase 1 channel sampling results, which included intercepts such as 1.85m @ 7.17 g/t Au and 4.80m @ 4.47 g/t Au. The targeting has been refined using AI-assisted analysis from MINML's PRISM platform, which ranked the project highly nationally. The program is fully funded and permitted.
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Talon Resources plc (AIM: TAR), the North American gold exploration company, is pleased to announce that planning and site preparation have been completed ahead of the Company's maiden diamond drilling programme at the Eagle Lake gold project in Ontario, Canada ("Eagle Lake" or the "Project"). Rig mobilisation is expected within two weeks, with drilling anticipated to commence in the first half of September 2026.
OVERVIEW
- Maiden diamond drilling programme of 1,375m due to commence in the first half of September 2026, comprising 11 holes across five pads at four priority target areas:
o East Fornieri Bay - four holes
o West Fornieri Bay - two holes
o Cedar Trench - four holes
o Moss Knoll - 1 hole
- Programme accelerated (from Q4 2026) to now and expanded from the initial 1,000m scope to 1,375m following the strength of Phase 1 channel sampling results (RNS: 22 July 2026) - results included:
o 1.85m @ 7.17 g/t Au, including 0.50m @ 24.40 g/t Au (East Fornieri Bay)
o 4.80m @ 4.47 g/t Au, including 1.00m @ 19.10 g/t Au (East Fornieri Bay)
o 5.70m @ 1.26 g/t Au, including 1.70m @ 3.15 g/t Au (Cedar Trench)
o 10.10m @ 0.57 g/t Au, including 2.50m @ 1.53 g/t Au (Cedar Trench)
o 8.00m @ 0.67 g/t Au, including 3.20m @ 1.10 g/t Au (Moss Knoll)
- MINML's proprietary PRISM machine learning platform has been applied to Phase 1 results and historical data to refine target selection and optimise drill hole placement.
- Programme fully funded and permitted with drilling to be managed by Critical Discoveries Corp. and Rodren Drilling Ltd. as contractor.
Alex King, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "Our Phase 1 results confirmed high-grade gold mineralisation across multiple targets at Eagle Lake, and the Board moved quickly to accelerate our maiden drilling programme. The quality and number of targets defined during our surface work warranted expanding the programme, and the application of MINML's PRISM platform has allowed us to refine our drill targeting with a level of precision that would not otherwise have been available at this stage of exploration. The programme is fully funded and permitted, site preparation is underway, and we expect to be drilling in early September with assays to follow after programme completion."
Archie Taylor, Chief Technology Officer at MINML, commented: "The PRISM platform ranked Eagle Lake against 1.83 million cells covering previously assayed areas across Canada, using national datasets alone with no property data as input. Ten of the sixteen cells covering the licence fall in the top one percent nationally for gold, placing Eagle Lake ahead of 62% of Canada's 242 past and present gold producers which were scored on the same basis. A second model was then built at property scale using data on Eagle Lake's geology, geophysics and geochemistry, and tested against ten mapped gold occurrences. Drawing on independent datasets, the two models converge on the same ground. The drill programme targets the highest-ranking ground PRISM identified and the corresponding assays will refine both the property model and MINML's regional interpretation."
DETAILS
AI-Assisted Target Refinement
Following the completion of Phase 1 surface exploration (see RNS dated 22 July 2026), the Company has worked with MINML to apply its proprietary PRISM (Predictive Resource Intelligence & Spatial Modelling System) platform to the Eagle Lake dataset. PRISM integrates geoscientific data with machine learning to map mineral prospectivity, quantify uncertainty and rank exploration targets.
MINML's model was trained on both surface samples and drill core, airborne magnetic and electromagnetic surveys, provincial geological mapping and terrain data from the Eagle Lake property. The model was validated against the property's existing exploration targets, which were held out as a blind test: nine of the ten known gold occurrences at Eagle Lake fall in the model's top quartile, and 81 per cent of the mapped mineralisation falls in the top decile. The model identifies 13 targets across more than 230 hectares within the 20 km² property.
All four target areas selected for the maiden drilling programme lie within the top 1.5% of the model's predicted prospectivity. Cedar Trench is the highest-ranking target identified by the model, scoring at the 99.9th percentile and is the only area to reach the model's top class. East Fornieri Bay, the drill programme's first priority, ranks between the 97.7th and 98.6th percentiles.
Drill Programme
The maiden programme comprises 11 diamond drill holes totalling 1,375m of planned drilling across five pads at four target areas, as set out below:
East Fornieri Bay: four holes
East Fornieri Bay is the programme's first priority, targeting a vein array that Phase 1 channel sampling has already intersected. Channel CH-03 returned 4.80m @ 4.47 g/t Au including 1.0m @ 19.10 g/t Au, while CH-01 returned 1.85m @ 7.17 g/t Au on the western part of the vein set.
West Fornieri Bay: two holes
West Fornieri has demonstrated high grade intercepts in historical drilling, including 3.05m @ 7.54 g/t Au from hole R-85-13. The Company has designed drill hole EL26-05 to twin historical hole R-85-12, which intercepted a broad zone of mineralisation including reported assays of:
- 1.22m @ 2.74 g/t Au (18.29-19.51m)
- 1.07m @ 8.23 g/t Au (23.16-24.23m)
- 3.05m @ 2.05 g/t Au (27.43-30.48m)
- 3.05m @ 2.05 g/t Au (36.58-39.62m)
This twinning will provide modern survey and assay data to validate the historic results and support integration into the Company's geological model.
Cedar Trench: four holes
Cedar Trench is the strongest ground identified on the property by MINML's model, at the 99.9th percentile. The drill holes will target a potential vein stockwork beneath channel samples grading between 1.26 g/t Au and 21 g/t Au.
Moss Knoll: one hole
Moss Knoll was identified as a new target during Phase 1 exploration, returning 8.00m @ 0.67 g/t Au including 3.20m @ 1.10 g/t Au from channel sampling. The outcrop displays geological characteristics similar to those observed at Parker Shear and is interpreted to lie along the same mineralised trend between Fornieri Bay and Cedar Trench.
Figure 1: Eagle Lake Project - Gold-Head Percentile Ranking Across Canada
The Directors of the Company are responsible for this announcement.
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