Puma Exploration Inc. announced the results of its maiden scouting drilling program outside of the main Lynx Gold Zone (?LGZ?) at its 100%-owned Williams Brook Gold Project in Northern New Brunswick. The 2,270 metres shallow diamond drilling was devised as a follow-up to Puma?s 2023 surface exploration program to confirm the presence of gold mineralization subsurface and determine the orientation and dip of the gold-bearing structure and alteration that was interpreted to extend 4 km northeast of the LGZ. The small, cost-effective program not only confirmed the presence of gold mineralization by intersecting anomalous gold at the Tiger Gold Zone (?TGZ?), located 350 m away, but the program also intersected several distinct styles of mineralization and alteration - some similar to those at the Lynx Gold Zone, as far as the Cheetah Gold Zone 3.5 km away and at a depth of over 150 metres downhole.

These results continue to validate Puma?s successful discovery method. Grab samples are proving to be a reliable vector for discovering gold at depth. A quartz vein stripped at surface at the Tiger Gold Zone that graded 19.90 g/t Au in a grab sample returned 2.0 g/t Au over 0.40 m in drilling (the reader is cautioned that grab samples are selective by nature and may not represent the true metal content of the mineralized zone).

Similarly, the holes drilled at the Tiger Gold Zone returned grades representative of the surface samples collected in this area in 2023. While the Tiger 2 zone appears to carry anomalous gold results, parallels can be drawn between these first drill holes at Tiger and the initial drilling at the Lynx Gold Zone when Puma started drilling there. The Chubby gold zone, drilled in 2021, returned lower-grade intercepts but was found to be adjacent to a very high-grade gold zone.

The current results at Tiger, with the observation of similar quartz veins and the same alteration and structures as those at Chubby, suggest that Tiger could also be proximal to a higher grade zone. This observation reinforces its confidence in the potential for future drilling targets at the TGZ, and further surface exploration and sampling will be undertaken to identify these. The 2024 scouting drilling program outside the central Lynx Gold Zone consisted of thirty (30) short holes for 2,270 metres.

Twenty-two (22) holes (1,500 metres) were drilled at the centre of the Tiger Gold Zone (200 m x 400 m area) located about 350 metres north-east of the Lynx Gold Zone where four (4) small stripped areas uncovered four (4) auriferous quartz veins. The other holes were spread over more than 3.5 kilometres along strike with step-out holes located up to 1 kilometre apart. The gold mineralization at the TGZ (Tiger 1 to 4) occurs in quartz veins with limonite alteration similar to those at the LGZ.

However, here, the quartz veins occur not only at the rhyolite/sediment contact but also at a rhyolite/gabbro contact. The presence of veining reflects the competency contrast between the geological units, allowing for the upwelling of hydrothermal fluids. The Pb-Ag ratio in assays has been a vector for the discovery of high-grade gold mineralization at Lynx.

Although drilling at Tiger 2 returned no gold, the ratios of Pb-Ab at Tiger 2 are similar to those in some areas of Lynx, namely at the Chubby zone, where the gold levels were low, but that is proximal to a very high-grade zone. The same could be true of the Tiger 2 zone. The recent mag survey has identified several areas of interest at Tiger 2 that will be further investigated.