MacMillan eyes more drilling by Dec.

Toronto-based MacMillan Gold (TSX-V: MMG) plans to conduct further drilling before Christmas at its Cerro de Oro gold-silver project in Mexico's Zacatecas state, company president George Brown told BNamericas Wednesday. "We're talking to metallurgists now," he said, adding: "So far everything has been reverse circulation, so we're trying to find out what sort of cores they want for doing some metallurgical testing on the product." MacMillan aims to report results this week from the first phase of drilling conducted in July, when a total of 12 holes were drilled, with depths varying from 60m to 180m. Though Brown declined to grant an early peek at drill results, he said mineralization looks "very similar" to Western Silver's (Amex: WTZ) Penasquito precious and base metal project, also in Zacatecas state. The best values from Western's reverse circulation drill program were 0.58g/t gold and 112g/t silver over 30m and 1.21g/t gold and 124g/t silver over 32m, BNamericas previously reported. MacMillan drilled an additional 10 holes at Cerro de Oro in mid-August, and will have results in October, Brown said, adding much of the Cdn$621,750 (US$455,000) it has raised via non-brokered private placements is earmarked for Cerro de Oro. The money also may help fund works at the La Violetta (sic) silver-gold prospect in northwest Mexico's Sonora state, which could include mapping. MacMillan's Mexican subsidiary Exploracion Mac Ore holds a claim to the 524ha property. At La Violetta "we know there's mineralization because there's some past production on them that dates back hundreds of years, but there's very little data available, so we've got to start building a database," Brown said.