Battle Mountain Nevada

In 2006 Sparton acquired the SBD claims in Lander County near Battle Mountain and the Coal Canyon claim group in Pershing County , east of the town of Lovelock.

SBD Claims

The SBD claims comprise 29 lode claims covering approximately 2 square kilometres within the prolific Battle Mountain-Eureka Gold Trend. The claims are adjacent to Newmont's Trenton Canyon open pit mine and approximately 6 km northeast of Newmont's Phoenix Mine development infrastructure. Glamis' Marigold Mine is located about 5 km to the north.

Drilling in 1992-93 by Echo Bay Mines Ltd identified the West, Stibnite and South gold zones on the SBD property. Subsequent drilling up to 1997 indicated several significant areas where mineralization located by the earlier work was not adequately followed up. Exploration had concentrated on testing favourable stratigraphic rock units to locate drill targets and ignored the structural controls now known to control much of the mineralization in the Battle Mountain area.

Mineralization on the SBD claims appears to be controlled by fault structures along which intrusive rocks have been emplaced. The final drill program, carried out in 1996-1997, by International Calneva focussed on the Stibnite and West zones. Over half of the drill holes were vertical and did not intersect the near vertical structures hosting gold mineralization. Several angle holes were also drilled but had little chance of intersecting mineralization as they were drilled in a northerly direction sub parallel to the structural elements being tested. Highlights from the 1996 (15 shallow holes) program on the Stibnite and West Zones include:

The initial phase of Sparton's SBD exploration program, completed in late 2006, consisted of over 23 line kilometres of detailed Controlled Source Audio Magneto Telluric (CSAMT) and magnetic geophysical surveys to properly delineate structures and alteration on the claims and correlate them with the known mineralization. This technique is widely used in Nevada exploration and has been very successful in providing reliable structural information.

Four new significantly conductive areas were outlined in the central part of the claim area. These appear to represent buried targets. Previous mapping indicates the presence of rock alteration including silicification and iron oxide development in each of these areas. The areas vary in size from 300 metres long by 50 metres wide to about 900 metres long and over 100 metres wide. None of these areas of interest have been previously drill tested.

The known gold zones in the western part of the SBD claim area (Stibnite, West and South Gold Zones) are all associated with conductivity trends and structural intersection zones that are incompletely tested.

The South Gold Zone, where reverse circulation drilling by Echo Bay Mines Limited intersected 8 m of 1.54 g/t and 33 m of 1.54 g/t gold in drill hole number 19-93 is associated with a conductivity zone nearly 900 metres long. It is located at the southwest margin of a large magnetic feature. Gold mineralization intersected in past drilling is associated with intrusive dykes in the zone. The intersections in hole 19-93 were never followed up and several nearby holes in the area were drilled vertically with little chance of intersecting near vertical structures, or they were located away from the conductive zone found in the current program. Several other shallow holes drilled by Santa Fe Pacific (now Newmont) in this area also intersected highly anomalous gold values adjacent to intrusive rock dykes (0.5 to 0.8 g/t gold over 5-20 metre widths), but were not followed up.

Upon completion of data interpretation, a drilling program will test newly outlined target areas and further define the mineralization previously located in this very prospective land package. A Bureau of Land Management drilling permit was received in February 2007 and subject to weather conditions and drill availability work to test the targets is expected to start in Q2 2007.