The published results are indicators only that gold and copper are present. The sampling regime they have used is flawed on at least two counts.
At this stage of exploration you are attempting to glean as much information as possible from your orebody exposures; you need to understand the nature and structure of both the host rock and mineralisation. Gold mineralisation in particular is highly variable and displays a high nugget effect (even if, as it appears here, it is or was sulphide-hosted) so shorter sample lengths of 0.5 to 1 metre (maximum) should have been used; individual structures (such as veins) should be sampled separately and the samples recombined as weighted average 1 metre samples, if possible, to aid grade calculations. You need a large number of samples to be able to undertake a kriging exercise to find a sill value (the sphere of influence of a single sample) which will tell you what your sample spacing should be, but up to that point smaller is better. Assigning a grade of 10g/t over 3.5 metres based on a single sample (channel sample? Chip sample? What was the sample methodology?) runs the real risk of over/under reporting. Also imagine a high grade 1 cm veinlet of say 50g/t in a barren face; if some of that gold makes it into the assay sample (your multiple kilo sample will be reduced to 30-50g for the analysis) you could easily arrive at a 10g/t value even though the 3.5m you've assigned that value to carries only a tiny fraction of that grade over that width.
Secondly, you would not sample across 'various rock types' in a single sample. Each rock type would respond to mineralisation in different ways and it's the geologists job to find and quantify those differences. Some may be enriched while others may be barren. It's important to know the difference.
A final point worth noting in respect of the copper grades is that when taking these samples you are hoping the the sphere of influence of your samples passes a certain distance into the wall or face ahead of you. If the copper you are sampling is in sulphides you have some hope of this; if it is as sulphate coatings, which can be grade rich, but only a couple of mm thick (formed by precipitation from copper-rich fluids percolating down from the oxidation of primary sulphides above) then that is much harder to apply unless the coatings are common and consistent.
It's encouraging to see some good indicator grades, but this needs to be tempered with the hope that this was just a first pass and that a properly constituted sampling/mapping exercise has or will be undertaken.
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