The new 50c flow-through share price compares with Nighthawk's 42c close Wednesday. The company's current market capitalisation is about $80 million.

Its original $11 million exploration budget for Indin Lake this field season - including $9.9 million of flow-through expenditure committed for this year - has been bolstered with the latest $2.5 million raising.

Nighthawk said its 2018 field season drilling got underway in March, with three rigs planned to be working for the whole season. Two of them are drilling on the main Colomac area to probe for extensions and also do infill work ahead of a "future mineral resource update".

The company has reported an inferred mineral resource of 50.3 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.62 grams per tonne (2.6 million ounces) at 100%-owned Colomac, about 200km north of Yellowknife.

"The third drill will test some of the more prospective regional targets within the company's district-scale land package … [including at] the high-grade Damoti Lake gold deposit where drilling will explore the host fold structure along strike and to depth below the current mineralization, with the objective to deliver a maiden mineral resource estimate in early 2019," Nighthawk said.

"The company is also aggressively advancing several of its recent new discoveries to possibly drill later in the program, including the Nice Lake Sill (2km east of Colomac), the Andy Lake Showing (17km south-southeast of Colomac), and the Swamp Showing (7km north-west of Colomac). These new discoveries have never been drilled."

Nighthawk president and CEO Dr Michael Byron said the support of key company stakeholders including Osisko Gold Royalties, Kinross Gold and Northfield Capital was allowing Nighthawk to expand its big Indin Lake drilling program while preserving a healthy cash balance heading into 2019.

"We are confident that more discoveries will be generated in … this underexplored Archean gold camp," he said.