The news comes while Wesdome is outperforming peers on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Highlights from drilling at Falcon 7 included:

• 11.1g/t Au over 3.0 metre core length (11.1g/t Au capped, 2.6 metre true width)
• 26.5g/t Au over 2.0 metre core length (22.8g/t Au capped, 1.6 metre true width)
• 20.3g/t Au over 1.7 metre core length (20.3g/t Au capped, 1.5 metre true width)

And highlights at mine 7 included:

• 40.4g/t Au over 3.0 metre core length (22.4g/t Au capped, 2.4 metre true width)
• 31.3g/t Au over 1.0 metre core length (31.3g/t Au capped, 0.8 metre true width)
• 34.6g/t Au over 0.9 metre core length (34.6g/t Au capped, 0.8 metre true width)

Wesdome president and CEO Duncan Middlemiss said the ongoing surface and underground drilling at Falcon 7 continues to better define and extend the zone up plunge to surface.

"Extending to surface this zone could represent a new mining area. Also the surface drilling, although early days, has returned a number of good values not only parallel to the Falcon 7 zone but also further to the west," he said.

"It appears that the gold mineralisation in the volcanic rocks has a similar periodicity to the gold mineralisation to that of the high-grade shoots within the mine diorite," he said.

He added that the drilling has discovered a new lens within the mine diorite that can be drilled and developed from existing underground infrastructure as it is proximal to the past producing 8 zone.

Canaccord Genuity Capital Markets analyst Michael Fairbairn noted that the new drill results average about 25.1g/t over around 2.14 metres, or roughly 33.4g/t Au by metre, across all intercepts, which is well above the existing 524,000 oz proven and probable gold reserve grading 15.3g/t.

"We believe that any future reserve additions from the Falcon 7 Zone, or other volcanic-hosted nearby zones, are likely to be value accretive as WDO will be able to leverage existing infrastructure and may result in increased production or mine life extensions at Eagle River," he said.

National Bank of Canada Financial Markets analyst Don DeMarco said, "The update offers readthrough for resource accretion and mine life extension, yet overall we ascribe a neutral bias as further drilling is required to confirm and our focus remains on Kiena ramp-up".

He noted that Wesdome's share price has outperformed over the past month, having risen by 19% compared to the 12% seen by the S&P TSX Gold Index, adding, "we look to operating results in H2/23 and confirmation of commercial production at Kiena to add support".

Wesdome's share price was down 2% day on day at C$9.49 on 5 October.

CG lifted its price target for Wesdome from C$9 (US$6.62) to C$10. NBF has a target of C$15.

Wesdome has a market capitalisation of C$1.35 billion.