The South Copper target is located on a ridge crest and is underlain Wackes, siltstones and limestone of the Upper Triassic Stuhini Group, capped by recent basalt flows of the Tertiary to Quaternary Mount Edziza Complex.

The area was originally covered by widely spaced soil sampling in 1984, but no significant work followed. In 2015, Skeena conducted prospecting and grid soil sampling outlining a 100 metre by 175 metre copper plus gold in soil anomaly and four prospecting grab samples returned 0.9 to 4.61 grams per tonne gold and 0.326 to 0.737 per cent copper (Assessment Report 36675). Rock and soil geochemical maps of the South Copper Zone are shown in Figures 13-65 through 13-72 in Appendix 4.

In 2016, additional rock samples were collected, the soil sampling grid was extended to the south and the area covered by a ground magnetic geophysical survey that extended south from the Spectrum Central Zone. The soil sampling survey did not significantly expand the soil anomaly; however, the magnetic survey was successful in tracing a panel of higher magnetics associated with porphyry-style copper-silver mineralization at the south end of the Central Zone south to the South Copper target.

At the end of the 2016 field season, a single drillhole, S16-097, tested coincidental soil, rock and magnetic anomalies and showing porphyry-style chlorite-epidote-magnetite alteration within wackes and siltstones like that seen in the Central Zone. Porphyry-style quartz-magnetite-sulphide veining and disseminated pyrite-chalcopyrite mineralization in the drillhole is weak, with the best intersection grading 0.35 gram per tonne gold, 0.08 per cent copper over 14.0 metres (Assessment Report 36675).

The panel of elevated magnetics is open to the southwest where the modelled magnetic susceptibilities increase with depth and define a 250-metre-wide body that is open to the south. The modeled magnetic susceptibility at depth is reported to outline an area larger and more continuous than that of the Central Zone.