Finding Union civil war bullets in a wooded fence row.

[silversweeper]

have been hunting a pretty much hunted out Union civil war encampment that is only a few minutes from the house. Discovered about a week ago that one whole side of a fence row on the side of the field hadn't been hunted too heavily. So far I've found 11 58 caliber 3 ringers, 2 round pistol balls, 5 44 colt pistol bullets (two either shot or smashed), a few buttons and a few button backs, and some other odds and ends. Remembered to take the camera today so I have some pictures of a few of the bullets in-situ. Am hunting with an etrac. The ground is peppered with bits and pieces of iron/ferrous metal, probably from the fence, and picking out the conductive targets has been a real task....even with a 6x8 SEF coil. But I had a blast today, found 7 more bullets total (including my first 2 ringer, not positive on the caliber) in addition to one very chewed "pain" bullet. I've found a few of these but this one definitely has human tooth marks on it. Also found the backs of 3 cuff buttons (alas, one of those probably had a front on it until I hit it with the shovel digging it, never could locate the other part), part of a toe-tap and a large rivet. Good day but it involved a lot of clearing of small saplings and brush. HH to all!

 

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[GaRebel1861]

Really nice finds!

 

[ramjet2187]

Looks like you're in a good spot. Might be worth the effort to dig up some of the iron targets you think are fence. They may very well be masking more desirable targets.

 

[silversweeper]

Looks like you're in a good spot. Might be worth the effort to dig up some of the iron targets you think are fence. They may very well be masking more desirable targets.

True enough, the two round pistol balls were just the tiniest bit of conductive chatter on my etrac. I dug the plugs initially just in the hopes of getting enough of the iron out of the way to pinpoint what I was hearing. Many of my other finds were also in between ferrous "beeps". My buddy was using a Spectrum with a regular sized coil and didn't do well at all. I'll be going back to this site quite a few more times. Probably the next time I will try a large coil in the open field in the hopes of pulling some DEEP targets, and sometime in the future I will hunt in a relic pattern and dig iron targets to see what other goodies I can find in that category. My buddy dug over 5000 items from the site when he first discovered the place. Several others have been over it since then. Not much left that isn't real deep or covered by ferrous metals.

 

[sekypaleo]

Good relic recoveries, nice Prussian and a couple of uncommon 58 cal minie variants. Keep at that spot.

 

[bearbqd]

Great drops. I love finding that civil wa lead. Your two ringer looks like it could possibly be a . 63 cal Merrill. Nice find. I've never found one myself.