First hunt of 2023

[VaGent]

Got off work early and decided to roam the woods for a couple hours. First hunt of the year wasn't bad, considering I have been hunting this area for 30+ years. 5 x 3 ringer Minies (all pulled with a wiper), a plain Eagle coat button, a floral motif flat button, and a 1888 and 1890 Indian head pennies (which oddly enough were as deep as the bullets, about 16"). The eagle button wasn't even in the dirt though, it was in the mulch layer.

 

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[WannaDig3687]

Congrats on the finds. What does it mean “pulled with a wiper?”

 

[VaGent]

Congrats on the finds. What does it mean “pulled with a wiper?”

It means a loaded rifle-musket was manually unloaded using the ramrod and an attached wiper, as seen below. (Wiper is the CW period term, today many people call them a "worm"). Alternatively, sometimes they were pulled with a ball screw attachment which literally screwed into the tip of the loaded bullet. The area where these were found was close to a large camp, and has produced ~100 similarly pulled bullets, roughly in a 10' wide path about 100' long. It is likely that a whole company was standing in formation and unloaded arms before entering camp.