🔎 UNIDENTIFIED Less "What?" and more "Solve the Mystery . . ."

[parsonwalker]

MYSTERY FIND. What's your theory? Hunting a "supposed" Confederate camp in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Had hunted hours with only two dropped Gardners (Top of photo) in the same hole. Nothing else. Decided to hunt a creek bank. 200 yards and nothing then a signal. But the hole was FULL. I found 20 fired bullets in a hole you couldn't fit a 5 gallon bucket in. WEIRDEST PART: It was 5 fired Gardners (Botttom line) and 13 fired 3-ringers, one cleaner and one unidentifiable. I reject target practice. No other bullets ANYWHERE nearby. And he'd have to be a REALLY good shot to put them all basically in the same hole. Five feet from a small creek. From 10 to 20 inches in red clay and blue marl. The only theory that makes any sense to me is a medic extracting bullets. But I would think he would pull them and literally TOSS them. Not neatly drop them in exactly the same place. So what do YOU think? I have NEVER found 20 fired bullets in the same hole! And different bullets. And nothing else nearby AT ALL . . .

 

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[releventchair]

You can reject target practice.
A five gallon bucket bottom sized target it not small by any means.
Range to target would matter more.

During wet weather or even at intervals refreshing a load made sense.
A bullet puller could be used , or just shoot it out.
Then clean and prep a fresh load.
Discharging guns at camp is doable. Timing would likely matter so not to draw attention to camp till near heading out if enemy are near..

Captured weapons could have been unloaded too.
Or even curiosity as to thier effectiveness could inspire shooting them.

 

[ticndig]

Or the bullets washed into the creek hole during a flood and stayed on the bottom just like gold would. I found around 50 union bullets in a creek off of white oak rd in stafford around 30 years ago. most were tucked under a rock shelf.

 

[Older The Better]

Any chance it was an attempt to recycle lead? Maybe supplies were short and someone had rounded up spent bullets, medic or target practice or pulled and had them ready to recast when they lost their stash for what ever reason.

 

[DCMatt]

View attachment 2020375 MYSTERY FIND. What's your theory? Hunting a "supposed" Confederate camp in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Had hunted hours with only two dropped Gardners (Top of photo) in the same hole. Nothing else. Decided to hunt a creek bank. 200 yards and nothing then a signal. But the hole was FULL. I found 20 fired bullets in a hole you couldn't fit a 5 gallon bucket in. WEIRDEST PART: It was 5 fired Gardners (Botttom line) and 13 fired 3-ringers, one cleaner and one unidentifiable. I reject target practice. No other bullets ANYWHERE nearby. And he'd have to be a REALLY good shot to put them all basically in the same hole. Five feet from a small creek. From 10 to 20 inches in red clay and blue marl. The only theory that makes any sense to me is a medic extracting bullets. But I would think he would pull them and literally TOSS them. Not neatly drop them in exactly the same place. So what do YOU think? I have NEVER found 20 fired bullets in the same hole! And different bullets. And nothing else nearby AT ALL . . .

After the Battle of Fredericksburg, the poet Walt Whitman described the scene of at a Federal hospital at Chatham just across the Rappahannock River:

It is used as a hospital since the battle, and seems to have received only the worst cases. Outdoors, at the foot of a tree, within ten yards of the front of the house [probably the still standing Catalpa tree], I noticed a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, etc. -- about a load for a one-horse cart.

Maybe... Any CW medical set up would need a readily available fresh water supply. The effect of the Minié bullet was particularly devastating on bone. Round balls used in earlier conflicts would pierce flesh and snap bones which could often be set. Minié balls would pierce flesh and shatter bones. At the time there was no technology or technic to reassemble shatter bones and very little understanding of infection, so limbs were amputated to save lives. I read that the sight of piles of amputated limbs was unnerving for soldiers in the field so they buried them in mass graves.

Here's a decent article: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/amputations-and-civil-war

 

[Spats]

I have heard several stories from landowners that they used to pick up minie balls off the ground. One guy told me they threw hundreds into the Yazoo River in the 1930s and 40s. One man told me he picked up bucketfuls around the same time period and sold them for 10 cents per pound as scrap. One theory might be that they were found over a larger area many years after the war, played with and abandoned. Just a thought.