What a thrill to find this INTACT after 150 years on the battlefield!

[parsonwalker]

I only dug ONE hole today, but it was a whopper. My digging buddies and I are calling this "blind hunting" on the battlefield. Pick a spot, dig down a foot and start listening for signals.



My hole ended up about 5' long and 2 or 3 feet wide. Here's what came out . . .



Regular digging buddy came up with this, digging the same way:



Guest-Digging buddy did well, too -



(Cap box finial beside the buckle)

But my find of the day was a thrill - simply because it survived in the ground. I found a package of percussion caps still wrapped in the original paper!



Here are pictures as I tried to remove the dirt later, without destroying the paper.



I've heard of packages being found, but never found one myself. Really made my hunt. I've dipped the whole thing in polyurethane to hopefully keep them from falling apart.

By the way, the package of caps was only about 18" deep. Some of the bullets were at 3 feet! Never would have found them without stripping off the top layer. Stuff's still down there boys . . . (and girls!)

 

[46Wheat]

Nice digs and thanks for those pictures

 

[Valley Ranger]

Superb saves sir!

 

[VOL1266-X]

Impressive dig PW. HH, Q.

 

[coinman123]

That is the most civil war bullets, and caps that I have seen found in one hole. It's amazing that the paper survived for that long! I have thought about trying that method since I started metal detecting, but I have never gotten around to doing it. Congrats!

 

[silverdollar]

man talk about a good day and luck I think you need a little luck or do you also do a lot of research?great finds thanx for the memorys

 

[collector01]

Looks like the hard work paid off. Nice lead and very cool pack of caps. I need to try that next time I'm out. HH!

 

[parsonwalker]

Has that area you dug been farmed and plowed much in the past?

Hey GSX and everybody else -
Thanks for all the kind words. No, absolutely untouched since the war since it is on a steep slope. We are digging in front of the trench which is where the land drops off toward the bottom (From which the yankees were charging. It was a slaughter). I cannot explain the depth other than to say 150 years of erosion and land gradually "sliding" downhill must have added a lot of topsoil - and of course, there's a tremendous amount of big hardwood tree compost. And yes, trying this method at a good and small "hot zone" around a homesite might pay off there too. As for so much stuff coming from "one hole" . . . well . . . yeah, but this is cheating. I mean my hole was 5' x 3'! But you're right. Amazing to have THAT MUCH stuff in a small spot. As for where the caps were found - closest bullet was probably 8" away. All of you are right. VERY labor intensive, no doubt. I was exhausted at the end of the day. But where we are hunting, you can't walk all day and find that much stuff, and that variety. We know it's down there . . . it's JUST out-of-reach of most detectors. As for the small backhoe . . . weve talked about that SO many times. But we don't want to get too wild and mess up our permission, as the landowner has only given permission to about 5 people. Someday, I would love to do that. For now though, it's a long-handled shovel and a bucket of sweat for every bullet. But I guess we all do it for what the next shovel-full of earth just MIGHT hold, right?!

Interesting footnote to the story - (A) Those unused caps in the paper sounded off like a large bullet. I broke the whole thing in half because I was confused as to what it was. Moral - If you don't know what it is . . . be EASY with it until you figure it out! and (B) 90% of the individual caps we find have 4 "ears". Much rarer to find 6 ears. This was a package of 6-eared caps, so a little rarer even than the standard.