Finding in virgnia (A first for me and my hunting partners)

gbpackrfan1990

Jr. Member
Feb 2, 2012
85
197
Virginia
🥇 Banner finds
1
Detector(s) used
Tesoro Tejan; Garrett AT Pro
Primary Interest:
Relic Hunting
I have been too busy with school to go hunting for the past month or so, so when I finally got some free time this past saturday I was chomping at the bit to go out and do some digging. My father and I had two very small spots to go try out that had potential, At the first spot was a lot of house trash and I did manage to find one eagle button. so we left there after satisfying our curiosity and moved to the second spot. I proceeded to dig three pieces of junk and then got a strong signal which turned out to be a dropped 3-ringer, swung my detector over the hole and got a low rumble of a reading right next to an old well. I thought twice about digging it (thinking it was a piece of a pump attached to the well or something) but decided I might as well go for it. I dug and dug and got down about 15 inches and out popped a round ball.... and another round ball.... and then another. I thought this might be a cartridge box in here!!! so i started digging more carefully thinking maybe there would be a plate in the bottom of the hole... the round balls kept piling up and then I began to realize I had more than just a cartridge box here. I had a case of ammunition that had been dumped by the soldiers!!! I ended up with a total of 440 "buck and ball" rounds all in this one hole about 15-20 inches deep! It was an awesome find for me, I was very pleased!
 

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Unfortunately none of them were still fused together, my father and I spent 3 hours sifting through the dirt we pulled out of the hole to find all the buck shot. (which we didnt do haha) I ended up gluing all the buck shot to the balls to replicate what they would have looked like originally for display purposes. we pulled a total of 440 round balls and only 954 buckshot. which is 366 short of the 1320 that should have been in the hole. I know we didnt miss that many so Im not sure if they were lost back when the case was burried during the war. but either way, still cool!

Well it is a great rescue of great relics! :icon_thumleft:
 

Exellent find. I've got a quart container full of differant kinds of musket balls, but never found more than one at a time.:icon_thumleft:
 

That is awesome I had no clue the buck was attached to the ball, very cool
 

VERY good day indeed! I'll bet that was exciting and heavy. In answer to FamilyFun2010's question. Yes, that is a buck and ball. Tennessee digger
 

looks like ash in the bottom of the hole could be a fire or trash pit did you check for bottles.

Does look like ash in the bottom of the hole, but it could also be gunpowder from the buck & ball cartidges.
 

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