Hunted 1870s park today. Modern bullets?

[lliebsch]

Updated.. 41 Caliber peacemaker Hunted 1870's park today. Modern bullets?

I hunted a 1870's park today and found 6 bullets clumped together in some type of tar along with some shotgun shot mixed in. I measured one of the bullets with a caliper and it measured 41 caliber. Does anyone know if these bullets are modern or early 1900's or late 1800's? These bullets were found next to the wood line of the park about 4 inches down. I didn't even think to see if a gun was around in the woods. I guess i will have to go back Wednesday to see.

No silver which was surprising. Hopefully Wednesday will turn up something. By the way this park was the place of a big fair back in the late 1800's.

 

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[lliebsch]

I think I have found it. Here is a photo of 41028 mould and here is the info on it.

The Original Ideal Handbook (originally published in 1888) lists both single cavity and Armory moulds (as well as a multitude of loading tools). Obviously, an Ideal mould cannot be older than its cherry design, so that's the starting point for determining the age of any given mould (see attached plot of cherry number vs. year). There have been a handful of recycled cherry numbers (usually from old round ball numbers, but also from a few phased out designs, like paper patched bullets), making it appear that a cherry number is much older than it really is. As a result, one must be careful using this mode of analysis, and perform various "reality checks". For example, the 31141 appears to be a very old mould design, but GC's were not invented until 1906, after cherry numbers were well into the 300s, indicating that cherry #41 got recycled (the original #41 was the 30841, an adjustable cylindrical mould for making paper patched bullets). One must also ask if there were suitable guns around at the time from which to shoot the design in question; for example the 41028 and 41032 are clearly .41 caliber pistol bullets, suitable for use in the .41 Magnum. These cherry numbers would suggest adoption well before the turn of the 20th century! Recall that the only reloadable .41 caliber handguns in the early days were the .41 Long Colt and the .41 Short Colt, both of which took heel-type bullets, or seriously undersized hollow-base bullets. The .41 Magnum wasn't introduced until 1964 and Lyman was well over cherry number 500 by that point (the original #28 was the 25728, a .25 caliber round ball for gallery shooting; the original #32 was the 31032, a heel-type bullet for the .32 Swiss Ordinance, "For those who have any use for this bullet, we can furnish mould for same." states the Ideal Handbook #9, 1897). Most of the cherry numbers assigned by Lyman/Ideal were done sequentially, making this a useful exercise, but there are exceptions that one must look out for.

 

[lliebsch]

Close up of todays find.