Ready for a stoopid CW bullet question?

[DrGrip]

OK, I see a LOT of CW era bullets shown on here and most all of them look as though they could be fired again.

Why do these critters come out of the ground in what looks like pristine condition? Did the folks miss that often? How many are found that look like they have impacted something? I would think that even hitting the ground would have deformed them some.

Now, I live in Texas and have ONLY hunted TX and NM, so I've never seen one live and up close and I may be missing something.

Grip

 

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[BIG61AL]

premondern rifles were known for being less accurate than desired the further the target was. Throw in the fog of war and you get bullets going every where.

 

[OutBack Duo]

Bullets that look like they could still be fired probably haven't been. I know I have found a lot of bullets that have been dropped (not fired). A fired bullet almost always will show some kind of damage or disfiguration.

 

[d2]

At the start of the war bullets were not in brass cartridges. A piece of paper was rolled around the bullet, powder was placed in the paper and it was tied off. The cartridge was then placed in their cartridge box that was worn along their side. After a days march and once in camp they would go through the box and see if any of the paper had broken. If so they "dropped" 'em in camp or used them to start camp fires. Also during the heat of battle sometimes the soldier would reach in his box and pull out 2 cartridges instead of one when reloading and would "drop" the extra one because there wasnt time to put it back in it's place in the box. If you can ever find a place where the soldiers were lined up in battle formation and you can locate 2 or 3 dropped bullets you can get an idea of the way they were standing and walking and shooting and usually find gobs of "dropped" bullets. Hope that helped some...d2

 

[dcinffxva]

As stated, a lot of them are drops, however, I've recovered fired bullets that look like they could be loaded and used again. Most (not all) Civil War era firearms were rifled, and they will leave rifling marks on the bullet when fired. Many if the fired bullets will be hunks of lead, with maybe some identifying characteristics that tell what they are.

The four on top were all drops, as was the buck ball on the bottom. The other is a fired bullet, and fired percussion cap.

This bullet was fired, but remains in pretty solid shape.

The two .44 balls in the second row also show rifling groves, but remain in pretty secent shape.