Back from another Diggin in VA trip! Had a great time up there as usual. Brought home a bunch of relics; just nothing really that great.
VA weekend finds
- Thread starter Crow Terminator
- Start date
ShaneHallum
Well-Known Member
Thats awesome! I'd love to get into that type stuff!
Str8Shooter
Well-Known Member
cool
What are the little round things in the bottom right?
Buckshot? Did they have that then?
Cool finds though.
Buckshot? Did they have that then?
Cool finds though.
Yep that's buck shot. They were fired out of older smoothbore muskets with no rifling. The thought was that if they fired a single round ball, their accuracy was only good out to around 50-80 yards at their best. In the heat of battle when they were mostly just loading and shooting, the accuracy was more like 20 yards at best. Thus why they had the tactics of lining up and firing as one big mass...a single wall of lead was bound to hit something. So they started loading one big round ball with two bucky balls...the thought being that it turned one shot into three and thus at close range with their outdated line up and go at it tactics, the slaughter was horrendous. Typically they are seen in early war sites; the farm we were hunting had a mix from early war to late war encampments and I wandered into an early war one with the big bore guns. .69 caliber round balls and .69 caliber minie balls...those were HUGE CHUNKS of lead. The .58s are big but these are just crazy big. Evidently some of the soldiers had gotten their muskets converted over and some were still shooting the smoothbores.
I think there were 480 something of us on this hunt. We leased a 3,800 acre farm for the weekend. Camps were all over this place; the worse part of it was the mud from all the rain. It limited our parking areas and we had to hoof it to most of the potential spots....and this was a long stretch of ground that covered over 2 miles in length.
My finds represented an average of what was found. Some didn't find as much; some found more. There were some really awesome relics found though; lots of plates and CS buttons. A ton of bullets and yankee buttons. The best thing I saw though and probably the find of the hunt, was a inscribed Kearney cross medal. There were only so many hundred of them ever made and a fella found one at this hunt. There were a few corps badges found and such; those are always good. I've never found one but they are always found in these Army of Potomac winter camps.
My finds represented an average of what was found. Some didn't find as much; some found more. There were some really awesome relics found though; lots of plates and CS buttons. A ton of bullets and yankee buttons. The best thing I saw though and probably the find of the hunt, was a inscribed Kearney cross medal. There were only so many hundred of them ever made and a fella found one at this hunt. There were a few corps badges found and such; those are always good. I've never found one but they are always found in these Army of Potomac winter camps.
buckhorn40
Well-Known Member
:cool:
