ID Bullets found near Chickamauga

[John in Tampa]

Please help me id these bullets I found supper close to the Chickamauga battlefield border. Found 65 shot bullets within a 50 square yard area. Don't look like civil war but I don't have the experience to ID and I can't figure out how they got there in such a confined area.

 

[High Plains Digger]

Your Bullets are like My Bullets

They apear to be .44-70 or .45-70. My brain is fuddled right now. These are what Custer would have shot at the Souix. I have two types, a shorter one with a large hole in the base (carbine?) and a longer one with a smaller, almost pin sized hole in the base. It appears you may have both also. Do the holes correspond with sizes in yours?? Mine came from a guy who dug on private land near Ft. Laramie and apparently found the 1870's shooting range. They aren't near as torn up as yours. Must have been in a sand pit or something. Perhaps this also explains the quantity in a limited area. Perhaps Mr. George could give the exact info on these, but I think I am close enough to get you going in the right direction.

 

[cwbullet]

I bought a bucket load from SD. Correct! they are 45-70.

 

[High Plains Digger]

Mine came from a rock guy who probably purchased them from your guy. He must have had a bucket load of them! I have wondered if he cleaned them. Most of mine are quite grey, with more white oxidation in the rings. Is that how yours appear? Or perhaps it is just our western dirt didn't oxidize them as well. I am thinking that perhaps they are more alloyed than the cw bullets. I found a .50 ball out on the plains that was well oxidized and almost "porcelinized" while another bullet I found, .30 with the reeding around it from the early 1900's was still quite grey. I am still fuddled about the inconsistencies. I have found copper jacketed bullets in Georgia that were better oxidized than these.

 

[cwbullet]

The bullets I have from out west have less oxidation. Oxidation levels are based multiple factors, but are typically less in areas with less rain.

 

[High Plains Digger]

Rain I can probably buy. Someone once said there weren't a lot of minerals like in Virginia, but that theory is easily debunked. My part of the plains here has large outcroppings full of limonite concretions. I once sent one to my friend in Ga. as an almost dead ringer for a palm sized fragment of a hotchkiss. Just a bit shy on weight to be mistaken for a piece of iron.