How far did they target practice...Army 1870-1880's?

[Lizardchaser]

Trying' to determine from where they were shooting from. Have found 25-30 in about a 50x100' area. Hoping to find some brass and coins or other dropped
goodies. I have afeeling there is allot more lead where I found these. The ground is frozen here now with 6" snow and more on its 'way tomorrow.
This will a next spring project.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks Lizardchaser

 

[Nemo]

Lizardchaser: To me, these bullets look modern rather than 1870-1880s. If a practice area, should be on a slope or hillside and shooters should be opposite to slope. Also the relic field should be oval-shaped going against hillside.. Use the long dimension of the oval to point to shooter's direction.

If you look closely at the bullets... none of them have ricochet characteristics which is what you would find in at least some if not all of the bullets of a practice area. Read about ricochet bullets at my website.

To me looks like modern bullets that were dropped without casings.

Anyway nice finds for frozen ground ...At least you didn't have to thaw the ground with urine the way one of my buds had to do to get a gold piece out of frozen ground. LOL

Dave Poche

 

[VOL1266X]

Finding target lead contributed to my finding a US CW Camp a few years ago. I unknowingly walked right through the middle of the camp without detecting a single relic. About an hour later, I started finding 15-20 fired .69 cal. 3 ringers. Some were loaded so hot that they were shaped like sombreros. Since the vast majority were fired, I figured they were shooting at a target or having a shooting contest. I walked back across a small creek about 150-200 yards from the target site and bullets were in the ground like Easter eggs in the same field that I walked through earlier. The pic shows several of the relics that I recovered from that camp to date. Dman found several nice relics there also. Good luck and happy hunting.

 

[Lizardchaser]

n/t

 

[Lizardchaser]

Thanks for the reply Mr Nemo

I liked your read on your page thanks.

All of these bullets are fired. I will post some pics for your consideration tomarrow sometime.

Also can you direct me to a page that might have pics of just the 45-70 bullet from the internally primered shells. I have a few here but don't wanna pull
the bullets off.

Thanks for looking Nick

 

[Nemo]

Nick: Been working on an article on the 50-70 Government since I acquired a super clean casing at Nashville last week. I have a lot of stuff about the Benet Primer (yes invented by the poet Stephen Vincent Benet) and I have been trying to do something like I did with "Spencers from the Indian Wars". The 45-70 Government was a later bullet. It was adapted for the Springfield in 1873 to replace the 50-70. Both bullets were around during the estimated time of your practice area.

Here is a YouTube video you might like to watch. I was able to see how the casing was ejected from the Model 1873 Springfield. The guy who made this did a super job.

Dave

 

[Lizardchaser]

Hi Dave I live out in the sticks and have very slooow dialup. snowing very hard here right now. will view that at the library when i go into town next time.

The slope of the recovery area is about 5-10 pct. about 100 yds behind recovery area is a hill approx 800' straight up. Haven't detected any on the steeper part yet. They could have been shooting 1000+ yds. all open area.

Now for some interesting closeups

Oh also Wiki states these were paper rolled so not to foul the bore? These bullets are not leaveing very deep rifling imprints, maybe the bore was "shotout"?

Stay warm and don't eat no yeller snow.

 

[Nemo]

Sure looks like hit cloth target. Very nice closeups. Caliber? Think scratches probably came on impact with soil (could be sandy?). Four lands and grooves with lands not equal groove width in the CW was usually from a European weapon. Bullets look like modern "wadcutter" but I guess "clothcutter" is a better description. Have seen same pattern impressed in CW pistol balls using cloth wads.

About 1 inch of snow here but will warm up a little and forecasters say after that another deep freeze.

Stay warm
Dave

 

[Lizardchaser]

n/t

 

[tab-nabit]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_11_52/ai_n16741371

 

[Nemo]

Raining here and cold. First, DAH...... asked caliber of a 45-70. Boy was that stupid move!!!! Second, I really learned a lot from the article about paper patching bullets that I knew nothing about and it all made sense. This sounds like that's what you have.

Thanks to all for good contributions. Hope my ramblings helped.

Dave

 

[Nemo]

Here is an article in Wikipedia on the 45-70. Looks like it was a very slow heavy bullet. Typically practiced at 100 to 300 yards. So I think you might start at about 100 yards and search till I got to about 400 yards. Might find some casings. Wiki also mentions that early bullets were paper patched.

Dave

 

[Lizardchaser]

Thank you very much Tab-nabit. very good reading.

 

[Lizardchaser]

Thanks Nemo....lots of walking and swingin next spring.