That is going to vary on where you're from.
If you are hunting sites that were occupied by the Army of the Potomoc, I think the finds are going to be more frequent per camp site. They were just so much better supplied. In the camps I've hunted up in VA that were occupied by them, an average weekend has found me about 100+ bullets, 20-30 buttons, various other camp items like j-hooks, etc. And of the 6 hunts I've been on, I've found two plates. Those guys that live up in those areas that have spent the same amount of time relic hunting as I have, have double if not triple the amount of relics I have in the same time frame. There are some that have spent a life time hunting relics in that area that have over 200 plates and tens of thousands of bullets.
Hunting the Army of the Cumberland sites around here in Southeast TN...well that's a different ball game. Those guys were really battle hardened and moved around a lot. Basically if they didn't need it to survive, they didn't carry it. They would go many miles away from their source of supplies and just didn't have as much to discard and lose. I've relic hunted the camps around my home for the past 15 yrs or so...not hard just strictly as recreation. And there are trips that you call very good where you'll dig 10-15 bullets and maybe a couple buttons. In 15 yrs locally I've found two plates...both of them coming in the last 3 yrs. I counted up my local drop bullets just a few weeks ago and had just shy of 3,000 from local camps and just over 100 eagle buttons. That's not a lot of relics per the time spent looking for them! I imagine some folks will scoff at that too.
You can read John McElroy's book from him being a prisoner in Andersonville...he gives very good descriptions of the different types of soldiers that would come into the Andersonville from the different war theaters. I've got pics of the boys in a winter camp of the Army of Cumberland and you can barely tell they are soldiers; no US oval belt plates, no breast plates, no kepi hats...and these were in a winter camp in 1863/1864!
Local relic hunters here have some nice finds they've made but most of their stuff has came from areas of other troop occupation, such as middle TN or Mississippi, VA, etc. Southeast TN had troops here, don't get me wrong but they weren't equipped like their other troops. When they went into the winter camps of '63-'64 the reports say they were in rags and had no shoes...this is dispatches from Sherman's corp commanders regarding the Army of Cumberland. This being just prior to the Atlanta campaign too!
