DIV Blog - Day 7: Big Brass in the 11th Hour

Wow, what an ending to DIV week for me!  I started out the day working a small camp area with Phil and Josh.  We were having some good results, digging a lot of brass and a few bullets. Josh had two wonderful finds - a pair of Maine state seal coat buttons! I did alright, recovering two knapsack hooks and a few bullets.  Phil was pulling eagle buttons from that area all day, and got into a fire pit just before lunch.

We paused to attend the BBQ lunch and view the finds displays.  I put my case on display, even though most of my finds were fairly ordinary.  I recovered a much larger quantity or relics than I have in past DIV's thanks to the GPX, but I still didn't have any one particularly noteworthy relic.  There were some truly amazing artifacts on display.

After lunch I helped Phil dig out his firepit, which looked promising, but only had eight rivets and a lot of barrel bands.  I decided to follow Keith to an area known for rare Confederate bullets, hoping to luck into a good one.  As with any known Confederate area, this one had been detected to death, and signals were hard to come by.  I did find one fired pistol bullet, but that was it after lunch.  The wind was bitter cold, and I decided to head in.  Keith stayed put, and was rewarded with a rare Confederate 69 Nessler with the GPZ.

I made my way back towards the truck, detouring to check on Phil and Josh.  They were continuing to make good finds in the area, so with an hour and a half left to hunt, I turned on the machine and started wandering.  A few minutes later I got a bullet tone, not loud, but not super faint either.  I was probably a bullet, but could possibly be a smaller shallow nail.  I cut a plug and started pinpointing.

With nothing on the pinpointer, I widened the hole. The signal was stronger in the hole, but still nothing on the pinpointer.  Phil saw me struggling and came over to check it with his machine.  After investigating the signal for a moment, he agreed - "down".

Josh came over to see what the fuss was about, and I told him not to worry.  It was probably big farm iron junk like I had dug so much of in the area.  He stayed to watch anyways, and I dug down and down to about a foot and a half.  When the target popped out we all jumped back and exclaimed. It was a big piece of lead backed brass.

I snatched it from the hole to check it out.  What I had found was a US artillery rosette, which would have attached to the horse's bridle, one on either side of the head.  This one is the more rare M1862 rosette, preceded by a standard bullseye rosette and replaced by the M1863 USA intertwined model.  There was a bit of ash in the hole, so Josh and I quickly opened it up to investigate but found nothing else.  By the time we were finished, my hunt time was about over.  What a way to end!