Andy, I haven't done any hunting in years, but when I was a kid back in the late 50's early 60's I did. I grew up in Hanover county, on the grounds of the old seven days/Cold Harbor battlefields. As kids we played in artillery and rifle pits left from the war. Minnie balls and Eagle buttons were often found on top of the ground after spring plowing or a hard rain.
My Grandfather hunted relics all the time. He had one room in his house full of display cabinets, that were crammed full of everything you can think of, and a lot of stuff you wouldn't. Buttons, bullets of all kinds, officers shoulder boards, belt buckles, cartridge box plates, sabers, knives, musket locks, pistol shaped hunks of rust, pocket waches, mess gear, horse tack, artillery shells, grapeshot, shrappnel, boot eyelets...well you get the picture. Although my grandfather/I never did, it wasn't unheard of for some "hunter" to find human remains known only to God. Usually they were left where they fell, but a couple of times I remember they were moved to one of the cemeteries around the area.
I did a little hunting myself but never found much more than minnie balls and such. Normally I just went with him and carried his hoe and helped him dig. "Scratch that dirt boy...don't chop at it."
I've seen a few hunters since I moved up here to Chancelorsville, but not many. I suspect the people who do it, have to get off the road and deep into the woods now. There is probably still tons of stuff out there to fnd. Just outside the window here are a series of rifle pits overlooking the river. I suspect it was a picket post and not part of an actual active battlefield, but not ten miles from here is where Stonewall Jackson launched his flank attack on Hookers (right?...It's early) flank. He was intending to drive the Federals back toward the river, where he hoped to pin them against the Rapadan/Rapahannock river and either force a surrender, or destroy them in detail. He of course was well on his way to doing that, when he was shot by his own men, about five miles from here, while scouting ahead of his lines, planning to resume the attack at night.
You can't swing a cat around this part of Virginia and not find a battlefield. Chancelorsville, Wilderness is just to the West, Fredericksburg to the east, Spotsylvania Court House to the south, Manassas to the north. And those are just the closest ones. Move south toward Richmond/Petersburgh, or west toward the Valley and you find more.
Probably more than you wanted to know.
A silent gun guards the battlefield at Chancelorsville.
This is one of the saddest places I've ever seen. It's a small Confederate cemetery just outside of Appomattox where we stopped for lunch one day. The twelve men resting here were killed in Lee's final, desperate attempt to break out of Grants encirclement. When that attack failed, Lee knew it was time to "Go and see General Grant."
One of the men here, the third from the left, IIRC, enlisted three days after Fort Sumter in 1861. He fought with the Army of Northern Virginia for four years, only to die in the final charge.
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