Lots of fired bullets, no primers

I'm assuming you're talking about civil war primers?

I had multiple fighting locations give me several hundred minie balls each before I found a new location that finally gave me my first primers. I will say on the at pro they are hard to get a signal on, even the Garrett pin pointer won't give a solid tone some times. Make sure to check your areas with different approaches because they will disappear depending on the way you are swinging.

If it's complete, you get a slight blip that changes tone and number. If it's a piece of one, you'll get faint tones. Remember is a tiny piece of thin metal probably a step above foil. When they get fired they split open and become very fragile.

That is what I was thinking---percussion caps are very small so never a big signal.

Where I detect I do find .22 short and CB shells. These are larger than percussion caps but still give a small signal when only a few inches down.

Yeah it will be like a 22 shell, but even weaker. But also if you're on the "fired" bullet end, you need to figure out where the shooter was. The person receiving may have just been on the run. That's how I bounce around my wooded areas, I pick up a bunch of fired bullets and look for a good shooter spot and will usually find the rest.


In this thread I made, I have a few primer caps in the photo. You can see how tiny they are and the little ends that will break off. I did find a few that were broken.

https://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=282121

If your finding a lot of mostly drops , could be you have found a location where they were pouring or casting bullets. I have over the yrs. found locations where hundreds of various cal .bullets have been dug and not much more other than a few coins and buttons.

Yes, this is all CW stuff. On a side not I have LOTS of nails and various junk iron in the yard as well. I have focused on notching out the iron but it is still really tough to hear the bullets, IMO. I hate to not dig up everything because there was a lot of artillery expended in the area and I did dig everything I heard for about 3 or so weeks but got discouraged at how much I was finding and how much was still in the ground!

I'm considering getting the smaller coil on the AT pro. Any advice is greatly appreciated.