Though most privately owned area sites have been picked over for years, there's plenty left to find. Union soldiers encamped in Stafford, for example, left behind bullets, uniform buttons and belt buckles, stirrups, pieces of bayonets, rifles, dinnerware, remnants of canteens and the like.
Burt Alderson of Tennessee, a judge for the Grand National Relic Shootout, said yesterday that most participants keep their finds.
"Some of these people come from all over the country," he said. "If they find one thing, they're in love."
Though many relic hunters carefully document what they've found, and where, for posterity, some are in it for the money.
Blogged before. Still controversial.