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Thats sad, I also feel bad for his buddy that collected with him, I think something like that would turn me off of hunting for awhile if not forever. I dont personally mess with ordnance, that kind of stuff scares the crap out of me. Ill stick to uniforms for now. Sad story, my heart goes out to his family.

One of the news services just picked up that story but we have an very extensive thread about from when it first happened:

 

http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/ind...showtopic=15963

When I was a kid I lived in Petersburg, Va. I had a friend (we were in 8th grade) who was the most fascinating kid I ever knew in all my travels. His bedroom was a former covered patio off the back of the house. When I met him, although we were young, he was a seasoned collector of TR and CW militaria as well as coins. When his bedroom was converted from the patio, he had his Dad build shelves over an entire back wall as well as one wall of storage bins. He had flour sacks full of bullets and a couple of shelves full of cannon balls of different sizes. One day when we got home from school, we were shocked to find the fire department leaving his house. While we we at school, it seems one of the cannon balls had rolled off a shelf and exploded. It was only enough to knock a hole in the corner of the room, but an explosion none the less. Surprisingly, all that happened was his mother (who was German) did what I think was a good a$$ chewing in German and made him take the rest out to the shed. The corner of the room was patched up and that was it. No confiscation by authorities or parents! If we had been in the room, who knows if it would have been enough to kill us, but no doubt the injuries would have been substantial.

 

To this day I have never known a collector with the "bug" as bad as this kid had it. I hope he is safe.

This is the same article but with more photos.

 

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/civil-war-can...502150909990001