I chased a MDer OFF MY BEACH....................

[ferdware]

Yes I did.
Hello all,

Today while I was MDing the beach I noticed two other MDers detecting within 100 yards of me. Now I was there about two hours before they were. I understand that I do not own the beach, but if I show up and see another MDer detecting. I will move down the beach a bit and respect the area that they are working.

Well I was doing my normal grid covering about 100 sq yards per grid, when the first MDer showed up. I noticed that he was just a weekend worrior by the way he was swinging and walking. First he passed along side of me about 15 yards to my left (i did not care for that). Then he shot infront of me by about 50 yards. Even though you could tell by my drag marks that I was covering that area. Then he went back to the dry sand about 30 yards to my left.
Now let me mention that I am a competitive person. So I kept looking in his direction to see what he was doing. That is when I saw him digging up a few cans. A few minutes later I looked up again to see were he was. Well he had moved again, BUT he left all the beer cans he dug up just laying on the beach (6 cans). I stopped what I was doing and walked up to the cans. As I picked them up to throw away I yelled over to him to throw his trash out. He just kind of blew me off and mumbled something while shaking his head..

NO WAY... So I walked in his direction to see what his problem was. While at the same time stating to him that I am a local and I have to live here. Well I guess he had enough because he turned and left the beach..

Now I am not trying to be a hard a??, but I am very consious about being green, and I hate to see people litter. Especially when they are visiting my town. They trash it up then get to go home while people that live here are left to look at their trash.. COME ON have a little respect..

(( I also dug up a steak knife in the sand this morning. WHAT is wrong with people. HELLO children play there. ))

So a fair warning to anyone who litters or leaves trash.. If you come to Garden City Beach or close PLEASE throw your trash away. Because I am NOT the type of person that will keep quiet.

With that being said. Please do not interprit this in a negative way. I am not being territorial. I have stopped to talk with other MDers before that were working the same beach as I was, But we both had respect for one another by working in opposite directions. I enjoy the company and comparing finds. But that guy this morning was a disgrace to MDing...

QUESTION. Was I wrong in how I reacted ???

Thank you for letting me VENT..

FERD

 

[dave5710]

Nope, not at all. I'm not a beach hunter, but I can relate to what you are saying. Everyone here in town says "we love our Rebels" (local school teams), but they leave the football field looking like a trash pit after a game. Actions do speak louder than words and I guess these people really don't take much pride in themselves or their community.

 

[moose]

I agree with you Ferd. I beieve that he is just as mindless as the idiot who buried it. It's a good possibility that a child playing at the beach with mom and dad could have burried the cans, so to say mindless idiot would be a poor call. But you would think mom or dad would wonder where the cans went and asked the child to get them, if this were the case.
I myself have pitched trash on every hunt this year. Still learning my v3-i and dig alot of trash. Good call on the butt chew'n and hopefuly educated him.

HH
Moose

 

[Rob (IL)]

You were right to instruct him on the subject of trash removal. We can never do enough to improve our image with the public. As far as hunting to close to you it is bad manners on his part but since the beach public I just ignore them. Rob

 

[thebeatmachine]

IF you didnt say something he would have gone to other beaches and litter there as well. Maybe he will think about what he is doing.

 

[Low-Boy/LCPM]

Those kind ruin it for us all..

 

[Larry (IL)]

Good for you Ferd, educating other hunters, new or not, is something that will benefit our hobby in the long run..............

 

[a.c.t.i.v.8]

Nope Ferd, you were spot on ! It doesn't take a minute to pick up the rubbish you dig, be it on a beach on a field ! The farmers can see you taking rubbish away and it helps. OK on a beach there are no farmers but you still do take away the rubbish. Just think you could go there in 12 months and find it all again !!

So well done m8y, good shout for good detectorists !!!

 

[nw1886]

You did everything right Ferd. A few months back, I was doing a night hunt (In a park across from my house.) and began kicking clods with my feet. Some "detectorist" just left his plugs laying all over the place....with trash beside. Went out the next morning and put them all back as best I could.

Speaking up did the hobby good! These day's, there's just too much info out there for people to behave like that and there's no excuse for it. You picked the right battle and handle the rest correctly.

 

[jbow]

No Ferd,

I agree about the trash. I have ZERO tolerance for trash left either in the hole or out on the ground/beach and I have no tolerance for people leaving holes unless they are on the hardpan and about to be filled back in by the surf... even then one can kick a little sand back in the hole if there are people walking along the shore to enjoy the beauty... nothing like a bunch of holes to make things look worse.

As far as the "territory" thing. I think many people really have no idea of the "rules of the road" as far as another person's space. I think we should assume that people who don't respect the area we are hunting don't really have any idea they are doing anything wrong or disrespectful... probably best to just tolerate that. They probably aren't going to do anything other than remove some trash that may be masking the ring you will find because they removed the trash! I'd just choose to look at that problem as no problem unless I start to get crosstalk... then i'd just move a little. We've all been ignorant about what is acceptable and really what is ok to one is unacceptable to another in some things. If I am detecting anywhere an I see someone else I will always work my way over and introduce myself and talk a little unless the person is rude and act's like they want to be left alone... then I move along but I always want to meet other hunters, see if they know what they are doing, or if they are leaving a mess and I have sometimes gotten a friend out of it.

As far as the knife, truth be known I bet a kid brought it out to the beach or some young person building a sand castle.

But.. everyone is different.

Julien

 

[jbow]

You did everything right Ferd. A few months back, I was doing a night hunt (In a park across from my house.) and began kicking clods with my feet. Some "detectorist" just left his plugs laying all over the place....with trash beside. Went out the next morning and put them all back as best I could.

Speaking up did the hobby good! These day's, there's just too much info out there for people to behave like that and there's no excuse for it. You picked the right battle and handle the rest correctly.

Man...!!!! There is nothing that gets me upset quicker than some idiot leaving holes and trash in a park... what the he77 is so hard about taking the time to, at the very least, using your foot to flip the da$% plug back over and step on it.... and are some hunters too "cool" to wear an apron or some other bag for trash???

A friend of mine was telling me last week about a guy in the local club, in Marietta, GA. Some old timer, been in the club for years, they call him Relic ___ . My friend told me that this guy never wears an apron or bag, he just sticks any relics he finds in a pocket and leave the trash on the ground. He mostly hunts in the woods but that is no excuse in my book. I hunt in the woods, I take the trash with me. I not only fill the hole, I re-spread the ground cover, the leaves etc. You cannot tell where I have hunted. There is just no stinking excuse for this sort of thing .... I don't care where you're hunting. A construction site or woods, a lawn or a park... it's all the same. Fill the hole, take the trash. Leave any place you go in better shape than it was when you got there... no excuses!!


ARRGGHHHH.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Julien

 

[Aurium]

I agree..

Trash - take it with you.

Respect the other guys space.

To me it's very similar to fishing etiquette, you don't cut the other guys trolling line by swinging in front of him. It's less about the finds or possible finds and more about having a little bit of respect for others. I was at a park recently where another MD'er showed up, they asked a few questions which I was happy to answer, and later on chatted with them about their finds. I also took some time to help them get better by sharing some of my gridding techniques, and a few pointers on digging, to make sure they properly filled the holes with the plug. (they were new to the hobby)

I think it was reasonable to suggest to the offender that picking up the trash is part of the etiquette of the hobby.

 

[Scortch]

Cheers Mate! I am with you on this one.

 

[wpaxt]

Ferd,

This happens frequently out here. We have large ocean beaches but hunters are like lemmings sometimes.

There are really two issues here. One is the trash. I commend you for telling the guy to throw his trash away. No excuse for that. I have the same problem with jerks who don't fill in their holes. Not only do the leave the beach a mess but it is really dangerous for joggers.

Second issue is your personal air space. If you are acccurate & the two MD'ers were really 100 yards away, well, a football field is pretty far. I wouldn't have a problem with that. Now if they get really close to you that's another thing. I usually just go the other way. Eventually these guys just move off; their patterns are usually very helter skelter. I had some clown cut right into my gridded area yesterday at Santa Monica. He was swinging a White's pulse a good 6" off of the sand. No threat to me. I just let him pass by & then kept my gridding going and got all of the stuff the loser lost.

Bill in S. CA.

 

[gilfordberry]

I agree with nearly everything said here. I will walk 50 yards out of my way to dump my trash apron into a litter barrel sometimes a dozen times during an outing. I DO NOT do it with aluminum cans, though. The places I hunt always have people looking for recycle cans and bottles, so they don't stay exposed very long. I'll dig 'em up and pile 'em up and let those trying to make a buck recycling aluminum cans do so. I figure that's better than having them diving in the litter barrels and leaving half the barrel's contents scattered on the ground.

One thing that REALLY ticks me off are broken glass bottles. I've had days when it seems I had to forget about detecting just to get the broken glass booze bottles off the beach. (They were probably not broken when the litterbug left them, but the beach cleaning machines wind up breaking them instead of scooping them up.) Also, I do kick sand back into my dig holes in both the wet and dry even though I sometimes wonder what good it does when people leave holes big enough to bury a Volkswagen all over after a big weekend....and don't even get me started on young mom's that leave their baby's dirty diapers on the beach and those amorous pairs that leave their condom wrappers scattered - by the way, they ring out almost like a gold ring.

As for others hunters....yesterday I was at Huntington Beach. It is a very large beach, about four or five miles long and probably 300 -500 yards wide, so it can handle a lot of detectorists...but....standing at one spot yesterday morning I counted no less than 15 other detectorists, many of them of the week-end warrior types swinging their Radio Shack detectors 18 inches above the ground and cutting in front of you at every turn. But there were some pros out there, too, and the resemblance to Mother Hubbard's cupboard at the beach this morning is proof of that.

 

[ferdware]

Ferd,

This happens frequently out here. We have large ocean beaches but hunters are like lemmings sometimes.

There are really two issues here. One is the trash. I commend you for telling the guy to throw his trash away. No excuse for that. I have the same problem with jerks who don't fill in their holes. Not only do the leave the beach a mess but it is really dangerous for joggers.

Second issue is your personal air space. If you are acccurate & the two MD'ers were really 100 yards away, well, a football field is pretty far. I wouldn't have a problem with that. Now if they get really close to you that's another thing. I usually just go the other way. Eventually these guys just move off; their patterns are usually very helter skelter. I had some clown cut right into my gridded area yesterday at Santa Monica. He was swinging a White's pulse a good 6" off of the sand. No threat to me. I just let him pass by & then kept my gridding going and got all of the stuff the loser lost.

Bill in S. CA.

The same here. This guy only had about a three foot sweep. He was raising his coil up at both ends of his sweep and he was walking all over the place..

FERD

 

[Rob (IL)]

That's what I would have done Bill. Life is too short to get bent. Rob

 

[dirtdigginlady]

I think you were totally right about the trash issue BRAVO for telling him. I think you are totally wrong about the territory issue. I think the beach is free for all and anywhere you want to hunt. I try not to get too close to someone else because of the detector interference but I never think about this is "their" territory. It's the beach.

 

[ferdware]

I think you were totally right about the trash issue BRAVO for telling him. I think you are totally wrong about the territory issue. I think the beach is free for all and anywhere you want to hunt. I try not to get too close to someone else because of the detector interference but I never think about this is "their" territory. It's the beach.

Well just to mention it again.

I never said anything to him about territory. I only felt that way. I only talked to him about the trash. So I really dont see how I was "totally wrong" when it was just the way I felt.

Also in my defence. He was clearly walking into part of my grid area. Yes the beach is free to hunt. BUT that would be no different than MDing under someones tent or hunting where someone is playing volleyball. Its all about respect You just dont do it.

For example, yesterday morning I arrived at the beach a little late. It was 6am and there were two other MDrs out there already. So the first thing I did was to talk to them to find out what basic area they were hunting. Then I went in another direction.

Thankyou for everyones input on this matter.

FERD

 

[morrow01]

There is nothing that gets me upset quicker than some idiot leaving holes and trash in a park but as for him hunting the beach there is a lot of beach if every time i go to the beach and hunt and some one else showed up doing the same thing and i got pissed then cops would take me in first alot of the time my family gos with me to the beach 2nd you do not own it every one dos if you get that mad just turn and work the other way I'm in west Florida can not tell you how many out of state detectors there are should i tell them go home northerners no just move over or pack it up for the day just a few weeks ago i was in Naples 4 hrs south of me working a spot with my dfx then some one past me using a beach magnet soon he was heading back working very fast he got nothing then i past where he was just at and got a gold heart charm. if you get that upset then go at night are one week day because if you tried to chase me off then one or the two of us would in up getting hurt
rt