Question about hunting a site

[PowerDetecting]

I found a site on google earth that is right on the water. There are houses around it with alot of land. My question is if I get the land owners permission to hunt it is it okay or are there any laws or rules I need to know about that say even with the land owners permission I am not allowed to dig it because it is history or something?

 

[7centsworth]

I have never heard any laws like that in the states. Unless it is a state park.

 

[PowerDetecting]

I left out the site is a civil war battleground site I dont know if that matters or not.

 

[Larry (IL)]

I think if you have the landowners permission, you have it made.......

 

[Shenandoah Digger]

All kinds of battlefield land in private hands. If you've got permission that's all you need.

 

[ironman200081]

There are only three states that I know of that restrict excavation activity on privately-owned land (Florida, Wisconsin, and Oregon). Otherwise, you should be ok. Beware that if you knowingly dig on, in, or above any marked or unmarked human burials, you may run afoul of state law. I only mention it because some larger battlefields with higher casualties are known to contain grave trenches.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

There are only three states that I know of that restrict excavation activity on privately-owned land (Florida, Wisconsin, and Oregon). Otherwise, you should be ok. Beware that if you knowingly dig on, in, or above any marked or unmarked human burials, you may run afoul of state law. I only mention it because some larger battlefields with higher casualties are known to contain grave trenches.

Iron-man, I don't know about FL or WI, insofar as it relates to this question of this thread, but when it comes to Oregon, I am aware of what you speak. Supposedly someone got flack years back, when he went to show his bottle collection dug from private homes privies. It was just some local story, on some local news station, where they profiled different persons hobbies as part of daily local tid-bits. Like I think the person did a show & tell for some school kids, or something, for example. Well a state archie in OR happened to catch this little clip on the TV one night, and raised cain in a letter to the editor of the local paper. Saying digging something 50 yr. old or older wasn't allowed EVEN ON PRIVATE LAND in Oregon. And he went on to cite the specifc laws, which...... I suppose if given enough morphings ....... could be made to say/mean such a thing. This letter to the editor made its way into the md'ing rumor-mill info system (got posted on a forum or something), and then "presto", Oregon md'rs were now somehow made aware that they can no longer find old things EVEN on private land.

What was odd is, whatever text he was citing, was already on the books for who-knows-how-long before this, anyhow. Dry dusty minutia only probably brought out to stop construction of shopping malls on admittedly sacred historic sites or something, but probably never meant to snare someone from digging 1960 pennies!! And I can assure you: that detecting goes on in OR, and people are ROUTINELY digging 1960 and earlier pennies, and no one gives a r*tts @ss. Yup, not only on private land, but even in public parks, beaches, etc.... No ones there with a calculator looking over your shoulder, doing the math on the dates of coins you find. However, I'm sure if you asked enough archies in state capitol, using enough key-buzzwords, then sure, I'm sure you can find a "no" for just about anything you want to do! But the "reality" is, those such wordings were probably meant to stop wholesale destruction of someone destroying sacred history, to put a strip-mall there, etc.... Could it be morphed to prohibit you from picking up a 1960 penny, if you asked long enough and hard enough? Sure. If this bothers someone, then I fear they have chosen the wrong hobby. Because I can assure you, it has not changed casual hobbyist detecting in OR one bit, unless you are being a major nuisance showing off your stuff to 1 archie somewhere.

 

[Nestor Cerpa]

I would believe that what you find should be kept on the "down low",. "loose lips sink ships", on the "QT, ", in other words... SHHHH!

there is a post here which speaks of a city park in Maryland, where a nice CW piece was found, so, the City Council has banned Metal Detecting in the public parks.

They even said, "what is in the ground, stays in the ground." Remember, you are not dealing with rational people.... so, if want to share what you found, be careful with whom you share it.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Nestor, I highly doubt that anyone on that city counsel was watching/reading a metal detecting forum, saw that "someone found a goodie in their park", and thus ...... made a rule. Do you really think that anyone besides us metal detecting nuts reads metal detecting forums, to begin with? So instead what probably happened, is some other metal detector enthusiast close-by that location reads the post. He thinks "gee, I think I'll go there and detect and try my luck". But .... bless his little heart ........ he wants to "make sure it's ok", so he goes to city hall and asks "can I?". And even though perhaps no one would ever have cared or noticed (because obvsiouly, hunter #1 went un-bothered), yet with someone standing their asking for sanction, well ........ then gee .... "I guess we better address this pressing issue!".

If it wasn't the above scenario, then another scenario is this: Perhaps because of a post where someone shows a goodie found at a certain park, then ..... yes .... this brings out other yahoos to try their luck there. Then the old "sore thumb" psychology kicks in, where ...... even though one person remained un-noticed and ignored, yet when you put TEN people down there doing an activity, then passerbys ask themselves "gee, what are those people doing?".

We had that happen in a park in CA. There was a park where detecting had never been a problem before, and finds were routinely put on the local md'ing forums from there. This was all fine and dandy till, one day a bunch of us decided to have a "forum outing" in this spot. Sure as heck, when you put 15 or 20 guys down in a single field, then passerbys (joggers, drivers, dog-walkers, etc...) would slow, stop, and look at the spectacle. Well, .... you guessed it .... it wasn't long before a cop comes by and starts quizzing us: "is this a club? what are you looking for? are you supposed to be doing this?" blah blah blah. So you see how sometimes a single person or two is just ignored. But if you put too many persons doing the same thing, it only raises questions, to which someone will "invent a rule" or "clarify something there", blah blah blah.