How to Get Permission to Hunt?

[Furismo]

Living in North Carolina I see a lot of old abandon buildings but I rarely see any new buildings next to them. How do I go about finding the owner so I can ask? I have never hunted for bottles other than buying them. I would also like to metal detect on these sites.

But, I don't want to get permission and have the owner take my finds if he/ she wants them. If I have to spend hours digging up a privy or hole I want to keep my finds. How do you avoid treasure snatchers?

[jgas]

TRUST! Thats the biggest thing you can do when digging. Trust that the people that own the property will either let you have the finds or share some with you. Go to your local website for property taxes, and the assessors office website. You should be able to access those and find the current owners. Then go to the white pages.com and look for the tx.( although I would rather do a face to face meeting, it usually works out better.) Get yourself a SanBorn Fire map if you can. They go way back to 1885 in our area. See what was there prior to digging. Believe me, most people will let you hunt. Then there are the select few that will not. Just move on down the road if that happens. Do a bit of research and then dig a pit. Take plenty of pics for all to see what you do. This is a great way to gain permission from others. If you are in a rural area, most people know their neighbors or are related somehow. If you do a great job on one homestead chances are the rest will fall like dominos.
Try your local government web sites though first. You should be able to punch in an address and get the owners name and so on. Good luck and I hope that helps a bit. jgas