Metal Detecting Season is Open with a Government Shutdown

[SoCalBeachScanner]

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With a Government Shutdown looming, and if Federal Park employees go on furlough, does that mean all National Parks and Federal Land is open season for Metal Detecting?

What I've always heard is; a law is only a law if it is enforced Our border with Mexico is proof of that!!


Update: October 2, 2013, 1:15PM - PST

As of now, the thread is up to 63 comments / replies and it looks like some of the long term posters to TNet are having fun with this post. They range from people that would never break the law, no matter what. To people that believe the relics under the ground on Federal land will disintegrate over time and be lost forever.

Personally, I'm getting a little dizzy, but it here's the synopsis in no particular order:

Leave the relics in the ground! Follows the laws! Dig the relics up, they will turn to dust! Are you serious or joking! Artifacts does zero good buried in the ground! The relics and lead will pollute the ground water! Future high tech equipment will know what's down there and why! The ground is sacred in National Parks! We can tunnel under and get the stuff that way! It's all the Archies fault! Do you even metal detect? Anthropologists do not support digging every site! Maybe our parks are actually government storage areas for aliens!TreasureNet does not advocate the breaking of any laws, local, state or federal! If your detector goes over a target and no one is there to hear it...does it make a sound? The way it's going, there will be no place to Metal Detect! Dig um up! Leave um there! I'm right, your wrong! No! I'm right and your wrong!
Gotta Love It!!


It's no wonder Congress's Approval Rating is only 10% and they can't agree on anything.

 

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[pippinwhitepaws]

 

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[Tnmountains]

Well I have been watching this and reading this thread. I like what the Greatest generation did the other day when going to their memorial at the park.

'Greatest generation' veterans sweep past barricades at memorial in their honor | Fox News

My feeling are that it is your park and if you want to go.go. How can they close your park? Ridiculous Gov does what it can to panic the people. Hit the parks enjoy them but leave them untouched. We have found that the biggest looters here are the employees. They feel entitled because they are care takers. Be a good steward.

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

well...the grand canyon is blockaded...smokies all over the place not allowing anyone in...or on the river...

 

[Dick Stout]

This from an overseas archaeologist blog...please be careful what you say.

The US government spending shutdown is on, stuff happens as they say. I'd like to draw attention to the plight of US museums. US collectors and dealers think "they are always going to be there" and going to continue to function at the same standard, and are thus suuposedly the best place for the rifled antiquities of the rest of the world. But today's events remind us that even in the USA, their continued functioning depends to a large extent on nothing more than historical accident. As we see, you just need enough tea-party extremists in the government to have the whole lot crashing down. Remember the old argument about guarding sites to keep the looters out? How many BLM guards are out in their jeeps today patrolling ancient sites in the USA and how many 'twitchers' are out there with their shovels assuming that BLM staff are sitting at home today?

 

[etex]

What is a twitcher?

 

[SoCalBeachScanner]

What is a twitcher?

Great question! I had to look that one up. Here's what I found....

View attachment 874688

It appears Dick is comparing Bird Watchers (twitchers) to people that metal detect

 

[jeff of pa]

Dawn of the Dead (2004) had Twitchers

 

[DiggerinVA]

Just had to add my opinion in here......How can it be wrong for me to want to metal detect the land that the govt. stole from my grandparents, great grandparents, etc.. That is what happened here in my state in the 1930s. All the famalies living on the land the govt. wanted were FORCED to sale for a price decided fair by the govt....But i know that the govt. is never wrong.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Nothing wrong with wanting to, but if you do and get caught is it worth the Tens of thousands in fines and jail time?

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[Jason in Enid]

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

View attachment 874749

Yosemite NP, one of the most beautiful parks in US.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[Tom_in_CA]

The truth is that soldiers were picking relics off the battle fields as the battles were ending. This is not some new behavior invented by detector heads hundreds of technically advanced years in the future. The people back then had as much knowledge of artifacts and rare finds as we do now. These soldiers collected pieces they thought were important and at the time did not feel their actions took in anyway, any sort of ill meaning or lack of importance from the battle they had just fought today. Clean up the useless debris!!!!!!

wild-eyed willy, you are so right: Human nature's desire to collect, find, etc.... has never changed. So even before metal detectors, people decades and centuries past collected, sought, dug, etc....

Example: 1) I read somewhere that in the 1940s and '50s, for instance (before the advent of detectors that could find individual coins), that people had taken up the hobby of sifting sand from under the Coney Island boardwalk. 2) and as anyone knows, arrowhead and indian artifact hunting goes way back to the turn of the century or earlier. Up along the Columbia river, families would pack a picnic lunch, row out to an island, and spend the day sifting for relics.

Thus no, detecting in that sense, is nothing new. There's not some new and horrible egregious activity that is now defined as "looters". And if some archie wishes to define anyone who dares collect as a "looter", well FINE THEN, I'm a looter. And durned proud of it for that matter

 

[Dick Stout]

You might try a few UK forums too...

 

[Tnmountains]

It was not un common in the Sixties and earlier for a family to pack a lunch and go dig artifacts. Where the term pot hole came from. When TVA took over in the South East and flooded millions of acres we had thousands of habitation sites,towns and cemeteries flooded. The Union troops set their guns on Indian mounds and shelled my city while the troops dug out tunnels looking for artifacts.
Now that TVA has militarized the river patrol they sweep down on you if you are on shore as if you are a terrorist. I hunt some Islands by permission and carry sifters and metal detectors in my boat. I make sure that I can contact the owner in case they stop me.

This is at winter pool down the road from me. I was able to get all the old survey maps before the impoundment. Cool stuff.

 

[SoCalBeachScanner]

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You might try a few UK forums too...

I assume Dick, that your talking about the Twitchers subject. If so, I took your advise and checked the UK. Check Out the link below ... it appears they Bird Watch also and their not very polite about it.

BBC News - Trimley Marshes twitchers 'overwhelm' bird reserve

 

[Dick Stout]

No big deal...forget it.

 

[MT_Joe]

Deteriorating iron hidden under ground ( out of sight) can certainly bring history alive for no one. We have all heard the problems of lead poisoning the environment, it can easily seep into the ground water, poison fish, wildlife, cattle and humans. There is no good reason to leave this remain in the ground. The dead solders will still be just as dead if the artifacts are removed. It won't change their fate whatsoever nor diminish the national respect our country has for the fallen soldiers. Consider this, there are literary volumes upon volumes written about the wars in this country, some autobiography's. These battles have been studied to delirium by experts and novice alike, the chance of any new material to be learned by some future archeological dig ( key word, DIG) is slim to none. Simply from an environmental stand point these sights should be cleaned of debris. Perhaps the sights could be divided into equal spaces, split between the Archeologists and the hobbyists. Simply put, IT AINT HISTORY IF NO ONE CAN SEE IT!!! also how much money could our poor government save if they didn't need to hire people to guard rusty bits of metal laying in the ground that no one can see anyway. I don't ask much, just a smidgen of common sense.

Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

My thoughts exactly about digging it up. Buried artifacts don't do anybody any good. I've definitely heard of people picking up trash (ie:artifacts) and get harassed by archies. Threatening them with fines for picking up a piece of glass that's doing nothing but sit in the sun. It probably isn't even from the timer hat made the property an historic site. But nonetheless they call it an artifact. It's like me going out to detect an area and finding bullet shells and have to leave this trash on the ground because the 7th Calvary may have dropped them. Yet at these sites, nobody is collecting/recording this data.
Why can't we as detectors work as archies. Some of us collect and record these items just for personal record but maybe they could use this info for their benefit as well. If it's important at all, then call up the detectorists to scan the area.

 

[Treasure finder]

I hike in anyway, Bolsa Chica State Beach does not open until 6:00AM, I'm scanning by 5:30AM. And it's a State Beach, which is not Federal

I think the authorities at Bolsa Chica put down lots of iron and other junk to keep us out whether they are there or not.
Rich

 

[jeff of pa]

My thoughts exactly about digging it up. Buried artifacts don't do anybody any good. I've definitely heard of people picking up trash (ie:artifacts) and get harassed by archies. Threatening them with fines for picking up a piece of glass that's doing nothing but sit in the sun. It probably isn't even from the timer hat made the property an historic site. But nonetheless they call it an artifact. It's like me going out to detect an area and finding bullet shells and have to leave this trash on the ground because the 7th Calvary may have dropped them. Yet at these sites, nobody is collecting/recording this data.
Why can't we as detectors work as archies. Some of us collect and record these items just for personal record but maybe they could use this info for their benefit as well. If it's important at all, then call up the detectorists to scan the area.

my guess the reason they are picky about everything including trash, is they can't see what you picked
up without approaching you,
which means Work for them. so they get P.o.'d they had to get off their fat overpaid greedy arses.
so they fine you just out of spite.
add to that most people never fought the fines, setting a precedent that is now hard to
change