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wvwildman, I put that link in my reply too. While I take very little stock in that list, yet as you can see, NH is one of the nicer-sounding states on that list. So .... nice to have that in your pocket if a busy-body approaches you in a state-park there, eh?
But as for a lot of the other states on that list, as you can see, some of them sound down-right dire. Eg.: inquire at each kiosk you come to, etc.. OR OUTRIGHT NO's. But even in those "dire-sounding" states, I put little stock in that. You have to go back-in-time, to know how such lists were ever made and compiled, to begin with. And then once you do that, you have to start to take such lists with a grain of salt. This is not the first compendium of the 50 states to do that. And all such lists more or less did it the same way: Someone went and asked. Doh. Sounds logical enough, right? I mean, ... who better to ask, than a state themselves: "
what are the laws regarding the use of metal detectors in your state's parks?" But the odd thing that happened when these lists or books were put out (like RW Doc Grim's book "Treasure Laws of the United States") is that some of those states with "no's" or dire/grim wording, had, up-till-then, quite frankly .... never had a problem. Ie.: you could detect state parks, and no one cared (barring unless you were being a nuisance, snooping around obvious historic monuments). So when lists like those started making the rounds, you had old-timers scratching their heads, saying "since when?". See how that works? It was the old "no one cared till you asked" routine. And whomever fields your pressing question, must pass it past a state lawyer, who in turn forwards it to an archie's desk for review, and so forth.
Like in CA, you can detect state-of-CA beaches till you're blue in the face. But looking at that list, you *might* think it's riddled with rules (eg.: only with permission from the ranger, turn in everything you find, alert the archie everytime you find something old, blah blah blah). Yet I can tell you for a fact, you can detect state-of-CA owned beaches and no one's ever cared. So knowing that, .... it sort of makes me wonder how accurate the rest of those states are, if ... in fact, "reality" is different. Know what I mean?