The solution is simple. Have a buddy toss a silver ring as far as he can, while your back is turned. Then he runs a Craigslist L&F ad for "lost ring". You print out the ad, and go look for the ring.
All joking aside: A friend of mine here in CA lives near some federal beach. Very very few beaches here are federal, but one near him happens to be. One day he responded to a CL lost-ring ad with a reward posted. He chatted with the gal to prepare to go to hunt for it. But then when she said the name of the beach, it occurred to him "oh no, that's such & such beach".
So he conferred with several of us in his hunting circle on a local forum of "how can I do this ?". He fretted about trying to get permission. Since, after all, it's a legitimate hunt. Or perhaps just print out the ad and take it with him to show if some busy body said something. In the end, he decided to just go. And he purposed in his mind to START at the fringes of her zone, before zero-ing in on where her beach blanket had been. Ie.: take his time to "be thorough".
In the end, even though he was there for an hour or more, no one said so much as "boo" to him. So we all got a good laugh out of that, wondering "what's to stop someone from just running a lost ad, and going out to look for something ?"
