Thanks for posting this question!!
While out yesterday looking for places to hunt, we passed a road we meant to turn onto. We ended up turning around in the driveway of an OLD house (had an old shed just behind it too). My Dad and I just stared at it, then we looked at each other and grinned. Of course we went ahead and left because we do need to ask permission and I plan to find out who to ask. There is a home next door (there's a thin strip of wooded area between the two properties), so as soon as I have some daylight I plan to talk to the neighbor and see if they can either point me in the right direction as to who to ask or I could get lucky and it be their property. I too was wondering how to get up the guts to ask.....I think I would do the following two things and then hope they didn't have a rabid pit bull to loose on me if their answer was no.
1. Tell them that my son got a new metal detector for Christmas and we wondered if it would be ok for us to go over and hunt the yard. Hopefully they would go for that and we'd be all set.
2. Clarify that we have no interest of entering the house whatsoever and we'd leave the yard just as it was(and pick up any trash we found).