Hi from Sonoma County!
I was born and raised in Northern California and lived here my whole life. I'm pretty familiar with the San Fran Bay area, East Bay, the Northern Coast and most of the features and parks and things from upper Mendocino County all the way down to Santa Cruz through San Benito County and San Jose and then east over through Napa, Lake Counties and that northern part of the central valley and Sact'o River all the way up to the Sierra foothills past Sacramento and I've never EVER heard of anyplace anyone could go and PAY to hunt artifacts -- even on privately owned land. I studied archeology and anthro in college with an emphasis on local Native tribes and I know that, back in the 70s, the State of California made some of the most restrictive legislation about "artifact hunting" that you'll find anywhere.
Even when we find things on private land, they are technically subject to be reviewed by reps from the State, universities, local tribes, etc. to determine if they are somehow important enough to be confiscated and either kept in collections at the State level OR returned to the tribe of origin...
Around here, it's kind of rare to find arrowheads 'n such, but in those rare cases when you DO, most everybody just keeps very quiet about it if they want to keep it. I've found some moderately "important" (in the sense of being able to give the archeo people physical evidence to use to be able to place certain cultural influences in certain places at certain times here) artifacts and I turned them over to the local state university's archeo dept. to put in their collection.
I think Texas has a lot less restrictions on these types of things that we do... California -- since the rise of the Archeo Dept. at U of Cal Berkeley in the 1920s -- has taken pretty seriously not allowing private parties to acquire its "state treasures" and artifacts.
In order not to have any problems keeping your "finds", I think you're going to have to "find them" on private property where you can find a sympathetic owner who won't turn you in for taking them but I have NO idea where any people like that can be found, I'm afraid. And anybody else who's "hunting" out there who DOES know a landowner like that is probably going to be too paranoid just to open up and tell a stranger where they can find them for fear it might be a "trap" to get them arrested or their collections taken.
Sadly, I don't think you'll be able to hunt the way you want to here... We're kinda funny, here in California about that stuff! LOL!
and i got 20.00 on bail
