Treasure Tales, thanx for the dialog. Even though the original question was about a beach in another state, the principles here can apply to beaches elsewhere.
I guess it boils down to this: When you say "I ask to CYA", I sort of look at that, as being like someone saying "I wonder if I can whistle while I walk on this beach" or "I wonder if using their drinking fountain is allowed", therefore "I guess I better ask, just in case there might be a rule against such a thing" You see, you/we just assume those things are allowed (why wouldn't they be?). I think of our hobby no differently. By thinking otherwise, you only cast aspursions on yourself, as if something were inherently wrong with you or your hobby, that you had to ask. It will only become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Even if something can't be contorted to tell you no, there is also the risk that they may actually MAKE a new rule to address this "pressing issue" that you brought to their attention. I actually heard of a case of that happening:
A guy in a certain state got the boot at a single state park, where he'd never previously been bothered. Who knows? Maybe it was an isolated incident? Intead of just avoiding that one park or ranger's shift, the fellow proceeded to petition to the highest levels of his state's park's dept personell, to "open the parks to md'ing". He never got a reply to his several letters. A few months later, he started hearing that md'rs at other state parks, elsewhere in the state, had gotten booted from parks that had never had an issue. When they asked "since when? why?" they were shown a memo that had come down from park's headquarters, alerting each park that md'ing was not allowed. Guess who it was signed by? The very senior official this first guy was petitioning! So that's all I'm saying is that sometimes you/we need to be careful in our asking.
I just go (barring obvious off-limits places) and if anyone has an issue, they're welcome to talk to me. As far as the fear that you might be roughed up legally, I still have a hard time pinpointing actual cases where this has happened. It's thrown out there from time to time, yet when you press for examples of jail, confiscations, etc... no one seems to know of any. I'm sure if you're night-sneaking historic monuments, or someone being a nuisance that can't take a warning, then yes, you'd be in trouble. But for detecting on the sandy beach?? And if someone CAN show an incident of an inoccuous md'r, in a non-posted, non-historic beach, that did get in jail, etc.... I would say that is so remote as to be non-applicable. I mean, let's face it: now and then you read in the paper that a rogue cop roughed up a motorist and jailed him for a simple tail-light out. Does that stop us from driving?
Borninok: yes I've seen that site before. The problem with that site, is that all they did to assemble that, was to send out 50 letters to each state, asking "what are the laws for metal detecting in your state parks and beaches?" Depending on whose desk that crosses, which bureaucrat answers it, and what his frame of reference was, is what answer he might give. Like, maybe he's thinking in terms of the historic parks in his state? Because if you think of it, ALL 50 states, by simple definition, would and should say "absolutely not, under any circumstance", IF they thought about it long enough and hard enough, and looked at it from enough angles. Even if there really weren't any rules about antiquities & md'ing, they could still morph something like "don't disturb the vegetation" to apply. It wouldn't be hard at all. So if you were that bureaucrat who opened that letter, and you had a particular historic park or two, in your state, in mind, of course you would say "no", or "check with the ranger on duty", even though the next 100 parks in that state have nothing to do with history. It's just the easy answer, since they can't go into great detail and say "yes at these 5, but not at this one, only on the east side of the 4th one, blah blah". So they just give an easy one-line answer. Why should they care or be bothered? Take CA for instance, that site says to check with each ranger at each site. We hunt state beaches here all the time, and have never asked or had a problem. Nearly the entire So. CA coastline is state beaches (some city and county though too), and there are hundreds of beach md'rs down there . It's just been "understood" that you can detect, EVEN though a site like the FMDACs might lead you to believe you're supposed to ask.
:P
), is MDng allowed there? LOL
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
LOL
We like things just the way they are here and don't want anyone to give it any more thought. We had a scare here a few years ago at Seacliff beach, which I'll save for another post some day 
