thunder-struck, whenever someone who's not in this hobby says they "never seen anyone detecting at such & such a place", it doesn't mean much. Because people who aren't into this hobby, most likely simply don't mentally register such things. It's just not their bag, so they don't "register" such sites, or make mental note of it.
Example: One time I was hunting some school turf after school hours, when a gentleman approached me. Turns out he was a coach or some sort of staff at that school. Says to me: "you'll have to wrap that up in the next 30 minutes or so, because we have a little league game that'll be starting at 5pm today ..." Naturally I told him that ... sure, I'll wind it up within the next 30 minutes. But as he turned to walk away, he added the following post-script:
"you ought to do really well here, because no one's ever detected here before".
I asked him "how do you know that?", and he said
"because I've never ever seen anyone here doing that".
What was odd was, this was the 1980s. And I KNEW FOR A FACT that the school had been routinely hunted, even as far back as the 1960s. It's the upscale older school in our town, and had always been the "go-to" place in those days for us locals. So as you can see, obviously, this person (even being a duly-appointed coach and school worker!) had simply never seen one before there.
And I've seen that same scenario played out many times, in various ways, in many places. Thus simply because someone says "no one's ever hunted here before", doesn't mean much, IMHO.
