To renew or not renew Park Permit

[Jay In NewKen]

Hey everyone,
I hope everyone is doing well. So with the new year, my permit for a local park needs renewed. The problem being, the permit clearly states "surface recovery only. No digging". Now, this is a MD'ing specific permit. I did manage to coin pop a bit, but was constantly fearful of the rangers when they make their rounds. Is it really worth renewing the $20 yearly fee with said restriction? Btw, this park is all kind of trashy and I'm not talking about the women.

Any advice is appreciated,

Jay

 

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[Terry Soloman]

Do the right thing. Take the high road. Protect your karma. Answer to your inner balance. Good Luck!

 

[G.I.B.]

IMHO it's not worth the $20 if you can't enjoy the hunt.

But then I have to wonder why you have to buy a permit to go into a park that your tax dollars have already paid for? Isn't this a tax on tax you already paid? What does the permit get you, entry into the park and the authorization to carry a MD around, or just a permit to pick stuff up off the ground?

 

[Jay In NewKen]

To be more specific, the permit is good for 4 county parks, but all have the same restriction. I should just post a pic of the permit, if I still have it.

Terry - That's the way I'm leaning and just focus on the few city parks that don't have any restrictions that I can find. Filling in the hole and move on.

Jay

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Jay, while that seems a rather kill-joy provision on your "permit", keep in mind, that if you are wanting to be utterly law abiding, then to be honest with you: Those type provisions exist at ANY park (or school or public land of any sort). Yup, if you dig into any city or county muni laws, codes, etc... there will ALWAYS be verbage that disallows "alterations" "defacement" "vandalism", and so forth. Yet as you can tell, there is no shortage of md'rs who still, none-the-less, hunt parks, schools, beaches, sandboxes, etc... and ..... gulp "dig" for targets. Sure they'll fill in the spot. But if some purist busy-body griped, they could still say we're all in violation. Thus this is why ALL of us, when we get ready to cut our plugs in turfed parks ........ of COURSE use a little .... uh .... "discretion" so as to be low-profile enough to not be in the middle of retrieving when lookie-lou busy-bodies are present.

But sure, if you're real worried about breaking rules, then don't even go to parks with no permit systems either. Because as I say, in one form or another, the same type "effect" of wording that is on your permit, is in all parks, anywhere.

If it were me, and I was finding old coins there (that required deeper than poking only and pulling out from finger-only depths), I would just go, and do it, and just pick low traffic times. Because odds are, as long as you aren't leaving any marks, you're fulfilling the spirit of the intent of that. But this is just me. Someone will certainly say that this is direct violation of the permit wording. To which I say, yes, ... sure, then avoid all parks everywhere. Because similar wording exists everywhere.

And lastly, I had to chuckle when I read about this "permit", because this is QUITE common whenever "permits" exist (as rare as they are for any city or county or state by-the-way). There's been lots of places that instituted "permits", with ridiculous things like that. Eg.: "holes not to exceed 3" deep", or "no digging" or "not within 10 ft. of a tree" and other such nonsense. Yet for some reason, md'rs ......... whenever they've heard any scary story (bootings or something), they rush to the notion of "wouldn't it be nice if we had permits for our parks?" As your case shows, permits are often the LAST thing we want, as that only makes us all the continual subject of scrutiny, review, etc... Better that we just stay off the radar, if you ask me, and NOT make ourselves a big bullseye needing someone's princely sanction.