Ding-Ding! round two. Here we go again :P
I don't ask to hunt public parks. If someone has an issue, they're welcome to tell me. If you go asking at each city's city hall, you risk a "no" from some bureaucrat, who has images of geeks with shovels, when in fact, no rules existed.
I don't know what the problem is in NY or other states, but here in CA, people hunt parks and think of themselves no differently than anyone else using any other park facility. No wait ... I take that back...... I do know first-hand of 2 instances where someone asked to use (md) at parks. In each case, they were told "no"here. At the first one, several others in that town had md'd there, un-restricted, in full view of God and everyone, for years. All of the sudden, one day, they got booted. When they asked "why?", they got the answer "the supervisor says so now". They then found out through the grapevine that a newbie had gone to the ranger's kiosk the previous week asking permission. The ranger looked it up in their book, found something they thought applied, and told him "no". I guess from then after, when they subsequently saw other md'rs, it was still fresh in their mind, as if to say "hey wait, there's one of THEM".
In the other situation I recall, someone in my town asked at city hall if they could md at our central park. He got a "no", and promptly told us veterans, as he met us at our club meeting, that it was "illegal". That was news to us! We'd md'd there without so much as a "boo". Funny thing was, we continued to detect there, and still, to this day, no one ever says a thing, other than "can you help me find a sprinkler head please?"
So maybe I'm just in a relaxed area, but I would still take this stance to any state I traveled too. The only exception would be obvious historic monuments.
Sorry to repeat these examples that have come up only a few weeks ago, but I fear that all we md'rs do is to paint ourselves into a self-fulfilling prophesy by walking on pins and needles all the time, as if there were something inherently wrong with us, or our hobby. Sure, maybe here and there someone might have an issue. Heck, I've even been booted a time or two. Sometimes I just let that park cool off, and return at a different time, and never again get bothered. Chances are it was a bored cop with nothing to do, or a gardener having a bad day, an isolated complaint, etc..... And yes, maybe there *might* be a city with a universal rule that is, in fact, enforced. They are welcome to tell you, and then you just hit another city instead of that one.
