El Paso, Tx

[Tom_in_CA]

Well sure, if you want to get downright technical ....... sure, don't ever find anything 50 yrs. old on any speck of federal land. I don't think the issue here is CAN such stuff like ARPA be said to apply , but rather, does anyone really give a hoot ? Example: I can hunt Ft. Ord here (WWII era origins) till I'm blue in the face. And (gasp) find a 1950 wheatie or whatever. And truth-be-told, does anyone care? No, of course not. But did that mean that if I asked enough archies and lawyers in Washington "can I keep this?" that I might not find one to cite ARPA as the reason I can't ? SURE!

No mind you I'm not saying to throw caution to the wind and tromp on obvious historic sacred monuments. I mean, OF COURSE use common sense. But if you want to start getting technical and digging up deep minuita, I gaurantee you that you can find verbage at any level, (city, county, state, or federal) that .... given enough questions of enough people, can preclude you from detecting even a modern city sandbox.

 

[sprchng]

ARPA applies to archeological and historical sites NOT to ALL federal land although there are many who would like you to believe otherwise---make them prove that to you!!

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Hmm, well I'm not going to enter a p*ss*ng match with any of them, to have the prove or disprove anything to me, if I can at all help it. Oh sure, if accosted and someone cared to debate that with me, then sure: your rationale is worth angling for. Or the rationale that "coins and bullets are excluded", and so forth. But I'll have to let you in on a little secret: in my nearly 40 yrs. of this .... I HAVE YET to ever have anyone come up to me, riffle through my apron, doing the math on ages of coins that I've found. Have you ? I mean, sure: seeing as how "anything's possible", it's possible someone could come up to you at gun-point, have you dump out the contents of your apron, and ... gasp ... find a coin over 50 yrs. old. But seriously now folks, has ANY of you ever had anyone standing over them with a calculator as they dug each target ??

One time I was hunting in Stanislaus national forest, at some old CCC era campgrounds. A ranger *just happened* to be passing by in his truck and saw me. He rolled down his window and said "you can't do that". As we chitchatted back and forth, he eventually changed his tune and said "well ... you can do it, but if you find anything over 50 yrs. old, you need to turn it in to the ranger station". Then he drove off, and I continued detecting. My math never was that good anyhow. Nor did he tell me where the ranger station was located (in town about 20 miles away? I dunno)

 

[mudpuppy]

Too Late!

While y'all were busy talking semantics, I upped and drove on down into Bliss from Michigan, 1500 miles one way, saluted some kid at the gate, drove right on in, fired up my F70 and swept up the whole base clean, got free food with the boys at mess, slept in a barrack, had the base commanders daughter tote me around in a jeep, (thank you Alvin York and Eric Holder) charged some sundrys at the PX, headed out at oh dark yesterday am, and home!...Oh, Felix, expect some sort of bill coming into FTP from the Bliss neighborhood soon?...just sign it and submit it to your acct dept under "good will" 'Local charity' event or somesuch...tax deduckable!
Mud

 

[garrybk]

Update
It is not just arpa that keeps me from detecting on ft bliss. It seems there is a lot of unexploded ordinance they prefer
People don't find the hard way.

 

[markg]

Wow, two truly geniuses at work in the same place.

In case anyone wants to argue with this statement, read the following definition of the word.

A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creativity, or originality, typically to a degree that is associated with the achievement of an unprecedented leap of insight. This may refer to a particular aspect of an individual, or the individual in his or her entirety.