no-cents, it is true that just because a town doesn't have a specific rule saying specifically "no metal detectors", that someone might not still get their panties in a wad, (because they think you'll leave a mess, or harm the earthworms, or something else they morph to apply to you). Still though, the vast majority of towns that have "no specific rules" (which is most every town, by the way), you will go un-noticed and un-bothered, so long as you're not a nuisance in some other way, or haven't used "due discretion" of going at low traffic times. Because, sure, if you go at high noon, waltzing over beach-blankets, in the middle of an archie convention, then sure, even places with "no restrictions", you can still find a kill-joy. Solution? Avoid all such kill-joys. Go at low traffic times when the parks dept is not tending that park that day. I mean, "why kick a hornet's nest"?
But I wanted to respond to the notion that since you got booted, that therefore, that town's parks are "off-limits". I would not be so fast to conclude that. Because if, as you say, there is no specific verbage saying such a thing, then you could merely have been at the whims of a gardener having a bad day. Or because Miss nosy-parker called in to the cops that "there's a man with a knife swinging a geiger counter here" (so the cop is "duty-bound" to keep miss nosy neighbor happy).
What I'm trying to say is, I can think of LOTS of cities where an isolated incident like that happens here, or there, but never amounted to anything thereafter.
For example: When I first got into this hobby (the mid 1970s), the friend who got me into this, told me at that time, that "such and such city is off-limits" (a town about 30 minutes away from us). I had no reason to question him, since .... afterall ... he was my mentor, and what did I know? Flash forward to the early 1980s, and some new friends in the hobby I had, were coming in to the club meeting with old silver coins to show off. Eventually, I got their trust up, and they confided in me which park was their current stomping grounds. It was in that city that, years earlier, my other friend had said was "off-limits". But apparently my friends weren't having any problems, so I joined them, and got my share of old coins too from there. Never-the-less, it was always in the back of my mind "I thought this city was off-limits", so I always kept a wary eye out for anyone who might say something to us. Nothing ever was said, and we hunted it dozens upon dozens of times over the next year or two.
The flash forward to the early1990s, and I was talking to my older friend who had gotten me into detecting back in the 1970s. My curiousity got the better of me, so I asked him "who told you that such & such city was off-limits?". He had to think a few minutes, to recollect, because he couldn't even remember saying that. But then he remembered that it was his brother (who had been into detecting since the 1960s) that had told him that, so he was merely passing that info. on to me. Well later on, I had the opportunity to talk to that older brother, and asked him the same question "who told you such & such city was off-lmits?" And he too had to stop and think and try to remember. Eventually he recalled that back in the early 1970s, he'd been detecting a school-yard in that town. An irate janitor came out of the school building, and said "you can't do that here!". The dejected md'rs says "hhmmm, ok, how about the school down the street then?" The Janitor replies "no not there either". The md'rs thinks for a second and says "ok, well then how about the park downtown then?" By now the janitor is getting irritated, and just makes it simple for the guy "you can't hunt ANY public grounds in this city!". The janitor turns and walks back in to the building, and the md'r slinks away, sad that he "can't hunt any park or school in that city". He promptly tells his brother, who in turns, tells a few others, and they too, in turn, perhaps tell a few others, etc... And before long, it's just taken as "fact". 2 decades later, md'rs ask amongst themselves "who said?" or "is this really a rule or law here?" But you see how it can start? A mere isolated incident, at a single park, by a single barney fife. Yet years later, reality shows, that was an isolated incident that simply means you avoid *just* that one kill-joy.
This is just one example, but I think you get the point.
