..... I've got a buddy that lives in Port St. John that detects and he said it's very tricky to detect down there with all the laws.....
....Hit Cocoa Beach for modern drops. There is a club called the Treasure Coast Archaeological society....
A quick look at the map shows that Port S. John and Cocoa Beach are not that far apart. So why is it "tricky" for one person to find places to detect, while the next person(s) ,
in the exact same area, never lack for places to hunt ?
I have a feeling that scgator's buddy is "over-thinking" things. I suppose there's not a single place in the USA, that ... if any hunter went knocking on enough doors, asking enough pencil pushers, that ....sure, they would not find "express allowances" or "red-carpets" rolled out for them. They might find someone who says "no", hence finding it "tricky".
We had a case here in CA, at a beach near me, where it's just always-ever been detected, since the dawn-of-time. Then one day, someone sent in an inquiry by hitting the "contact us" button of the state of CA beach-park administration website people. Someone in Sacramento sent back a "no" (based on prohibitions of "harvest and collect" verbiage). Yet, you can detect till you're blue in the face, and .... it's never an issue. Thus it's obvious they got a lame "safe" answer from some pencil jockey, that means nothing at all.
So too do I wonder sometimes, when someone says they "can't find a straight answer" or that it's "tricky", is merely a part of the daisy-chain of "no one cared till you asked" psychology.