Metal Detector

[Kurt]

Tom.

Wyoming is pretty laxed for dredging. It really does surprise me that they don't let you do it in Rock creek for just the reason you said. Montana and Washington it is almost impossible to run a dredge. In Wyoming the DNR came out one day in the Medicine Bow when we where dredging and they saw the benefit it made for fish habitat giving them a new food source and the junk the dredges sucked off the river bottom and they gave it a thumbs up.
Mercury is easy to reclaim from river bottoms and amalgamated gold. It does not float when you disturb the river bottoms.

But the dredge regulations don't bother me as much as the iron gated springing up more every year closing old established trails all over the National Forests every where in this Country closing access to people that just cant walk anymore.

[Tom Herman]

Kurt,

I think there is a general lack of common sense in government nowadays... I work for one of the natural resource agencies, and there is a general pressure to regulate people out of using the land. It irritates the bejeezuz out of me.
And, yes, the gates popping up everywhere... I went back to a favorite rock collecting site in the Carolina mountains recently, and the road was bulldozed and cut with tank traps every hundred feet or so... The sign said that you welcome to collect, as long as you didn't disturb the water, or dig... Very generous of them... I won't tell you what I did, but I came back with a very nice collection of minerals and crystals.
This reminds me of a fire I was on in 2013 near Ellensburg, WA: The USFS destroyed the road into the radio site years ago, so we had to hike up this mountain repeatedly to install and service the site. They refused to ATV us (thanks a hell of a lot! We were keeping their forest from going up in smoke!).
Each time we took a different route, and we finally hit the Mother Lode: I found a ledge dripping with green flint and quartz crystals.
The USFS people were getting pissy about our finds (they thought we may have raided a Native American site on the green flint), so we just refused to share any more information with them.
It was funny as heck! All of the State folks would come to the truck every night to see what sort of goodies we found that day. Everyone got a nice selection of rocks. By law, we could take 25 pounds a day without anyone's say so, and what I do on my lunch hour is my own business. There is more than one way to skin a cat....

-Tom

[Kurt]

Tom.

Someday they will push and restrict the people like the British did and the people will revolt like they did April 19th 1775 to Sept 3rd 1783.
Maybe that is why the liberals are disarming the general public now already.