Duh, it's the lore Innit?

The capacity of metal detectorists for thickness never ceases to amaze even me. You'd think a normal person taking up a hobby (or getting involved with anything at all) would first make sure they knew the law which concerns participation in that activity. It seems that modern life teaches us this, what is the law about using my car on the road, if a rotten branch from a tree in my garden falls onto the pavement and injures somebody? When we go walking in a national park, can we build a fire and cut down some little pine trees to fuel it, things like that.  Not so a metal detectorists it seems. There is a very revealing thread on a metal detecting forum near you  which has been picked up by some blogs too. Responsible metal detectorist has a thread on this and also Janner. This is amazing:

I posted a reply myself saying surely if the landowner didn't lose it then it must be ours to keep. In all honesty I really thought this was how it was  until I read a reply to my post which the replier added a link. For some reason I couldn't open that link on my computer but googled a few words from it and came across this article here... I came across a few sites that explained the law regarding this in lawyer terms that were hard to understand, but the link above seemed to be the best one to read even though it took me a few reads for it to sink in. So it seems that all the finds we make on a permission really all belong to the landowner and we only get to keep what the landowner doesn't want himself. As I said on that forum, your never too old to learn something new.

But perhaps it would be better to do the learning before beginning the hoiking.  Of course "Farmer Brown" on the Heritage Action website has repeatedly been telling his readers this for well over a year now. It's just a mouse-click away for any metal detectorist with a computer, yet because all their pals are saying nasty things about Heritage Action, none of them are able to use that information to their own benefit. Perhaps attitudes of entitlement and disdain for alternative well-argued viewpoints need to change in the artefact hunting community.