OK….(conjuring….working….conjuring….) TA-DA! I’m now in their place, which is…anywhere but where I am. Cuz, you know….this is MY place. Now that I’m in their place…or my place, actually, but in their place but still being me….or something….I’m observing. Looking around….processing….working….and oddly enough I do not give one pinch what other people are doing. Ahhhhhh….now I can get back to being me….in my place! Unless someone is running full speed directly at me with an Uzi shouting “aktar abba dabba allah yahtzee!!!” I DO NOT CARE what other people are doing. The people that continuously believe that they are constantly being “observed” or “watched closely” or “obvious fodder for a severe busting”….you’re not. For two years I used a hand trowel. When I got my Explorer I went to a shovel designed and built specifically for metal detecting. In the subsequent 10 years I have been approached by people here and there, mostly passersby. Not ONCE, at ALL, EVER have I received any kind of comment regarding my shovel. Know why? 99.999% of people just DO NOT CARE. This subject keeps coming up, out of the blue, time after time, for some reason. I’ve literally hunted a couple hundred different public and well travelled locations. Schools, parks, ball fields, fair grounds….No. Body. Cares.
When a person starts hunting ultra deep coins and that’s ALL they hunt, a trowel of any kind is just a tool that is going to make a serious mess in a lot of cases, a proper purpose built metal detecting-specific shovel can do SO much better with way less damage. I’m going to do what I know from experience to be right, not what the “optics” say I should or shouldn’t do.