Curious to know the main reason?

[rodp]

I'm glad you asked the question as it's been insightful for me too. I do feel disappointed by the past experiences farmers have had due to poor conduct of those visiting their land. I think about the historic opportunities that will be missed.

I live in a farming town and have a few local permissions, but when you find a historic site of interest and there's some farmland nearby, that's when I try to seek permission to detect!

You get bad apples in everything though, not just detecting or shooting, I've met the odd farmer I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw him. You just have to accept there's bad un's in everything.
I get on well with the ones I deal with, they're a good blokes and I repay their kindness when I can. Off over to a farm Saturday to drop off eight new signs one wanted making, the usual "Beware of the dogs" and "Strictly no parking" sort of thing, and no doubt I'll be there a while putting the world to rights
Those that don't want anything to do with "outsiders" are welcome to it, it's their right to be like that, and it doesn't affect me at all. Some do miss out on the odd benefit or two though I suppose, for example we used to make roll over covers for grain trailers etc amongst other things (which aren't cheap) and I've handed those over in gratitude for being allowed on the land. Also gave two extremely large mesh hay store roll up doors to one, again probably £1200/£1500 worth. Semi retired so just make smaller stuff now, but even those can be several hundreds of £££ . But, at the end of the day I'm happy with the permissions I have, and the original post was just curiosity, no harm or sarcasm intended whatsoever.

 

[Booga13]

I stumbled accross this thread whilst looking for suggested ways of asking for permision to metal detect and it's been a fanstastic insight into a landowners viewpoint, at least 50% of which hadn't even crossed my my mind but now that I've read them completely understand and agree with, I would feel the same way were roles to be reversed! I was about to start pinging out requests to a selection of local farmers/landowners but I think, for the time being at least, I'll hook up with a small local group on organised digs until I can retire to a smallholding on the Welsh borders and detect my own land!
I signed up to the forum just to say thank-you for the insight, it's been a cracking read

 

[ianm641]

interesting and truthful replies i used to have a couple of small wooded areas where it was mainly squirrel and wood pigeon but kept me happy and in the fresh air , used to ring the farmer before arrival to check on shooting lines and leave a orange hi viz at the wood entrance, bottle of whisky at christmas and wine for his good lady and all was good but when they eventually retired and sold up despite a good word from him to new owners it all came to a stop, have recently gone back to air rifle shooting (spring not pcp) and know i cant offer vermin control and take vast numbers of rats per night due to the rifle setup i have i am a member of a club so can shoot most days but still miss the ability to just wander in the woods and make a small dent in the vermin population