Permits & rules
What counts as hand tools
Casual-use collecting on ordinary BLM is built around hand tools. If it needs a motor, a compressor, or a truck-mounted boom, you have left hobby collecting.
Usually fine (on open BLM, under the cap)
- Rock hammer, crack hammer, chisels
- Hand shovel, pick, pry bar you can carry
- Screens and buckets
- Hand rake
Not casual-use tools
- Explosives
- Backhoes, winches used as excavators, pumps for sluicing a public wash
- Anything you would need a mineral materials permit or claim to justify
Wilderness and some ACECs tighten this further — sometimes no shovel at all. The unit order beats this list.
Informational only. Ask the field office if your “hand tool” looks like a machine.