So water witching works to find not only water, but natural gas lines and aluminum cans?

Come on. If it were scientific, it would only work on certain things, not on just anything buried underground.

And it would work only with certain kinds of rods, not coat hangers, tree branches, etc.

OK, so "water witching" is not using copper rods to locate underground pipes. Water witching is using a peach limb to try and find a good spot to dig a water well. It's an old-timer thing that supposedly those guys that dug hand dug wells years ago used to find a "good" water source. I am pretty sure this was complete BS.

Walking around with copper rods to find underground pipes is actually a thing, and does work to a certain extent. I learned this from some sprinkler contractor guys at a large ranch that I had a summer job at in high school (Red Adair's ranch, as a matter of fact) . I have used it in the past with pretty good success. I got fascinated with this at one point because it does actually work, so I spent a bit of time researching it. It has nothing to do with magnetic fields and some of the other outlandish things you read. It works as well for plastic conduit and PVC pipe as it does for metal pipe.

I read a very plausible explanation that I think explains why "divining rods" work and I really think this is the correct explanation. A guy on a forum had mentioned he was driving across his pasture in his tractor and felt where he had buried a water line years ago. From the naked eye, he could not see or feel the dip (or hump) walking across it and looking at it, but it was very noticeable in his tractor. His theory was that you can never really get the ground back to *exact* grade after burying a pipe of the like. When you walk across these areas with the rods, you unknowingly transfer that slight "jolt" through your body to the rods and that is what causes them to cross.

My parents in the hill country have had 2 crappy wells. 1-2 gallons a minute. Well company drilled 20 years ago in several likely spots and we had thousands of dollars invested in some nice post holes.

Recently had a guy come out and witch for asource and in the middle of a field away from anywhere you would think there would be a stream the dude hit. Drilled right where he said. Now they have a 30 gallon a minute well.

I don't know how it works but it does.

Yeah….

I'm squarely in camp bullcrap myself. Im not sure exactly what makes it so prevalent as a thing but I believe it mostly to be confirmation bias.

I'm a science guy. If if can't be explained with science or tested with the scientific method, I call total absolute and unequivocal bullcrap.