Quote:
Originally Posted by John Mercier
My information is that I was the President of the NDATV for years.
The ATV was an active trail... and you are not allowed to recreational shoot within 300 feet of it.
We had F&G in there repeatedly, repeatedly picked up the trash and shell casings by the bucketful, and had several signs with bullet holes that could not be made without shooting across the Class VI road.
Since the trails also moved through the woods, and the shooting was not 300 feet from all of them also, it was not technically legal.
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If we are speaking of the same place - there is no class IV road that traverses that sand pit. The class IV road starts at the end of Rines Rd which is beyond the entrance to the pit.
For as long as I can remember, and we're going back 20-30 years or so there has always been evidence of ATV riding in there and from what I understand from the former owner like the shooting he was aware of it but didn't care to do anything about it so long as there wasn't any problems. This predates the NDATV club's existence.
At some point the second owner had that area logged out and as such skidder trails and a landing was created above the pit. Those skidder trails eventually turned into defacto ATV trails but I am fairly certain that happened before the ATV club came into existence and "technically" that riding was illegal as I don't think anyone in there had written landowner permissions at that time. It is possible that my timing there is off and in fact the club did exist, I don't know for sure.
Later on when I know ATV riding became legal all throughout the devils den area, the pit in particular was used by many to park and thus go off and ride. For a short time there was shooting still going on in there along with the ATV riding. At that time as well I did see signs and even a trash can appear for the purposes I assume for shooters to pick up after themselves which never really happened. At that point I don't know who owned the property only that so long as it appeared it was open for use I did shoot in there a number of times.
To your point and efforts to clean and sign that area...nothing gets me more mad than to see a free and open resource like this to be abused and lost. I loathe anyone who will leave trash there, shoot to hell signs and other pieces of infrastructure including the gate that was installed. One of the last times I was in there the F&G did a drive through and stopped to talk to me and my shooting companion. We actually had a pretty long chat about the goings on and he told me of the challenges they were having in there, in fact telling me that the area would likely close due to all the factors he had mentioned. Due to the increased ATV riding activity alone I figured as much since having riders and shooters in the same area is an accident waiting to happen, but ultimately as you say the lack of respect and trash left was why things were shutdown in there.
I'll also mention that there were times when I was in there where there were shooters that were shooting in areas I personally felt were unsafe are arguably illegal, nevermind in a manner that made me uncomfortable and not conducive for the layout of the spot. It was bound to happen and I don't fault whoever owned the property from closing it. It's just sad and unnecessary that it happened. Unfortunately nobody can be there all the time to babysit what was going on and I am certainly empathetic to the F&G as well at the ATV club to make attempts to keep it open for dual use only to have those efforts thwarted by the few irresponsible morons who had zero respect for the resource that had existed for years and now is no longer.