Trespassing, vandalism, erosion control and pressure from environmental organizations is what I"m seeing. It's not even the Jeeper's per se that are the cause. Here's a classic example: There was a really nice shooting spot up on Meadow Lake road out of Carleton that the family and I used to go to for a little sport on the weekends sometimes. It was a very large area with several 100 yard long log landings and acres of reprod. The land was private timber company land, owned by a company out of Australia. A couple of years ago the land was sold to Weyerhauser. Soon after it was posted no shooting. Fair enough, but it was only posted on one trail into the area. If you came in the back way, you never saw the signs. The area was just trashed. On several occasions we found things like a fiberglass boat dumped and shot to ribbons, a pickup camper dumped and torn apart. There was a camp trailer up there that someone had dumped and started to tear apart and burn. TV's and other junk were dumped randomly. There were signs that people were going up there and grabbing Christmas trees. Some of the trees were literately shot to pieces. Brass and shotgun hulls were everywhere. Lots of places where 4x4's had gone off the skid roads and torn up the land, with major erosion resulting. A couple of places somebody had done the side hill thing on road cuts, causing the hill side to collapse and the road to wash out. The Sheriff's Department would send a deputy up there occasionally to chase people off, but that had to be a bad experience for the deputies. I know I wouldn't want to chase armed drunks off of private land more than once or twice. Weyerhauser finally put up gates and completely closed the area. This is a pretty extreme example, but less extreme examples are pretty common, especially in areas close to the mainlines and public roads. Luckily, the same folks who do this sort of thing don't venture very far off the beaten path. The results are that access points to the deep back country are getting closed off with gates on private lands and the ditch / berm thing on public lands. Mostly the access points along or next to Highway 18, 6, and 26. Highway 30 access is still pretty good. Access to the hills from the Dallas area is pretty horrible, with lots of gated private land down that way. If I see this sort of thing (dumping, Vandalism, driving off the roads / trails) I'll turn'em in to the local Sheriff, but that is a loosing proposition. Most of the Sheriffs don't have the resources to do anything about it.
