spring...this almost sounds like a reversal of your previous opinions but let's not, as they say, "go there". I certainly agree with this latest statement that you've made. Happy Hunting.
I'm gonna go run over some plants in the wildlife preserve.

 

Well spring, it seems like you are starting to understand. This entire issue has nothing to do with what ATV is being ridden or even where it is being riden, it is about whether it is "appropriate" riding for the area. I have property that is privately owned and open for the public that I can ride on and literally do ANYTHING I want. That is what the property is set up for and whether anyone wants to believe me or not, NOTHING I can do on that 750 acres is going to be as bad for the environment as the new WalMart they are building here in town. ATV's are not the problem. Proper managemetn and the "bad apples" of the ATV world are the only ones causing damage.
Other than the area I mentioned above, all my riding is "tread lightly" oriented, and I drive a sport bike. It don't matter what your toy is, just how/where you choose to use it.

 

springdrl seems like just the sort of hypocrit that Gabe referred to. Probably lives in a nice house (carved out of forest or natural land, just like every other house) drives an SUV on a road that was also cut out of natural land, burns electricity and gas, has BBQ's every weekend (pollutes) mows her lawn with a big riding lawnmower, eats at McDonalds and throws away all the containers, etc etc etc.

You conservationists make me sick with your hypocrisy. The only conservationist I would respect would be a Grizzly Adams type. Lives in the woods with Big Ben and catches Salmon out of the stream. Probably the one and only true conservationist.

 

I don't know about anybody else, but I don't like to ride my sport quad where there are no trails already established - that would just bang up my nice ride. Besides, mine being a sport quad, I do most of my riding on an MX track, or at the dunes -and I'm sorry, but there isn't much damage my little quad can do to a mountain of mobile sand! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

As for the happy deer and pigs - well, maybe if Spring wasn't busy putting holes in their hearts (that's if Spring's a GOOD shot, and the animal doesn't go stumbling off into the forest to die a slow and miserable death) he/she might actually see a happy animal.

My .02

 

OK, I'm going to bring something into the equasion that no one here seems to have thought of. What about all of the forest fires in the west. I'm sorry but when trees and grass gets burned off, you have erosion, big time. Now this ISN'T caused by ATVs. There hasn't been one forest fire (as far as I know) that has been attributed to ATV usage. Most forest fires occur NATURALLY from lightening storms (and govenment "controlled" burns). If you want to do things the natural way, let the fire burn. I wouldn't want this to happen as 99.99% of the time someones property gets burned along with the natural resources.

Soil erosion? This is the same crap they've used in Pennsylvania to get their draconian ATV law passed this year. The idiots in the government just can't seem to get it into their thick skulls that when you have over 100,000 ATVs in PA, you need more than 188 miles of trails to ride them on. We here in Pa probably don't have half as many snowmobiles as ATVs, yet they have over 10 times the amount of trails as the ATVers have (2500 miles of snowmobile trails vs. 188 miles of ATV trails). Just in my county alone there are over 200 miles of snowmobile trails and 0 miles of ATV trails, so you start to get the picture.

Sandhopper,

I have one question I've been dying to ask someone who rides dunes. Why do you need a spark arrestor if all you're riding in is sand?

 

As backwards as PA sounds it's worse in Illinois were we don't have ONE SQUARE INCH of government funded riding areas for atv's {that I'm aware of}. And to top that off those of us who do ride atv's here will get busted for riding in the same areas that the snowmobiles get to use any other time.