ATVs and Fair Chase

I came across this interesting post on the Dakota Backcountry Blog We have been having this debate in Vermont because the Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Johnathan Woods has pushed for a rule to open up some corridors on state owned land to ATVs. Currently all state land is closed to ATVs. There has been lots of push back to any opening of the corridors which are suppose to only be short connector trails to existing trails on private land. It sounds reasonable until you see what ATVs have done to public land out west, and do with illegal riding in Vermont.
I don't fully agree with the post below that they are also in violation of fair chase in all cases. Except for pulling out harvested big game and getting to trail heads that are open to other vehicles, I find ATVs offensive. But there are plenty of good reasons to restrict them with out using the fair chase argument. When I hunt in the west I'll only hunt wilderness and other land where they are banned. Otherwise it feels like hunting in a cloverleaf off an interstate. But that is my preference, Others may like that experience. To me they should be restricted to certain areas and then on existing road beds only.
What do you think?

Blogging About Hunting & Wildlife on the Northern Plains

ATVs and Fair Chase
2010 February 8
by dakotabackcountry

The Winter 2010 issue of Backcountry Journal, the quarterly magazine put out by the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers has an excellent article by Tom Wharton about ATV use in big game hunting, its impacts, and postulates that unlimited ATV use tips the scales too much in favor of the hunter. Together with improved weapons, optics, and other gadgetry, unlimited ATV use eliminates the fair chase ethic from hunting. It struck close to home; we’re involved in attempting to regulate ATVs on public lands in South Dakota at the present. Hunters out here are divided.

Read the whole article at the Backcountry Journal

ATVs on State land?

From the Vermont News Guy blog:

Science, Anyone?

July 10th, 2009

No surprise that environmentalists are against the Agency of Natural Resource’s proposed rule allowing all-terrain vehicles on state land.

Nor that more than a thousand rank-and-file Vermonters, some (though by no means all) encouraged by green groups, have flooded the ANR’s mailboxes (electronic and “snail”) expressing their opposition, often their outrage, as the Burlington Free Press put it. There are a lot more environmentalists than ATV riders in this state.

What might be a little more unexpected is the quiet but indisputable disagreement from another faction: the agency’s own scientists.

The last time those scientists officially spoke on the matter, the Board of State Land Stewardship “unanimously agreed…that the existing ANR regulation (prohibiting) ATV use…should not be relaxed.”

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