Poll: litter

[KGNC]

My property has about 3/4 mile of road frontage, all wooded. and it's about the only location on this road that is not in view of a house. So I seem to get the majority of the stuff that gets thrown out. The last couple of years we take a spring saturday to pick up the stuff. first time we did it we had more than a pickup load of stuff. Not near as much now, but more than there should be.

[Murf]

My summer place has a double whammy against it, but mostly just wintertime. 

First I own a small peninsula between two busy lakes, since the lakes are joined by a relatively narrow stretch of water the current that results means there is very rarely ever enough ice to safely support snowmobile traffic. In fact there have been more than a dozen drownings there over the years from people trying (unsuccesfully) to cross the gap. As a result, we carved a portage trail across our land to allow the snowmobilers to safely bypass the dangerous area. This was part of the problem.

Secondly the cottage is the end of a long dead end road, so anybody coming down the road gets dumped into my yard.

The problem is, between the road dumping sledders out onto my place, and the portage, which is a natural 'choke point' for traffic. If they feel like stopping for a bite of food, a beverage or three, or even to build a fire to warm up and take a break, they do it in the sheltered little bay in front of my place.

To make matters worse, they leave the trash on the ice.

Every spring I have a great assortment of trash on the bottom of the bay, everything from spark plugs to beer cans & bottles, both broken and not!!

One year I even found a helmet! How do you drive away and forget your helmet??? 

[Ron Wenrich]

"One year I even found a helmet! How do you drive away and forget your helmet???  "

Do you think all those beer cans had anything to do with it?   

[Murf]

Yup, more'n likely. 

I was there one weekend when they pulled 4 bodies and 5 sleds out of the narrows. When the police diver asked about the 5th sled, a relative of one of the victims said "Oh yeah, that was his from last weekend. He was showing the others where he went through."

When they brought one body up there were still 3 full beers in his pockets.

[sawguy21]

More areas are being closed off to recreation because of littering and destruction of the soil cover. That puts a lot more pressure on the remaining ones.
I stopped at a reservoir to fish and found a mallard drake tangled in discarded fishing line. I carefully cut the line away, the poor bird was too weak to fight. I have no idea if it survived. I really get upset when I see pull tabs and fishing line left lying around.

[Murf]

"Tread Lightly" seems to be an unknown term to some. 

While we do have some problems in this regard, I would still rather have a small area (10' x 500') of my land chewed up by carbides and tracks than have to fish bodies out of the lake.

The ones that annoy me are the ATV'ers who feel that since they have "go anywhere" vehicles, that it's Ok to 'go anywhere'. I've even had more of the 'back lands' behind my cottage chewed up by ignoramuses on 4 wheelers than think about. At least they generally don't leave trash behind though.

I found out who one of the culprits was though, a neighbour, he figured if I wasn't there he was free to use my land. I discovered this when I showed up with friends, in their truck, he even had the nerve to stop my buddy and tell him off for driving so fast in the driveway (about 2 miles long) because his kids were riding up ahead. He nearly swallowed his tongue when I put down the (tinted) back window and said hello.

 

[SwampDonkey]

Reminds me when I was out for a ride with mother on the farm and this moose hunter we stopped and talked to said he had permission to ride his 4x4 pickup on the farm. He had a nice beat down path up two full rows of potatoes by then. Mother said, that's funny I own this land and you never came to me to ask anything. And no one said you could ruin our potato crop.    The next few sentences I don't dare repeat. Once one idiot makes their own path/road through your crop the whole hurd follows. 

[Den Socling]

I have done a lot of camping out of canoes. often times 'traditional' trips get going on the same part of the same river at the same time of year each year. one time, 'my' group met another group who turned out to be mostly Pennsylvania State Police. One year, they ended up camping in a spot 'round the bend and down stream from us. That evening, we heard a lot of shooting. just figured the cops were enjoying some target practice. Next morning we packed and floated down stream and the cops were gone but we were shocked to find the crystal clear stream full of shell casings and beer cans shot full of hole. I said the other day that there are good people everywhere you look but this memory reminds me that there are some stupid people where you wouldn't expect to find stupidity.

[SwampDonkey]

On our crown reserve waters we have federal wardens responsible for monitoring the salmon angling. And why I mention crown reserved waters is the fact that these rivers are most commonly chose for river camping because of their remoteness. Wardens are often camoflaged and hidden along the bank of the river , or sometimes they float silently along side your canoe to check your license and crown waters fishing permit and length of the salmon you kept. I'm sure if those guys where shooting cans out over the river with wardens near by they would not get a very welcome greeting from the wardens.