The guy who sent this link it asked “Do they sell blaze orange jerseys in Radford, Va?”
Radford owns about 250 acres in Montgomery County that it really doesn’t use for much. The city lets people hunt there, but it’s not always hunting season. So Pathways of Radford, a bunch of people who really like trails, came up with a plan to make hiking, biking and and walking trails all over it.
All it took was city council’s permission, 300 or so hours of volunteer labor and about $1,500 for equipment and chain saw fuel. Six miles of trails opened with great hoopla in July.
But there is a problem.
City council made it clear that the area would still be open to hunters.
Source: blogs.roanoke.com/newrivernotebook
I just have one question: Can I hunt while riding a bike?
“City council made it clear that the area would still be open to hunters.”
Welcome to our world.
In New England, the only parks that do not allow hunting are in urban/suburban areas. These parks are generally too small for reasonable trail networks, crowded with pedestrians and horses, and in many cases are closed to mountain bikes.
This leaves us with state parks and certain conservation areas, which are generally open to hunting. I’ve been out many times over the past 20 years and heard shotgun blasts, too close for comfort.
I’m not one that supports irresponsible targeting methods, in fact, I don’t hunt and have never owned a gun, but this _is_ the good ole USA and we _do_ have a second amendment, which means that hunters have as much right to the woods as we do. It would be nice if they would make sure their targets are actually game animals, but we all know they do not. The answer is to share the woods.
1) Don’t go out during the prime hunting periods, generally between the hours of 6:00 AM and noon.
2) when you _do_ ride during hunting season, don’t ride alone.
3) Wear some sort of hunter-orange on the top half of your body.
4) Carry some sort of noise accoutrement on your bike that lets a hunter know you are not a game animal. I have a short set of sleigh bells I hook under my saddle, a trick I learned from a dog sledder I met around the lake massebesic trails many years ago.
We can get a long, but we need to show mutual respect.
http://www.texaselectricbikes.com/catalog/bike-rack-p-83.html
bike gun rack
bow hunting from a mountain bike
http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/hunting_articles/bikes.htm
beer hunting from a bike
drunkcyclist.com
There was a time when I would have given a shit, but who gives a fucking shit… I mean really.
Let the hunters shoot a few bikers; let a few families cry over lost loved ones; close the trails to bikers (who may have been instrumental to these trails not only being built, but also the whole thing being opened to everyone in the first place…)
Problem solved.
And the whole idea of the ‘second amendment’ argument ? Fuck that. For that kind of logic, yeah… dentex has the right idea. Get a gun rack, carry yourself some shotgun and shoot fucking back.
“I thought he was a terrorist shooting at me, so I unloaded on him. If I can’t ride my bike without being shot at, the terrorists have won, right?”
obama is all about some 2nd amendment, the right to wear sleeveless shirts, or whatever, AND he likes the environment, so he’d be all about some bike hunting. jonny – you’re gonna be a lawyer. can you tell me what the right to bare arms is all about?
Is it ok to shoot back if they shoot first?
Same problem all over this Mid-atlantic. Luckily Pa doesn’t allow hunting on Sunday. Also the use to Nite riders has greatly avoided too much over lap with our group. The Hunters are mostly the ones to complain. Especially when they don’t see deer.
I can tell right away who has hunted/been around hunters/lives in reality and who hasn’t.
Blaze orange is sufficient, bells on the saddle, bells on your dog’s collar, bells on your horse are a good extra step. I’ve been riding on hunted land for years & have never heard of an accident or even close call.
The forest isn’t some fucking wild west free for all.
Guys-
Last month here in WA, a young bear hunter set up above a popular hiking trail. He saw movement, he fired his high-powered rifle and killed a 47 year-old woman. Fucking idiot.
Not much up side to that story.
Mikey
“The forest isn’t some fucking wild west free for all.”
Ever been to my home state of North Dakota? No forest, just flat, and it’s fuckin’ nuts.
Shoot twice, field dress it, ask questions later when it’s at the meat-packers.
I’m glad I’m not a rider of mountains. I’ll stick to dodging traffic (which I would say is just as dangerous but the bullets are two-thousand pounds and a tick more visible).
SnakeHawk~
I were to do a Venn diagram of your Right to Bare Arms…
It would look like this:
In the town I grew up in Kentucky, its not uncommon to hear gunshots from the inside the kitchen when your eatin breakfast. No big deal…rednecks. Why in the hell would you actually go out in the woods to hunt anyway, over-achieving bastards. Truck huntin’ is how you bag the big game Plus, you also get to practice your Hank Williams for karaoke on wednesdays. Pretty fuckin amateur if you ask me.
I shot a bear last august the day before my best friends wedding. The wedding was in a remote northern town with very little paved roads. I’m a full time bike racer, so I had to bring a bike with me, so I chose the MTB. The afternoon was nice, and I had to stay around the house for a delivery truck to show up full of wine glasses, and bring them to the hall and help set up as I was the best man. My buddy told me they’d be here “in an hour or so” so I clipped in, threw the gun with the sling over my back and not 10 minutes later I ditched the bike, and the hard soled MTB shoe’s as they were loud on the ground, and started crawling closer to Mr.Black Bear and that was that. I got excused from best man duties until I could get him all skinned, cleaned and butchered. The MTB was a great choice, fast, quiet, comfortable and environmental.
venn diagrams are gay. just like me. just like that book “good to great.” that crap is gay. i want you to drop a k-means bomb, son. straight up cluster analysis. or for the tracking of data sets with multiple outcome variables, some of which might not be so obvious, show me the latent class analysis. sleepers will get you every time, dawg. (i wouldn’t know any of that nonsense if allison weren’t such a fucking genious.)
seriously, though – bare arms, bro.
In Mn I’ve hunted fr my bike for grouse. Sounds like mostly archery deer hunting which is a gig that doesn’t work (no shots taken) unless you have a clear close (sub 35yds.) vision of the animal standing still. Ride on and relax. Deer are chowing the shit out of rare plant communities all over the US. I arrowed and ate 5 deer last year from an area where overbrowsing had hammered a rare shrub and a special season was opened in the normally very protected, restricted area. It’s the most ecologically sound food around; local and no ag land requirements, and a way wilder experience than gardening is.
Any tits in this thread anywhere (other than those two gay nips above that is) ???
…#12 canuck…what town, bud ???…i was raised in foleyet, west of timmins, before it even had a road going into it…dirt roads & the only way in & out back then, was the canadian national rr…
…jeez, ay…in fifty years the population has jumped from maybe 275 folks to a staggering 350…wow, urban sprawl…will it never end ???…
Not a hunter or a gun owner, but a little reality is in order. The problem here is with the people who built the trials. They’re good people, and well intentioned, but a bit naive. The money sentence, “Everyone making the plans seemed to assume….” Well, the assumed wrong. When dealing with the government and the law, it is foolish to assume anything.
This reminds me of those people who build their homes by the airport, then get pissed about the noise.
riiiiiiight.
rather, posit a variant nomenclature-
a vin diesel diagram is what you were after?
A constitutional right to Ursine weapons?
in Michigan we just went mt biking at night.
hunters can shoot their pop guns from sunrise to 1 hour before sunset or something like that (or could been a while).
anyway, it was great. night riding is wicked awesome, and the rec areas generally were pretty cool with it.
there were a few times I wound up at fort custer and was unloading the bike while the hunters were unpacking their guns, but in general they use the same trails to get around to their favorite hunting spots and there are enough hunters there that they were used to only shooting into the open spaces… The occasional near by gunshots were a bit un-nerving so we wound up just riding mostly at night during hunting season…
I was riding my local ridge line trail one day when I heard a couple of gun shots off in the distance. A couple of miles down the trail I found a nice hunting rifle just sitting next to the trail. It seems the fuck-tard hunter had left it there when he went down the hill to find his recently slaughtered food animal(deer IS mighty tasty!). Too hard to carry both I guess. Lucky for him I’m half-way honest and left him and his un-secured firearm to it. Weird.
May I suggest vibrant, gala colors for the cyclists and strong (yet subdued)Tartan patterns for the hunters here? Thanks.
Yours,
Smalls
yeah, after noon the hunters are usually too drunk and their aim suffers, ok to ride on!