Not trying to ressurect the dead but this is still continuing. My parent have a cabin in broken bow. The national forest is on the other side of the street from us which is where the trails begin. Or so I thought. After a couple rides back getting fuel, lunch, maintenance, etc. we ran into a game warden. I have a copy of the oklahoma atv trail riding magazine stating all the laws, do's and don'ts. They are very vague to say the least. I was ticketed for riding on an 80 foot stretch skirting the road to get to the marked trail. He knew that we meant no harm and wore safety gear and took all precautions etc. . After chatting with him and signing my ticket I learned a few things. This area is becoming more and more popular. Especially by people from Dallas. He also said he rides himself but not as much anymore because of these people that come and break laws making it unsafe which leads to more trails shut down. I now know I cannot use that small trail (which is not marked for no OHV use) and have to trailer my bikes up to go an 1/8th of a mile and offload there. I have no problem with doing that other than the convenience factor. I just think these trails need to be marked just as frequently as they are going to hand out tickets for them . Otherwise, I would have never gotten this ticket to begin with. The highway clearly states when you need to adjust your speed, as does a stop sign when you should stop. End rant.
The way the forest service goes about deciding which trails stay open is this.
They take into account records of tickets issued, accidents, and land destructed not on a designated trail and decide what trail networks stay open each year based on these things. Needless to say, they are dwindling. We need to police the others all the time so incidents don't continue to mount and kill our sport. I am going to write a letter asking for more signs marking trails and ohv rule pamphlets available at all gas stations etc. This everyone could win. Its the idiots that have no respect of authority that will continue our demise.