Littering in the national forest

[Corvus Corax]

This time of year especially, I have to respond to power outages caused by Mylar balloons. Something about Father’s Day and graduation ceremonies. I’d chew my family and friends ass if they launched a bunch of garbage into the sky to celebrate my life!

 

[browning2480]

Where I grew up it was common for the generation before me to just throw trash out the window while driving and the same with hunting. I remember going to Colorado hunting back in the early 2001 or so. I didn’t think much about it then, but we packed in with horses and camped back in a Wilderness area. I took my kids back to that spot in 2017 and was shocked at the trash that was there. I am sure it was from us back 16 years ago. I remember the old guys we went with were bad about just digging a hole and filling full of stuff. Old propane bottles and all kinds of stuff. I felt bad and my boys and I packed out what we could. Of course I did lots of stuff with that group that I wouldn’t do today.

 

[Ekrider]

I once watched 2 hunters on horseback pound a 24 pack of beer while on their horses (rifles in the other hand) , I never wondered where all the beer cans in the middle of nowhere Came from anymore.

 

[AK_Skeeter]

Hunters are some of the worst offenders when it comes to leaving their trash behind. It amazes me the number of times when scouting the woods for good locations to sit and watch a deer trail that I find trash left by other hunters. These are off hiking trail locations that hikers would not have been to. Not that the hiking community is perfect by any means but decades of "pack it in/pack it out" messaging has made a difference. Similar messaging has been lacking in the hunting community.

Shooters are worse.
I shoot at a local gravel pit and every Tuesday haul off to the dumpsters
a pickup bed full of "targets"....
TVs, washer/drier, propane tanks, oil drums, paper targets , plywood, etc.

 

[justinspicher]

My biggest gripe is picking up brass that’s left behind in some of the rock quarries and larger areas that folks frequent to shoot. On the plus side I have a TON of brass, but I don’t reload.

 

[tt_johnsclist]

I pick up a hundred Mylar balloons a year off our property. Public land east of the Mississippi you can’t go too far without finding spent shotgun shells. Shotgun shell wads all over the Great Lakes beaches .


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[pk_]

Empty thermacell cartridges and spent pads...

It’s not just hunters it’s in all aspects of life, go look at places where public shooting is allowed, go look at popular shore fishing spots, look at a movie theatre or ballpark after the crowds leave(I know this isn’t nature but still). Humans have become pretty disgusting.

I try very hard to pack everything out and others trash I can reasonably gather. But once in a while accidents happen man, sometimes I realize I dropped something on a hike, if it isn’t on an actual trail good luck finding it.

Even on our boat I have a long handled fish net and my kids know if floating trash gets close enough to the boat it’s their job to scoop it up, it’s almost become a game for them...

 

[beachbunny]

i live at the beach.
can't stand those things and am always picking them up .
i did have a balloon get away by accident once. I was teaching my 10 yr old girl about neutral buoyancy while diving and i tied her favorite stuffed animal ,a little lamb called lambie,to a balloon and we got distracted and a crosswind in the house sucked it out the door and my friend was fishing on the dock,
is that lambie???
last we saw lambie was climbing through 500 feet heading NW.
worked in glacier that season, sent stuffed bears, moose and mountain goats to her to make up for it.
enjoy your kids men, they grow up too fast.
next thing you know you're trying to change the subject from makeup and birth control to diesel engines!

 

[alexanderg23]

Had to

 

[Sled]

Had to
View attachment 190705

 

[Downeaster]

Dont know if anyone has called this out previously...but the insanely rooted premise that carrying your trash out into the forest and shooting the hell out of it, somehow doesnt make it littering...makes my blood boil!

 

[Rokbar]

A ton of tree hugging hikers where we hunt near a Wilderness area east of the big river. Seems everyone has to have a dog now. Mind you this is a Wildneress area and NF, not a city park. But I don't know how many of the little plastic bags full of dog crap I've been finding. These huggers pic up Fido' s crap in a plastic bag off the trail, then throw down through the woods. Normally I get them and lay them back in the trail. Always around trail heads!

 

[Gir]

Hate seeing areas trashed. I'll pick up after you once in a while, but I won't like it.

 

[300 shortmag]

this is a real problem in our country and sadly to say hunters are just as guilty as the rest, i have probably litter as well in the past unintentionally, but always try to make a conscience effort to pack out more than i pack in. really if we would kindly inform others of the need to keep our forest clean we might see an improvement in the future.

 

[Brooks]

Sunday afternoon in the NF. You would think if the hoppers are that full they would haul their garbage to someplace else or take it home and get rid of it.

 

[mtn]

If it's truly passive, I think there's a fine line between a genuine accident and reckless carelessness. If I were the citing authority, I would much rather give the person an option to go back however far it was and pick up 3x the amount of trash than give them a citation that is nothing more than an inconvenience to their bank account.

 

[WannabeHunter]

The Earth doesn't care if the litter was accidental or not.
It's presence is the violation. Ticket should be issued regardless of intent.

 

[mtn]

The Earth doesn't care if the litter was accidental or not.
It's presence is the violation. Ticket should be issued regardless of intent.

Ah, yes. The earth would rather see a black mark on the record of the litterer combined with the picking up of only the items they dropped, rather than the individual cleaning up a much larger area? For some, perhaps the citation being issued will change that behavior. From what I have experienced, the citation usually doesn't. That's the beauty of discretion.

 

[WannabeHunter]

Ah, yes. The earth would rather see a black mark on the record of the litterer combined with the picking up of only the items they dropped, rather than the individual cleaning up a much larger area? For some, perhaps the citation being issued will change that behavior. From what I have experienced, the citation usually doesn't. That's the beauty of discretion.

Edited: Deleted original post bc this is silly to even talk about. Sorry I even commented. Good Day

 

[mtn]

How the hell did you get that from my comment?

I thought you were responding to my comment. I had given a couple of options, one was to issue a citation, the other was to use it as a teaching moment through some extra manual labor. You stated ticket should be issued regardless of intent...in which case (in my opinion) the issuing authority couldn't justifiably require the litterer to pick up more than what they dropped.

If the person with the ticket book chooses to use their discretion, I was just saying the earth would benefit more from making them clean up the whole campground, trailhead, shoreline, etc. rather than just issuing the ticket. That's all.