That’s another part of the problem. I hadn’t seen a TWRA officer in the first 3 years I went to TN. I bought the daily passes the first couple years then said f*** it. Got caught 2 years ago and the ticket is $10. I asked him how much they get out of the ticketing and he said… $10. Court cost/fees on the $10 ticket are $350 and TWRA sees none of it. The riding scene exploded in TN and there wasn’t a good plan in place to deal with it. They should have done this 4 years ago and not let the hunting license s*** slide in my opinion. On the flip side, they will need to actually put more effort into trail repair/maintenance outside of knocking a tree over to block a mudhole once a year to warrant the extra cost. I’m being facetious there obviously, but the trail “maintenance” is severely lacking by most people’s standards. Personally, I’d rather they let them all go to s*** and 90% stop riding them because they don’t want to scratch their $40k Polaris. Those are the fun trails….
I think that depends on what they want the endgame to be. That entire area was first and foremost for hunting to begin with. From the increases it doesn’t seem like they are too worried about running off anybody in the riding community in regard to profit. I think most people will still pay that $300 to ride if they go to TN more than once a year and they know that. Hopefully with the additional funds they can keep the main trail system maintained enough for the people that just want to sightsee that are the most vocal. If they had a better “official” map where they could outline where the maintained trails are versus others would be helpful as well. That’s how the mud park near me is. They built a high line that they maintain and advertise it as such, but they don’t do anything to the other trails.
