I sure some of y
ou may have wondered what the criteria is for the trails to be closed for the month of December. Well here is some of the history/details behind that.
There are very few early muzzle loader hunters. So ICORR compromised with USACOE (our boss) in not closing the trails in October many years ago. Closure in December is just simpler to do because the hunting season closes for 3 days. In reality if we wanted to we could close the entire system November 25th – Jan 29th… but ICORR is inclined to only close the trails for the heaviest user seasons. The actual hunting dates were: (similar dates from year to year)
Early muzzleloader: Oct 15-23.
Late muzzleloader: December 19-Jan 10.
Shotgun seasons were: December 3-7 December 10-18
November antlerless November 25-27th.
January antlerless Jan 11-29.
History of hunting in the area precedes the bike trails and for the sake of safety we close during the month of December because shotgun season is the heaviest hunting season.