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Howdy everybody. I've been away since '89 working in other parts of the world, and got my new $150 sticker eagerly looking forward to some Race Point fishin' & relaxin' my first year back. Yikes! How things have gotten worse.
When I started doing the ORV thing at the Race in '75, the sticker was $15.00/year, ALL of the beach was open, 2 dune trails were open (the inner and outer dune routes from RP to High Head beach), the Rangers did not bother any fisherman sleeping on the beach overnight, so we would curl up in a tire rut next to our trucks without worrying about getting hassled. As a city guy I would drive down from Boston every weekend without worrying about a closure.
Piping Plover nests would get “orange flagged” and when the birds fledged, and as warned, we would watch out for the little runts in our tire tracks and make sure we did not run over them, or watch that they did not get trapped in a tire rut as they occasionally did.
Then it ALL started changing for the bad. What started the downhill slide IMHO were the movies “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Convoy” that came out in about 1978/79. Those flicks spawned what we striper/blue fishermen lovingly called the “Yahoos” (well before the invention of the internet Yahoo.com)….as in…“Here come the f’n Yahoos!” Within months of the new CB radio craze these turkeys got brand new 4WDs and decided to go dune blasting like they would do in the TV commercials for 4WDs. Over the bushes, grasses and everything/everywhere else they could go. The Yahoos especially liked dune blasting at night with their Halogen lights and so they could turn them off to evade the overwhelmed Park Rangers. Plover chicks were found flattened in tire tracks so there was hell to pay.
The Yahoos started sleeping on the beach with no fishing gear aboard which obviously over-crowded the beach after awhile, and some started to go into Hatches Harbor and dig up the Soft Shell clams for steamers, even though there were signs saying “NO CLAM DIGGING.” They would cruise too close to the fore dune, let the family out to climb the dune stomping out the dune grasses, and then pee and crap openly on top of the dunes.
After a season or two of this, the dune trails were closed down due to damage, the rules were changed saying fishermen had to be actively fishing overnight, so it got risky to take a nap under penalty of a sticker suspension for the rest of the ORV season. During the ‘80s I watched the sticker rates start to climb, and beach section closures start, but the damage was done and it looks like from what I have read on this thread it has just gotten tougher. It only took a few to spoil it for the many.
Well the aforementioned gives you some prospective on how I feel we got started to where we are today, and hope to see you out there later this summer. Cheers.
Bottomgun
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