Almost 20 Pine Ridge Road residents showed up to the Brown County Commissioners meeting on Aug. 21 to ask the board to vacate a portion of their road as a way to prevent a hunting parking lot being built at the end of it.
The commissioners ended up denying their application because they did not want to “abandon” public access to a state forest area.
The Indiana Department of Natural Resources had planned to put parking spots for two to three pickup trucks at the end of the road where it connects with Yellowwood State Forest as part of their Invitation to Conservation program. The program’s goal is “to improve opportunities for outdoor activities in nature” and one of the program’s core concepts is “enhanced access to public lands,” according to a letter objecting to the Pine Ridge Road petition to vacate by DNR staff attorney Ihor Boyko.
“This initiative is to get more people engaged in hunting so this tradition doesn’t continue the (downward) trend it’s on,” Division of Forestry forester Mike Spaulding said at the commissioners meeting. “A part of that is to improve access to public lands. The pressure is high on public lands, but a lot of that is due to access. There are a lot of areas that don’t have very good access.”
Spaulding said that the DNR is not singling this road out. “This is one of three that we’re doing right now, but we have many of these areas all over Yellowwood and Morgan-Monroe state forests,” he said.
The DNR also requested the portion of Pine Ridge Road in question be returned to the county’s maintenance inventory. Currently, residents who live there take care of the road.
Mike Day was one of the residents who spoke against the parking lot. He questioned why DNR wanted to bring more hunters to the area and if the county could afford adding the maintenance of another road to its highway department budget. Day also shared concerns about hunters going onto his neighbors’ properties.
“We don’t know where they are going to hunt or who they are or anything. They will be very close to private dwellings and residents. Young children routinely bicycle down that lane,” he said. “I am really concerned that the proposed access parking lot is not in a safe location.”
Other residents spoke about hunters parking on their properties and trespassing while hunting.
Dan Bright said one hunter sitting on the Yellowwood property line shot a shotgun 40 to 50 yards from him when he want back on his property on his tractor after hearing a hunter was nearby. “He started yelling at me about why I was there on my tractor. I’m going, ‘I’m on my own property.’ He goes, ‘You still don’t need to be back he=re. I’m back here hunting.’ He yelled at me for 15 minutes, then I just drove away, went back to my house. This was about 200 yards behind my house,” he said.
Bright said he also witnessed a hunter shooting a deer on his neighbor’s property two years ago. “I showed up there and these people were really scared because they knew weren’t supposed to do that, but they shot across property lines. It’s common in our neighborhood,” he said.
Resident Dick Buergler provided photos of 17 different parking spots along Dubois Ridge Road hunters utilize now to hunt in Yellowwood. He said only half of the spots are used now.
The DNR argued that vacating the portion of this road would make access to public land difficult. “A minority of property owners is improperly attempting to restrict access to the majority property owner in the areas,” the letter states, citing that nearly 150 acres of Yellowwood State Forest can be accessed by Pine Ridge Road.
The DNR would pay for the upgrades to the section of the road to make it passable and return it to the county’s inventory, according to Indiana Code. The road is currently single-lane and gravel. DNR would bring in gravel to expand the road, the letter states. “DNR absolutely is ready to assist with maintenance. We have many of these roads all over Brown County,” Spaulding said.
For example, the DNR has spent more than $10,000 helping install new culverts and gravel on Pumpkin Ridge Road, he added.
The section of Pine Ridge Road in question is on the county’s GIS system layer called “Pre-1937 roads,” Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner said. “Not officially abandoned, but they were no longer in use. We have hundreds of these in Brown County,” he said.
Magner said the general rule for his department is to not let go of any county road. “Even though there’s a section that is grown up, that can be used if we ever had a wildfire in state forest property. We need access to control that fire. We’re reluctant, just as a general rule, to abandon anything,” he said.
An inspection has to be done and approved before the county could add that section back to the maintenance inventory. Then Magner would petition the state to officially get it added back and the county would receive money for maintenance from the state along with gas and excise taxes.
Commissioner Jerry Pittman said it’s not their job to try and fix issues with hunters and landowners. He encouraged property owners to post no-trespassing signs. “Certainly, when you’re adjoining public land, you have to expect that there’s going to be public occupation of those lands,” he said.
“Honestly, I don’t think abandoning this road as a county road will have any effect on what happens out there other than possibly who winds up paying for some maintenance of the road. … You can’t stop the egress and ingress of traffic on that road into the DNR property.”
He also added that there was not a 100-percent consensus to vacate that section since DNR was not in support.
“DNR as the owner of that property would be no different than if somebody bought that five acres and built their own driveway and their own house. They are a property owner and they can have access and use their property how they deem it fit,” said county commissioner Diana Biddle.
