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Comment by zucked | Hacker News Reader

Yes - 100%. There is zero excuse for not knowing/abiding by local rules/regulations. The USFS, BLM, and others have troves of information posted online.

A local area has gone to great lengths to put up signage stating that unlicensed off-highway vehicles are NOT ALLOWED to travel the main stretch of USFS fire road. So what are people doing? Screaming up and down that very road on unlicensed off-highway vehicles at 2/3x the posted speed limit. Shooting is supposed to be confined to specific areas with backstops - instead you've got dingbats firing off hundreds of rounds into valleys with NO BACKSTOP and they aren't even cleaning up their brass.

It's a goddamn shit show.

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To add to all of this great info, to any prospective dispersed campers: please use high-quality, recent, ideally official maps of your choosing to ensure you're on the sort of land you think you are. Boundaries can change and notes on spots aren't always up to date. My area involves a mix of national park, national forest, DNR land, and private land, and I regularly see dispersed campers getting ticketed for unwittingly setting up on the wrong side of the (unmarked) park boundary. That's tame compared to what can happen if you're trespassing on private land.

The keyword (primarily for federal land) is MVUM. It stands for Motor Vehicle Use Map. It will be an awkward PDF. Green dotted will indicate trails you can drive on. If you can't pull off all trails to camp little dots will indicate where that's allowed.

BLM and USFS websites have horrible navigation. Just Google the name of the forest with "MVUM". You might also need to first Google forest name + district map and then Google MVUMs for the specific district.

Another option is the MVUM layer in CalTopo (the name comes from the fact it started as just CA, but it's national nowadays)

That's a really good point. Although not every agency produces good dispersed campsite maps, they typically do have at least boundary maps on their website.

Avenza (iOS/Android app) has done all the heavy lifting - you can download area maps and your position will be shown correctly on the map if you allow location services. Most of the BLM/USFS land I've been to recently produce compatible maps.

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