I lead jeep ride every year. We travel across BLM land that has been fenced and is used for cattle. Out in the desert, closing a gate that needs to be left open might meant he cattle can't get to water. Opening a gate and leaving it that way might mean the cattle are spread all over the place. Might take days or weeks to get them back.
We've been doing this for a long time now, decades. The recent problem is eco-freaks, aka Greenies, purposefully change the position of the gates. They don't like it that a cattleman can use the land by paying rent per cattle unit. They don't even like cattle (they're veggies.) Worse, we're not allowed to shoot the mountain bikers that do the damage. Basically what they've done is inject their own political feelings into vandalism.
Because I don't live there, I don't get the chance to meet the cattlemen. But a friend who dose live there talks to them from time to time (sometimes the holder of the lease changes). So now we do know that one of 5 gates needs to always be closed.
We had a minor confrontation about 5 years ago. We got to that last gate and it was open. I was the tailgunner that day, so I got out and closed it. About a mile ahead we came to the intersection (Dead Horse Point Road) and there were a couple of hostile bikers. They demanded to know why we'd closed the gate. They'd opened it and left it that way on purpose. So one of our group tried to be kind of polite and told the guy "we closed it to keep the cattle in". The biker then said he'd left it open so his friends who were following wouldn't have to go to the trouble. Besides, he didn't see any cattle. Then I recalled seeing a few bikers about 5 miles back, having a rest off to one side.
To them, leaving a gate open was no big thing. So we can easily guess they're city folks. They come to the desert to play. At least they don't litter. And we're not allowed to shoot them.
Normally a meeting where someone starts to become confrontational can get tense fast. Your're 10 or 15 miles from any kind of habitation or store of any kind. The greenies don't mind getting in your face. That's bad form with a line of 30 jeeps. Nearly everyone would like to get out and have an old fashioned tussle. Worse for them, its not a line of jeeps, its an armed convoy. I don't know for a fact that every jeep has a gun inside, I only know about mine and my friends, but then I'm pretty sure some have more than one gun, and lots of tire irons.
If the bikers were armed, I have no idea where they'd hide it. Them trick pants made out of silk hides nothing (I know, its spandex.)
So were kind of at a stand off. Jeepers hate bikers and bikers hate jeepers. Hikers hate us all. And the land owners hate most of us, just for good measure. The land users, like the cattlemen have a huge investment in both time and money, so they don't like anyone who messes with their cattle or gates.
Leave the gate how you found it.
