Motorized Vehicle Tracks on Bear Island Trail
 

Walked the trail to the church yesterday and saw what appeared to be ATV tire tracks that disturbed the trail. Those trails are for hiking and not motorized vehicles or even trail bikes as they would get trashed. We need to call it out if we see it.

Just look at the width between the tracks, and the width of the track.
The tracks will lead back to someone.

It could have been the co-op, or even someone who owns the land that the trail is on.

Sort of.
Usually maintenance, safety, enforcement, or rescue personnel will use a full size ATV or UTV depending on what is at hand... but I have seen some think that a wide bicycle tire (Fat Bike or other) is an OHM.

The track width and nearly uniform separation is a telling sign that it may be a legal access... but not always.

Just not worth jumping to conclusions without discovery.

On March 4, 2021 the NHEC and Liberty Electric-NH were fixing the downed power line on Bear Island and other islands, and had small, open, four wheel style, single seat atv's with tracks for crossing the lake ice and island land so MAYBE that's what you see.

https://can-am.brp.com/off-road/us/e...k-systems.html ..... small one-seat machines with tracks? ..... there's another thread on this weather/wind storm, March 2nd or 3rd power down and they used small tracks to fix the power. Is very doubtful the tracked frozen ground could still show any tracks after six months of summer so who knows but BRP, Armand Bombardier, makes some hell-of-a-good very happening winter atv videos.

Is it actually posted for no wheeled vehicles?

I do know someone on Bear that has a 4 wheeler that does trail maintenance with it.

The Bear Island Forest - comprising some of the internal land of the southern 'half' of Bear - is signed to prohibit wheeled vehicles.
But there are a number of trails on the southern half of the island that lead to the church, so I do not know which trails the OP is referring to.
The trail leading to the church from the church docks is on private land owned by the church.

State law prohibits the use without direct landowner/land agent permission... it does not have to be signed against motorized use.

The only ''wheeled'' vehicles that must be posted against is DTV and bicycles. They have open access where they are not signed against usage.

What is a DTV?

Thanks

Dog Training Vehicle.

The NH Mushers pushed for it to avoid the cost of registering an ATV that was largely being used as a dead weight rolling rig with brakes for sled dog training.
It became even more important as the registration costs began to rise.

DTVs are legal in lots of trails, as they are not considered motorized (vehicle must be shut off)... and so do not follow under the change in statute that occurred about 2003/04 requiring motorized users to have positive signing.

Positive signing are the trail markers that are orange to signify a snowmobile trail access, and green with a picture/wording to signify an OHRV trail access.

Rail trails are usually marked with a red sign, and signify which uses are allowed during each season.