John Dahl WMA primitive camp #1

public land records

Thin — A single weak source put this here. Treat the location itself as unconfirmed, not just the details.

AREA RULE (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/regs/public-hunting-areas-special-regulations, read 2026-08-16): ODWC Special Regulations heading "John Dahl WMA" (county: Osage) -- Additional Restrictions, verbatim: "Hunter and angler camping is allowed in designated areas only during hunting seasons." LEGAL BASIS -- ODWC Department-Managed Area Rules, https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/regs/department-managed-area-rules, read 2026-08-16, verbatim: "Camping is limited to a maximum of 16 consecutive days, and for no more than 21 days total in any 30-day period on the same WMA. Camping on these areas is limited to two days longer than the period the camper (hunter) is authorized to hunt. Leaving a campsite unattended for a period longer than 48 hours is prohibited. Unattended camp items will be removed. Quiet hours are enforced from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. All dogs or other pets must be kept on a leash or otherwise confined while in camping areas." FIRE -- same page, verbatim: "Fires shall be confined to those areas designated for camping and shall be contained in fireplaces, fire rings, grills, or other facilities designed for this purpose. Fires shall not be left unattended and must be completely extinguished prior to departure." ODWC does not publish a statewide seasonal fire ban on this page; Oklahoma county burn bans are issued separately and are not reflected here. Also verbatim from that page: "Public lands not specifically listed as open are closed." Read the area's own regulation before you go. THIS IS NOT A FEE-FREE PLACE TO ENTER -- fee=0 on this row means ODWC publishes NO per-night camping charge, not that access is free. ODWC's license fee table (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/licensing/regs/license-fees, read 2026-08-16) states verbatim that an "Annual Wildlife Conservation Passport" is "Required of all persons 18 or older who enter Department owned lands, regardless of residency, unless exempt" at $46 for residents and $239 for nonresidents, and a "3-Day Wildlife Conservation Passport" at $26 / $51. A separate $100 / $200 "Land Access Permit" is "Required for residents ages 18 to 63, and nonresidents of any age, including lifetime license holders to access certain ODWC managed properties." ODWC's fee table says "unless exempt" but does not list the exemptions on that page, so we do not state who is exempt. Treat this as: budget for a permit, and check odwc before you drive. ODWC publishes NO site name for this point -- the '#' number in our name is ours, assigned north-to-south within the area for stable identification. It is not an ODWC site number and it is not signed on the ground. WATER: ODWC's layer carries no drinking-water field for camping areas and this row claims none. Do not treat any lake, creek or pond near these sites as potable. COORDINATE PROVENANCE: latitude and longitude are ODWC's own, from its public ArcGIS service https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/server/rest/services/PublicWILMA/WILMAFeatures/MapServer/4 (layer 4, 'Camping Areas'), queried 2026-08-16 with where=1=1 outSR=4326. Every ingested point carries OPENTOPUBL='Yes' in that layer. No geocoding was used. Nearest town: Shidler ~8.7 mi. 'Nearest town' is STRAIGHT-LINE distance to the nearest OpenStreetMap place=city/town/village and is NOT a driving distance -- on a Corps lake shoreline or in the Ouachitas the road in is routinely two or three times longer. Ingest 2026-08-16. STATUS=pending: this is a lead for review, not published. ||| NIGHT-SHIFT REVIEW 2026-08-19 (fire 1090, Oklahoma pass 3, reviewer=nightshift-verified). BULK RE-CHECK done this fire against ODWC's own live ArcGIS layer 4 'Camping Areas' (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/server/rest/services/PublicWILMA/WILMAFeatures/MapServer/4/query?where=1=1&outFields=*&outSR=4326&f=json, read 2026-08-19; 299 features returned): of the 144 pending Oklahoma odwc_camp rows, 0 had vanished from the layer, 0 had moved more than 0.02 mi from the stored coordinate, and 0 had lost OPENTOPUBL='Yes'. The two rules pages cited above were also re-read verbatim on 2026-08-19 and are UNCHANGED: Department-Managed Area Rules (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/regs/department-managed-area-rules) still states "Camping is limited to a maximum of 16 consecutive days, and for no more than 21 days total in any 30-day period on the same WMA" and "Public lands not specifically listed as open are closed."; the licence-fee table (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/licensing/regs/license-fees) still states the Wildlife Conservation Passport is "Required of all persons 18 or older who enter Department owned lands, regardless of residency, unless exempt". So the coordinate and the statewide rules HOLD UP. DECISION: APPROVED. Independent second source fetched this fire that this row did not previously cite -- ODWC's own John Dahl WMA area page, https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/wma/northeast/john-dahl-wma (read 2026-08-19), Camping/Facilities section, verbatim: "Two primitive camping sites are on the WMA." ODWC's GIS layer carries EXACTLY TWO John Dahl points (odwc-camp-168, odwc-camp-169, 0.977 mi apart), so the agency's prose and the agency's GIS agree on the count. That count check is the reason this row is approved even though ODWC publishes no SITENAME for the point. CRITICAL RESTRICTION -- the special-regulations page (all 13 paginated pages pulled 2026-08-19) states for heading "John Dahl WMA", verbatim: "Hunter and angler camping is allowed in designated areas only during hunting seasons." This is NARROWER than the generic text this row was ingested with: camping here is limited to hunters and anglers AND is not permitted outside hunting seasons. The field_note as written does NOT carry either limit and MUST be rewritten to say so before this row is published. DE-DUPE: matched on COORDINATES against all 163 published+approved Oklahoma rows; nearest is 15.9 mi (Buck creek, Hulah WMA). Not a duplicate. WATER: none published by ODWC; do not treat any pond or creek here as potable.

US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center station locator, snapshot 2026-09-16. Straight-line miles to the nearest public, open, unrestricted station; restricted and planned units are shown but never counted.

On the agency's books. The land manager inventoried this site, so its existence is not in question — current conditions are. Nobody from here has camped it recently.