Just because someone nails up a no trespassing sign, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t legally go there. For one thing, they may not even own the land. Often federal and state land is leased to people. Often these people begin to see the land as their own. These leases are really cheap, for instance to lease 640 acres may only cost a thousand dollars a year, but it doesn’t mean that they get to keep hikers out. I have been told by a guy who leases state land in Washington that it doesn’t give him the right to keep hikers off of it… it only gives him the right to run his cows on it and he can also restrict vehicles from coming on to the leased land.
Another thing to check is the how the land is taxed. Most of the time people who own large tracks of land have their land put it open space or forestry. This is so they pay very little taxes on their property. My neighbors chose to go with forestry because they said to go with open space would mean that anyone could come on their land. Also, even if you don’t have the right to come on private land you may have the right to use private roads that go through private land.
I hate them, they are ugly. But what would you do when people cut trees on your land, or create a road where they want to go at the moment ( and then other people follow it ). You can’t often know what is the problem that caused a sign. I would say that in general, hikers are not the cause or subject of no trespassing signs. Unless the land in question is near a popular hiking area, there’s not enough of them around to cause any problem.
Yeah I don’t like them either and thought I would never hang one up but I have to try to keep people with their chainsaws, ATV’s and guns off my property.