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Getting
stuck. That pretty much says it all to most hunters. Those two words
will instantly conjure up memories for most hunters (and farmers as
well) of some of the most harrowing events in their hunting memories. It
also is an excellent excuse for being late or absent from events that
are particularly distasteful, but it will never work at your own
wedding.
Most
of the time, getting stuck is nothing to joke about or to do on purpose
because it is such a pain to "un-do." Not only will you get
filthy, angry, frustrated, angry some more, tear something up, get even
angrier and finally blow your lid, most guys will not tempt fate by
pretending to get stuck. If you’re told he was late because he was
stuck, pretty much count on it being the truth.
Attention
wives and girlfriends, if your other half tells you that he will be late
for the ballet recital, tea party, your family reunion, marriage
counseling session, etc., or he is late for such things and the excuse
is that he "got bogged down," trust me he’s not lying.
Getting
stuck is referred to in many different terms such as the simple "..
got stuck," "bogged up," "bogged down,"
"buried it," "bogged ‘er to the axles" and many
others.
In
my hunting and farming career, I have left many vehicles and machines
sitting in either the field or the woods, bogged to the axles. Getting a
tractor stuck is really depressing because you have to either wait for
things to dry out or go get a bigger tractor. You really have a problem
when you have stuck the biggest tractor on the place. On almost any
farm, there are stories that are legends about the biggest bog there
ever was on the place and what all it took to get unstuck.
Here
is an example that was told to me as true. It happened in south Baldwin
County. I will mention no names but there are people who will know
exactly who I am talking about when they read this. There was a farmer
who owned a huge lime green, four-wheel drive, articulated frame tractor
that literally throbbed, whether it was running or not, with the power
of around 275 horses. The story goes that an 18-wheel dump truck got
bogged in a field with a 30-ton load of lime while trying to dump. (For
you non-farmers in the crowd, a truck with 30 tons of lime probably will
gross out at 40 or 50 tons total weight.) A call was placed to this
farmer and was told they needed him to come and pull out the truck. At
the time, the going rate for this green monster to come to your place
and perform such a task was around $200. The legend continues with the
tractor showing up and hooking onto the truck, still full of lime, and
proceeding to pull it out of the mud. Upon reaching dry ground, the
tractor driver asked the truck driver where he started getting traction
and the truck driver explained that he was pulled out so fast that he
never had the time to build up enough air pressure to unlock all
eighteen brakes on the truck. Draw your own conclusions.
As
dry as it has been, many of us are trying to remember just what a mud
hole looks like and those of us who have really bogged down a piece of
equipment worry that we will not recognize one when we see it and will
bog down again.
Some
of us are even able to get stuck on dry land.
Where
I used to hunt in Dale County, I was stuck many times on a red clay
road. I dreamed of the day when I would be able to afford a four-wheel
drive truck and would not have to worry again. My dad had the bright
idea that if I kept a "come-a-long" in the truck I would have
no worries. Dad was from the horse and mule days where the animal that
was providing the horsepower had enough sense to stay out of the mud
even if the operator did not, so dad had no concept of "bogging to
the axles."
I
tried his method once and all I got was mad and ended up having to hunt
a tractor anyway.
Finally
my dream came true. My brother and I used to hunt there but we would
park at the gate and walk the distance to the field where we hunted just
because we feared "the clay spot" in the field road. This spot
had stranded many a vehicle. It was a spot that seemed to be crafted by
Mother Nature for entertainment purposes. Not only was it a clay deposit
that seemed about twenty feet deep, but it was situated in a curve that
went up or down a hill depending on whether you coming from or going to
the field.
If
you were going into the field, you had to slow down for the curve, allow
for the hill and maintain enough momentum to get through the mud. Coming
out, you had to accelerate to allow for going up hill, slow down for the
curve and once again maintain enough momentum to get through the mud.
There was a fine line between too much and not enough and that
"bog" claimed many a vehicle.
My
dream came true because my brother called and told me that he had just
bought a four-wheel drive S.U.V. and we no longer had to fear the clay
hill. (This was the same vehicle that, a few years later, I had to
single-handedly load a dead deer onto that has been related in a
previous article.)
Sure
enough, when we shifted into four-wheel drive, we plowed through the wet
clay and continued our journey.
We
set up camp and then with plenty of daylight left, we went to set up our
stands. It was the first time that we had not had to carry our gear in
by hand and my brother said that it would be nice now that we could
drive almost to the spot where we wanted to hang our tree stands; I
agreed.
We
approached the creek I fell into a few years later and as we made the
approach to crossing the creek we were confronted by the ruts of tractor
wheels that were generations old. I reminded my brother not to drive in
the ruts, but to straddle them. I’m not sure what happened but there
are several possibilities. He didn’t hear me, I didn’t talk loud
enough and he didn’t hear me, he heard me and ignored me or he heard
me and tried to stay out of the ruts but slipped in anyway despite his
best efforts. I feel it was the latter. Suffice it to say that in dry
weather, there we were, high centered in the ruts in the
"path."
We
rocked, we pushed, we cussed, we spun the wheels, we pulled, we dug, we
stuck logs under the wheels, we spun the wheels some more, we jacked the
front end, we jacked the rear end and we cussed some more. All to no
avail, this baby was stuck. We ended up walking all the way back to the
farm and got some tractor help and, of course, the tractor made short
work of freeing the vehicle.
Over
the years, I have learned many ways to free a stuck vehicle. I have
found the best way to get something out of the mud is to never put it
there in the first place. This is why I have never bought a four-wheel
drive vehicle because it is too tempting to assume that
you won’t get stuck. This is usually the point in this article where I
quote my father for some words of wisdom, but now I will quote myself.
(This is one I plan on passing to my grandchildren.) "Show me
someone that can get any vehicle unstuck and not break a sweat doing it
and I’ll show you someone that has been stuck many times."
Ralph
Ricks is the manager of Quality Cooperative, Inc. in Greenville. |
