Guns & Outdoors Forum

At 69 years old I finally did it! I sank my 98 Chevy to the axles. I have been working in a strip mine re-claiming an abandoned hunting shed that was in dire need of repair. It's location is great and will serve our hunting party very well after repair, up-graders and brush removal for shooting lanes. Shots will range from 75 yards to 250 yards in the shooting lanes. Alas I didn't know the area to the left of the blind was once a pond also. It was filled in and topsoil put on top. Through the years it produced a hard pack about 3 inches deep but under that is pure mud. While clearing the shooting lane today I saw three bushes 75 yards off that needed removed, rather than walk up there with my battery operated chainsaw (yea, go ahead and laugh, it works) I chose to drive to them. I was within 25 yards of them when I felt the tires spin. I realized the trouble I was in and added a little power to get through. The truck dropped and stopped. I shifted to 4 wheel low, dropped into low gear and eased the gas, no luck. I went into reverse, no luck. I tried two rock manoeuvers, no luck. I gave up and climbed out of the truck, the doors were 4 inches above the ground. I called friends to find help and after four calls I found one who had a Dodge Ram and worked the afternoon shift, cool he owed me a favor anyway. TJ said no problem he could pop it right out.

45 minutes later he arrived circled high and backed in ahead of my truck. "No problem" he said as we attached the chain to the front hooks. He pulled hard and his wheels spun. He backed up and hit I'd hard twice, no luck. The third try he hit it hard and spun his wheels enough to break through the hard cap on his drivers side. His Dodge Ram is raised and he sank it to the frame on the driver's side. We made multiple calls to find a winch, come-along or another truck. At last my great nephew, Ryan, said he would leave work early and be there in an hour.

I knew we were in trouble. I left most of my tools at home because I'm almost done with the shed, I never anticipated this! I had a lot of 2x4 and OSB from the old shed in the bed of my truck. With a 3-4 inch hard cap to climb over I knew we had to make a ramp to get the tires over the hump. In addition the mud suction was going to be hard to overcome. I broke out the jacks and was barely able to get it under the rear frame with some plywood under it. Our first attempts lifted the truck one inch at a time. Finally we started making progress and added a second jack in front of the wheel. As he and his wife jacked, braced and jacked again I used my hands to dig the rear tire out of the mud then shifted to the front wheel. I used all the OSB and 2x4s to get traction under the tire and build a ramp over the hard cap. Just as I finished my nephew arrived. We left the jack in place at the rear of the truck to get the weight transferred to the ramp. Ryan backed in above him, attached the chains and I missed a great video opportunity! A Chevy pulling a Dodge out of the mud! It came right out thanks to the ramps.

Now it was time for my truck. Ryan attached the chains and TJ took the wheel of my truck, he's a redneck he's done this before. The first two attempts to free my 98 Chevy failed. I remembered my rocking maneuvers and told TJ to back up. This gave me 10 inches of clearance between the hard cap wall and the tire. I gathered the 2x4s from our previous project and built ramps in front of the tires. It worked and my old Chevy roared to life.

There's a first time for everything....but.

Well that sounds like an adventure! I buried a dodge dakota on the passenger side e to half way up the doors in snow, I fell off the “hard road” (mountain gravel road) into the soft shoulder. It was about 2 hours of digging and pine bows under all the wheels. Was not a pleasant afternoon.

When I was in college, I had a 1980 Dodge Ramcharger. I loved that truck.

But I buried it to the axles and floorboards multiple times. I mean I got it stuck so bad one time it took two trucks to pull me out

Yep...sunk my F150 to the frame on a pasture trail that, as it turned out, had a spot that didn't have a bottom...took my cousin's truck, which got stuck, his cousins big John Deere, and also his cousins bigger John Deere , that, pulling in tandem got everybody out

My old chevy Luv 4x4 got stuck frequently. A bunch of us would go trail riding on weekends. There were enough of us, we never had to call for help. 10-12 4x4s of various sizes meant we normally had enough ass to pull whomever needed it out

Oh yeah, dad had a Ford F250 Van with the Quadravan package and a 460 with a Holley 4 barrel, I am an expert with a high lift jack. Slow was bad, all 4 barrels open in 4low was your best bet in clay at our deer camp, surprised we never broke anything. We punted one night on the way in and the damn thing was frozen in the mud the next AM when the temps dropped overnight, had to use an axe to chip the mud/clay away from the tires. One weekend we spent the WHOLE weekend at deer camp getting the John Deere B un-buried

Shoot no! I’m not dumb enough to get a truck stuck! Cars are better.
I was driving a 1979 Buick Regal down a dirt road on some some public land with some buddies when we came across a giant puddle. I was going to turn around. My buddy says “Hell, you can make this!”

I didn’t.


Luckily a guy with a tractor was driving down the road a couple minutes after the incident. We’d have been screwed with a capital F if he hadn’t. Pre cell phone, middle of nowhere.

This century? No.

As a teenager into early twenties it was a borderline hobby.

Buried the rear axle (with posi) of an '86 C10 one time. It wasn't sand, it wasn't mud, but it wasn't hard enough to drive over obviously. Shovel and board time!

Yes. Doesn't help when you're young and too poor to get quality tires.

Been close a few times at the old ranch but managed to get myself out of trouble. Helped that I had a big 4WD farm tractor with a front loader that could literally lift a car/truck out of a rut

Not a lot of mud in my present coordinates, a whole lot of sand to be careful about though…