Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Worst Stuck

I'm sure we all have stories, pics are better yet.

Mine was 1994. I had a lifted 78 Ford Bronco that I figured was indestructable. Late August before school started buddies and I were on our way back to check on deer stands. It looked muddy and swamp, beacuse it was. I stopped and my buddy said we got back here with the van this spring and it's front wheel drive...you'll be fine.

Famous last words. It wasn't fine. I burried it to the frame in the front and the rear diff in the back. We dug and dug to no avail. Finally walked 3/4 mile to the road and a coulpe of loggers who weren't much older than us drove back to pull us out. Told them where not to drive and since he had a indestructable lifted Chevy with 35's, he could go anywhere. As long as anywhere didn't include 5' from my back bumper because he burried it worse than me.

We cut some logs, and jacked his up, sticking a slightly longer log under the truck each time. We got him out. They had to go....he gave my buddy a ride to town to get his dad's new 1994 F-150 4x4. We pulled my Bronco out, but pretty much ruined the cluth on the truck with less than 5k on the odometer.

Young and dumb would elplain the entire process.... that and 8 hours of ball busting work in August heat.

Mine was being stuck with air underneath. Dad and I were hunting in my 2x4 pickup, going up a 1 track road along a creek. At one point, we were about 10' above the water. Then the back end sunk. It went down until we were sitting on the frame. A section of road had caved in and left a rear wheel hanging free 10' above the creek.
We hiked out about 3 or 4 miles and found some young guys who offered to help us out. They had a heavy 3/4 ton 4x4 and lots of chains, cables, etc. We hooked a cable to my rear axle and it ran under the bumper so when he pulled, it lifted the bumper a bit. I got in and turned the steering wheel so it would roll up the hill around the cave-in as he pulled backwards. It worked. We were out in just a few minutes.

It was about 1976. I was with my friend in his old Ford pick-up, headed down a grassed path along a plowed field. A large puddle appeared ahead of us, covering the path. His instant decision (we were young, and therefore moving very fast) was to veer out into the field around the puddle. Naturally, the field was completely saturated, as was evidenced by the aforementioned puddle. The truck was suddenly sitting on the frame.

Exiting on my side of the truck, we (remember - young and stupid, not old like we are now) thought that if we could clear some of the mud from the tire tread, we would be ble to get out. In digging at the mud with my fingers, I managed to locate some sharp object residing therein, which resulted in a fair amount of blood soaking through the beauty mask on my hand. We then hiked a mile or so to the farm of a friend. He told us to jump into his 4-wheel drive truck. Naturally, the mud won this tug-of-war quite easily. A return trip to the farm resulted in bringing a tractor into the fray, which extricated the truck.

At this point, more attention was paid to my finger, which when the dried mud was washed away, continued to emit blood at an impressive rate. Closer examination revealed a rather deep V-shaped flap.

Being Saturday evening, a call was placed to the home of a local doctor, who agreed to meet us at his office. After much tsk-tsking and clean-up, he lifted the flap with a pair of tweezers and asked me to hold the tweezers while he snipped off the flap. He then nandaged it up and bid us adieu.

When I got the statement of charges covered by insurance, I found that there was included a charge for "surgical assistant" which could only have meant me when I held the tweezers.

Mine was A CJ7 with great tires and a heavy duty winch. I only had to drive thru a 30 foot patch of snow. Trouble was the snow was deeper than it looked and I ended up with all four tires off the ground while the jeep rested on the frame.
No shovel to dig with- last time that will ever happen.
The winch? the only pick point was a culvert rim about 50 feet behind me.
I strung the cable UNDER the jeep, started to pull and fouled the cable under the front leaf spring, couldn't get it free.
After a couple of hours a rancher came by and pulled me out with his truck

The worst was in my '88 Toyota 4x4, in about 2' of water on top of a stump. It was expensive and I don't like to think about it much.

A LOT of mud on a 'dry' lake on San Carlos Indian reservation in an 88' 4x4 Toyota. Nearest tree was 60' feet away and we had 55' of cable for the come-along. The nearest pavement was 4 miles away and the nearest store/civilization was 60 miles away.

It was a LONG day.

I've got a couple stories, both involve my 2002 Tundra. The more memorable story took place in November, 2003. My new wife and I had just closed on our property, 40 acres of land with a mixture of abandoned pasture, softwoods and swamp. This land is located in an area with spotty cell coverage several miles away from the nearest person we knew at the time. We'd gotten a ton of rain in the previous month or 2 and combined with the high water table of our land, it made for a great place to get stuck.

We were driving out to the property to check on my deer hunting spot in the late afternoon, taking along a bottle of champagne to celebrate the purchase of the place where we would put down roots. After checking the deer blind, we started to drive back up toward the road when suddenly we came to a fairly abrupt stop. This land was lousy with field stone in sizes from a golf ball to boulders. Turns out, the driver's side front tire had come up against a buried mid-sized rock, stopping us in our muddy tracks. Shifting into reverse and gently nudging the throttle resulted in a sickening, sinking feeling. A few more attempts to rock back and forth got the truck resting firmly on the rear axle and front skid plate. We were all done.

We spent the next 1/2 hour trying to reach help on our cell phones. Any time we managed to make a call, there was no one home at the number. We finally managed to get a return call from a good friend who said he'd come with his 4x4 Dodge, but he was at least an hour away.

The next part is my favorite. What do you do on a dark night when you have an hour to kill, a bottle of champagne, a new, young wife and a truck with enough gas in the tank to keep the heater running? Yep, that's right.

My buddy eventually showed up and after a couple attempts, got my truck freed up. We gave our thanks, took our ribbing and said our goodbyes - until my buddy's truck sank into the mud as he was driving back out the way he came in. Now it was my turn to play tow truck. Thankfully, his truck wasn't stuck as badly and we managed to get his truck free and we all drove carefully out to higher, firmer ground.

I think that's the last time I went for a ride and went parking.

I posted this in another thread this morning.

A few years ago a friend and I drove a 4wd toyota down a dirt road. Went down with no problems, not the first sign of mud or even a wet spot. Coming back about 50ft. before we got to the pavement we broke thru about 2" of hard dirt over an epic mud hole. The truck sank so fast I barely had time to get the window up to keep the mud from coming in thru the window.

I climbed out the drivers side and the truck settled down to about 1/2 way up the window on the passanger side. This in a spot a prius could have driven across it had it not broke thru the rock hard top layer.

To make a 12 hour story short my cousin who owns a wrecker service that pulls out stuck log trucks came and got it out and even had difficulty. We wound up digging under the truck and placing crossties to get it high enough to roll out the hole.

If it had been a little deeper or the truck a little heavier I'm guessing the roof would have been flush with the roadway.

My cousin didn't even charge us for the gas to run down there and pull us out lol. He said it was the best recovery he had ever done. Barely beating out a truck that tried to drive across the lakebed when the water was low and took all day to get out.

I'm glad we were in a spot nobody could watch, of course all this happened starting right at dark and continued on thru the night

2 years ago trying to get to my elk spot in a rain/snow storm. The road gave way leaving me very stuck, it was about 3 in the afternoon and getting colder. I dug and used the come-along, and highlift with a couple of straps. I had lost cell service about 30 miles back and hadn't seen a single person. Finally about 10 o'clock that night I got the truck back on the road, and decided to just drive home. Got home about midnight and went to bed, woke up the next morning with the puking and really sick, probably a good thing i got stuck and came home.

Best not stuck was with a Volkswagen Rabbit and the incident gave my car its nickname for the rest of the time I owned it.

Driving around South Florida in Palm Beach County in our old shooting area. It had rained and huge puddles were all across the dirt roads. These could more accurately be described as ponds since they were generally about 20-40 yards across. Not knowing how deep they were in the middle, I could see grass sticking up on the edges where the road would give way to the grassy fields beyond so knew the water would only be a few inches deep there. I traversed several ponds like that with no problem.

Then we came to one puddle, probably 50-60 feet across with big bushes on either side so no going around it. I figured WTH, how deep can it be? Got up to about 20 mph and went through the middle, figuring momentum would carry us through. The front end of the car disappeared completely under water and a huge bow wave washed over the entire car, going up over the windshield and roof. I remember seeing the surface of the puddle a few inches above the top of the door as we went through, we had taken the precaution of having the windows up.

Fortunately the plan worked and the car plowed through to shallow water on the other side before stalling. I restarted the engine and drove on a few feet.

A huge jacked up 4X4 truck was behind us. He slowly entered the puddle which was a big mistake. He got halfway through and his tires just started spinning. Even in 4WD all he could do was send up sprays of water from his uselessly spinning tires. Fortunately he had a winch so the driver got out - sinking in water up to his waist - attached to a tree some 50 yards away and pulled himself out.

The nickname - the license plate on the Rabbit was VUU 835 which I thought was cool - V double U 835 on a Volkswagen. But after the incident of successfully crossing a puddle more or less under water that car was known as the U-835 from then on.

Elk hunting in the Strawberry Mountains in Oregon. A friend decided that it would be more comfortable in his Winnebago than a tent. Hard pack trail, easy to get way back there.

The next morning, I went outside and the snow was up to my knees. I hooked a strap from my 3/4 ton GMC Pickup to the front of his Winnebago and we got about a mile, until a steep grade stopped all forward movement.

I unhooked and drove to John Day. No tow company would even consider it. Found a logger, who was willing to take a skidder on a lowboy. The last ten miles, I rode hanging onto the cage of the skidder. The skidder had no problem towing the Winnebago to a paved road. It wasn't cheap.

Parked on a completely dry surface back from where a spring had the ground below so wet guys had been getting stuck. Walked up to look the situation over to see if we thought we could get through or not. Decided it was better to go a long way around.

When I turned around I discovered I had parked the pickup on about two inch thick, baked from summer sun, completely dry ground that was nothing but mush underneath. Truck had sank to the bumper before we could get back to it.

Others had left many boards, pieces of carpet, sleeping bags, and other items using then to help themselves get unstuck which helped.
First time I jacked the rig up and put a 6' 4X4 under a wheel it slowly sank right back to where it had been.
Second one held a little, took us several hours work to get out.

A buddy had a small jeep back in the '70s and we were hunting SW of Ellensburg when we found a stuck pickup with a huge camper on it. We had a very long nylon strap and offered to get him unstuck... He laughed but finally got in while we attached the strap.

Pete was going mighty fast when he hit the end of the strap and the jeep just bounced a little side-to-side. Second run was a little faster yet and the pick-up hesitated for just a second before it popped right out in a single jump.

T-54 and only one foot of the turret was above the mud level, I was not the driver, we had to get it out. It took whole night.

so you took the horses out, and used them to pull the truck out of the mud?

About 1991, Toyota fj40- good friend thought he could get over a huge fallen aspen (I thought otherwise). That one took a long, long time. One of the many times we got stuck in that thing, definitely the worst. More recently, 12" of pure clay in an f150, love getting chains on truck tires after they are totally coated in clay. Looks like you've been mud wrestling.
There has been many others involving flipped vehicles etc. over the years... seems the older I get the less this happens, hmmm...

i've seen a few trucks and car get stuck on the island at low tide and all but disappear into the sand when the tide came in.

Should any of youse guys find your truck stuck upside down in the ice, here's how NOT to try pulling it out.

I've never been stuck in mud that I couldnt get out of or had a truck/tractor at the site to get me out.

But not being able to drive out, now that's a different story.

Worse for me was a '76, 3/4 ton, 4x4, short wheel base, chevy pu, with a homemade lift kit and 9.00-16 tires. Going camping/fishing in the river bottom and the river was up, way up, out of its banks, way up! The public landing has a flat topped mound and we were going to camp on it. (Yeah, JPro, you know where!)

I was driving thru the water, on the dirt road, headed for the mound. The road would dip in and out of the water, but each dip into the water was getting deeper and deeper. Finally, when the water was over my lap (4' or so), I decided I wasnt going to make it to the next high spot and decided to back-up to the last high spot, and leave the truck out of the water. We would bring the boat and load the stuff in it to get to the mound.

While backing up, I went into the ditch, dipping the breather tube into the water. That's when the truck died!

Water running into the truck on the drivers side and out the window on the passengers side.

Left the truck overnight in the water. Went into town the next day and got a friend with a 10" lift kit to pull me out of the water. Drained the water from the motor (it was full), changed oil about 3 times in the next 100 miles, changed the oil in the tranny, transfer case, front and rear ends and drove the truck for another few years before I sold it.