Amphibious vehicles

WeedyJ

5 year old buck +
So I know most of you don't need amphibious craft, but with so many of you in the Wisconsin and Minnesota area, do you know anyone or do you yourselves know folks with experience on these things. My wetland has the bottomless mud once I break the surface. I haven't put tracks on the ATV, but am considering it. It may be nice to have a floating ATV when needed. I've looked at tracked Argos and Mudd Ox online, but there seems to be a maintenance issue common thread. I wonder how many of those are related to poor maintenance and cleaning. I need for winter to get here, so I can explore the new portion of my wetland safely.
 
I had an older model, it worked decent in mud, or water, but if you had a foot of water, and mud under the foot of water, you didnt move, and just made muddy water. As you can imagine they (at least the older model I owned, steered like a skid loader, so if you were in mud, and you needed to turn, it would stop one side from spinning, and only drive one side, and if you were in a light, soft mud, this then pretty much stopped you in your tracks. Another issue, when I owned it, I lived in MN, the DNR made me license it as a boat, the other issue is MN DNR being so liberal, you cant disturb a wetland, so if there were certain types of vegetation growing where you were riding, you would get a ticket for that as well, even on your own land.

I owned it for about 5 years, and I had gotten 5 tickets from the DNR, and been reported for everything from no watercraft license, driving it in a swamp/pond, driving it on a township road without registration, which at the time, I wasnt able to register it for offroad.

Mine was also a bit under powered, it had a 12hp in it when I bought it, I took that out and installed a 18hp and it would still bog down considerably in water. I realize todays models come with much more HP then they did back then, and laws have changed, but from the few people that I know that still own them, they hardly ride them, because they just are not ideal for anything.
 
I have looked at the Argo, was concerned with it on bobby wetland with hummocks.

Look to hear from others on their experience.
 
The Argos have terrible ground clearance. It doesn't take much to get them hung up. I have a neighbor that put tracks on his UTV and he claims it is like night and day with what he can go through..
 
That's what I had planned and may do with my ATV
 
I have a buddy with a Kubota utv and he bought a second set of tires for duck season in Arkansas. Real big knobby mud tires and that thing will go anywhere. I was super impressed.
 
I've got great tires with big lugs on may ATV. Have the Can-Am XMR mud edition SxS. Problem is when they finally break the surface, especially where there's still some water on top, every tire carves it's own rut and the vehicle sits on it's skid plate with mud packed tires spinning in their holes. Then, as you winch out, the tires just keep sinking until I get back to some supportive ground. I've been in the Arkansas rice fields, and between the water giving some tire flotation and the solid bottoms in the fields, the ATVs and SxSs don't sink. In my swamp, it's like a muskeg. I can sink down to my knees in sticky mud when I walk in some areas and maybe deeper if I don't drop to my knees!. I think tracks on the ATV may be my best bet. With the SxS. I use it so much as a work vehicle on the upland part of my property, I want to keep tires. Not to mention it would be HORRIBLE to winch THAT heavy thing out on tracks!

Will need to get tracks that can be transferred to a new machine, because the ATV is a 2008 model.
 
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