I just read an article in the subject magazine about a guy that knew a lot about survival, was prepared and still got in trouble for 4 days because his ATV tilt over and pinned him down. Nice reading.

ATVs do that. All the prep in the world can't compensate for 1 second of poor judgement or bad luck. Haven't read the article myself.
I bet his most important prep would have been to tell someone where he was and when he would be back. At least then he wouldn't have been out there for 4 days.

Edit; WRONG POST

LOL I hate it when that happens.

I have even posed something on a completely different BBS because I had several windows open at the same time. It takes a real putz to do this…

No link or anything, but if he was pinned down under an ATV for four days, he was in bad shape...

i read that story, it was a good one. he had polio in his leg when he was younger, so it was all but useless when he was pinned under the ATV. if he had a healthy leg, he probably could've pulled himself free.

I went to the F&S website, and looked through some of the survival stories.

"Experienced" doesn't seem to mean people use common sense.

"Experienced" seems to mean "dumb luck has always worked for us before".

Cynical Sue

I tripped in my snowshoes once. I was pinned for 5 minutes until I could cut the lampwicking free. I hate ATVs.

Here is an ATV stupid-luck story that happened to me.

Most days I work alone and one summer afternoon about 7 years ago, I went about 50 km into the bush to do a quick job. I planned to off-load my ATV at the end of an isolated logging road and bike down a rough firebreak to a remote "restricted access tourist lake", no big deal. Using the satellite phone in the truck I logged remote and gave my location and estimated time I would be back to the truck (about 4 hours).

I then put my helmet on, untied the ATV ropes and pulled the sliding ramp out of the bed of the truck. When I dropped the end of the ramp I noticed that there was a small, maybe 8" high hump of dirt right where ramp ended, but I thought I could just drive over it in reverse.

I started the bike, let it warm-up for a bit, then drove it backwards down the ramp, like I have done hundreds of times before.

When I got to the bottom of the ramp I gave the trottle a little "shot" of gas to get over the dirt hump. To my surprise the front-end of the ATV went straight-up and I found myself still sitting on the ATV seat with my back on the ground and the ATV balanced on the rear tires and the rear gear rack. The ATV was very unstable in this position and I was using all my strength to keep it balanced or it would fall on top of me, upside down!

I managed to stop the ATV from swaying and slowly slid out from under it; I can still picture that big ATV standing on its rear-end, still running.

This is when you get one of those "Holy Crap, I can't believe I made out of that one" feelings; your heart pounds and you think about what is really important to you in life. Wheeeww!

If I had have been pinned under that ATV it would have been at least 5 hours before someone would started looking for me and probably a minimum of 7 hours before they found me.

I pushed the front-end of the ATV down onto the loading ramp, lifted the rear tires over the dirt hump and finished unloading the bike. I went to the remote lake, but moved the truck to a new location before I reloaded the ATV.

My son missed a big buck deer 2 years ago and I told him that "you learn more from your failures, than from your easy successes". To this day, I am much more careful how I load/unload my equipment, I learned my lesson.

Mike

"...I hate ATVs..."

Great minds think alike...