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ATV for food plotting

Deer&Ducks

PMA Member
Hi guys, just bought my first farm and now I'm daydreaming bout all the stuff I wanna do to it. I don't have a tractor or an atv and, according to the wife, my purchasing power is severely limited for the next 10 years.....:D I do have friends and neighbors that I can borrow equipment from in the short term and I imagine I'll eventually be able to scrape a few pennies together to buy a used ATV in the next year or two, so my question is: how large of an atv do I need to be able to do some basic food plotting of about 1 acre? I'm thinking a heavy single gang disc would probably be the most taxing implement I'd pull behind it. Any experiences or advice would be greatly appreciated.

-Russ
 
I used to use a 500 Suzuki but it put a toll on it cant imagine using something smaller if your going the pulling a ATV disk.. IMO , Id try find a old 30 HP 2 wheel drive tractor.
 
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I'd buy an older tractor before the ATV. Similar money, or less, and a lot more capable. Something like an 8N could be bought for less than 2k
 
I started with a rake and weed whipper & back pack sprayer.
I think maybe 25 years old I had me a 400-ish cc Honda 4 wheeler. Sprayer that mounted on back and a harrow. Did all the clover & sometimes I think I managed to do brassicas and pull a mower with it. I think I lasted maybe 1-2 years doing that and bought a tractor. The rest is an obsessive mess that grew like a nuclear reaction. Stuff gets crazy. So- I'd either pay it done OR figure u just gonna do minor stuff with atv or possibly go for the tractor with basic stuff route. All have some major +/-'s. I'd stay fairly "basic" or next thing u know ur pulling a 12/23 planter, need hp in the hundreds & so much equipment u will have ur own repair shop. ;). It's a slippery slope. Stay fairly basic & if u are saying "well, clover and maybe some brassicas, little mowing & spraying is it" nice size 4 wheeler be nice. U wanna get into grains and drills and planters, small tractor be next. Good luck! U still will have my rake, weed whipper and backpack sprayer beat!
*Agree on below. UTV. I had a couple close calls on my 4 wheeler where I'm lucky I didn't kill myself too! :)
 
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Agree with the comments about a tractor (and loader) being what will serve you best. If that is still out of the question I would certainly look at a UTV as opposed to an ATV. A 4x4 Gator, Mule etc... may not go 50-60 mph down the road but it will do a lot better job "farming" than an ATV, and last longer doing it.
 
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I agree with the comments already made. One can create and maintain some nice plots with an ATV...but it is WAY easier with a tractor, even a small HP one. Like Skip, I started with a weed whacker and a back pack sprayer and an over the shoulder seeder. I made it work to some level, but it was a lot of work to maintain even an acre of clover or brassicas. I "graduated" to doing plots with a 350cc ATV for several years, it was time consuming and kind of tough on the ATV too.

Using a real tractor though...you can do way more faster. Aim for a tractor of some sort.
 
I used my 700 Polaris atv to pull around an old spring tooth harrow. It "did it" but I cringed the whole time. Just not very good for it. But I still wouldn't not have an atv...for hanging tree stands, going here going there or otherwise puttin around

I was just mowing an overgrown field the other day with my tractor and rotary cutter and thought back to the first time I tried to clear an area without fire. Push mower, weed wacker and 1gal pump sprayer...the good ole days :)
 
:D
I started with a rake and weed whipper & back pack sprayer.
I think maybe 25 years old I had me a 400-ish cc Honda 4 wheeler. Sprayer that mounted on back and a harrow. Did all the clover & sometimes I think I managed to do brassicas and pull a mower with it. I think I lasted maybe 1-2 years doing that and bought a tractor. The rest is an obsessive mess that grew like a nuclear reaction. Stuff gets crazy. So- I'd either pay it done OR figure u just gonna do minor stuff with atv or possibly go for the tractor with basic stuff route. All have some major +/-'s. I'd stay fairly "basic" or next thing u know ur pulling a 12/23 planter, need hp in the hundreds & so much equipment u will have ur own repair shop. ;). It's a slippery slope. Stay fairly basic & if u are saying "well, clover and maybe some brassicas, little mowing & spraying is it" nice size 4 wheeler be nice. U wanna get into grains and drills and planters, small tractor be next. Good luck! U still will have my rake, weed whipper and backpack sprayer beat!
*Agree on below. UTV. I had a couple close calls on my 4 wheeler where I'm lucky I didn't kill myself too! :)

Skip not everyone goes at your speed!!:D
 
The only thing I use my tractor for is chopping. If you can hire, borrow, or figure out a way to chop, you can grow awesome clover and brassica plots with a bag spreader and an atv sprayer. That being said, I use a 60 gallon sprayer on my ranger 900 and chop with a 15' bushhog on a 125 loader tractor. I've grown really nice plots using throw and grow/mow method, and haven't broken any ground since I started about 5 yrs ago. I still keep the old 325 Sportsman around and a 25 gal sprayer as well if a backup is needed.

Edit and congrats on the farm! Any details?
 
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Thanks for the advice guys! The farm is 45 acres of timber in Madison County & I have some creek crossings that will probably be pretty sketchy with a tractor but an atv/utv with a winch should be able to handle. Thinking about maybe building a small bridge to get equipment across, anyone done that? The property has high voltage lines over a small portion of it so that area is already clear which is a nice bonus but the utility easement dictates that I'm not allowed to burn under the lines so that's a bummer. So about an acre of clover with a nurse crop of winter rye this first year is my goal. I'm thinking I'll probably mow, spray, rake, lime & fertilize per soil test, disc & harrow, spray again, and seed and cultipack in late July. Is that a decent plan to transform a grassy/brushy area into a plot?
 
I have done the bridge and it works well for me. This covers a 6ft or so wide creek. I basically made 2 narrow bridges, one for each tire. I layed 3 4x4 timbers across across the creek for each tread (12" spacing) and screwed down 2x8 planks on top and across the timbers. So 6 4x4 timbers total. I did this so that I could move it around to other creek crossing areas, a mobile bridge so to speak. Flip them upside down and drag them.
 
Thanks for the advice guys! The farm is 45 acres of timber in Madison County & I have some creek crossings that will probably be pretty sketchy with a tractor but an atv/utv with a winch should be able to handle. Thinking about maybe building a small bridge to get equipment across, anyone done that?
Telephone poles are the way to go if you can get them to where you need them! I had a buddy bring his skidsteer and we took them down a pretty steep bank to get to where this bridge is. It ended up being a little longer than I would have liked, just over 20' span.
Bridge.jpg
Bridge - finished.jpg
 
Wow!!! That's nuts. Looks really nice.
So, I have to make mine for large machinery.... I end up doing Missouri Crossings (where I doze or excavate out the bank) and then dig with excavator all the soil down super deep and fill with concrete from around the farm and a load of big rock. Usually $300-1k in dozing/excavating & my concrete is free in that example OR i do a tube at a few locations and the tube prices can be more pricey.....
But, for smaller stuff, ATV's, smaller stuff (non agricultural which is all 90% of people pry need anyways) & the "looks" of yours, sure looks nicer. How long would something like that take and is the cost fairly reasonable??
That looks ideal for spots that would use smaller stuff & so on. Very nice!
 
Very nice. I did one of those as a land bridge one time on a Michigan farm. It was 20' across a mucky ditch. Telephone poles and oak cut offs. Covered that with a rubber membrane and then put dirt on top of that. Talk about an AMAZING pinch point. Animals used it all the time. It was pretty sweet.
 
Wow!!! That's nuts. Looks really nice.
So, I have to make mine for large machinery.... I end up doing Missouri Crossings (where I doze or excavate out the bank) and then dig with excavator all the soil down super deep and fill with concrete from around the farm and a load of big rock. Usually $300-1k in dozing/excavating & my concrete is free in that example OR i do a tube at a few locations and the tube prices can be more pricey.....
But, for smaller stuff, ATV's, smaller stuff (non agricultural which is all 90% of people pry need anyways) & the "looks" of yours, sure looks nicer. How long would something like that take and is the cost fairly reasonable??
That looks ideal for spots that would use smaller stuff & so on. Very nice!
Thanks! The telephone poles were free, I spent around $350 - $375, I probably spent around 12 hrs of actual work getting the telephone poles down there, secured, as level as possible, had to dig, etc. Put the 2 x4's on over a couple afternoons, built the ramps and adding the rail took about 7 hrs. Treated 2 x 4's were on sale for $2.50, the most expensive parts were the 4X4's, the bolts, lags, and I used triple coated deck screws.
 
I agree with all of the previous threads, don't go below a 500 if you go the ATV route. I can only disc for about 15-20 minutes before I overheat if it is hot out, and it takes me close to 2 hours to disc, spread, cultipack a 1 acre food plot, get a cheap tractor if you can find one, if not, find yourself a cultipacker or a drag, ATV spreader, and a sprayer and you'll be in good shape.
 
You can sure do a lot of with ATV for food plots, we did 2 acres this weekend, of clover and beans. Just an ATV--550 Yamaha, spreader, seed, drag and an ATV disc.
PArkers-plot-1.jpg
 
I have been doing plots on permission farms for a couple years with a 700 Sportsman, 50" flip disc, Swisher rough cut mower, cultipacker/drag. I purchased a farm this past January that sounds very similar to yours, access with a tractor is problematic but my ATV setup should work just fine.

The most important issue with the ATV is the cooling system, not it's ability to pull the tillage equipment. As stated above, keep your eyes on the ATV's temp and do not plan on doing individual plots over an acre. Mine are normally around 1/2 acre, sometimes separated into strips to lessen each individual work day on the ATV. I get very good tillage from the flip disc (5-6" depth) but as stated above there are warm days where it works the 700 pretty hard. When I go to my new farm this year for work days, I plan on having things I can do during the day to bust up the workload on the ATV so as to not be running it hard for hours at a time.

I have checked my ATV's CVT belt (transmission belt) more than once and as long as I do everything in low gear, my belt has been fine. High gear and you'll be burning up CVT belts in a hurry.
 
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