Groundhog Max ATV Disk Plow

[waligators]

Has anybody ever tried using one of these for your plots? They look pretty slick and easy to use. Been thinking of expanding our food plot areas and this looks to be the ticket to get into smaller areas with the wheeler.

[jkcmj]

A friend of mine has one, and uses it for plowing up his food plots. He has fairly loose sandy soil and it does a great job...he swears by it.

I tried it out on several long thin woodland plots I was putting in and was less impressed. I had to grub out a bunch of locust trees to make room for the plots, and the branches in the dirt made it so it wasn't heavy enough to do any real digging. I imagine it would take a lot of trips over if you had any sod base as well, but I never tried it, except to drag it quite a ways with the disks down along a field road to try leveling it out some, but it didn't do to much damage to the sod burm in the middle.

[jkcmj]

I have to say I am only 160 lbs and I have a 300 cc quad, so the weight factor limits how much they dig...bigger guy or heavier quad and you'd bet a lot better penetration I suppose.

[waligators]

I have to say I am only 160 lbs and I have a 300 cc quad, so the weight factor limits how much they dig...bigger guy or heavier quad and you'd bet a lot better penetration I suppose.

That's exactly what I was thinking. We have a 05' Sportsman 500, and a 08' Sportsman 800 and the dry weight difference between the two is only 55 pounds. So either wheeler would do the job. Looks like a good product and the price is very reasonable. Going to have a lot of time to kick it around before next summer.

[HooknHorns]

Ive read that a decent speed is needed to tear the ground up.

[fowldreams]

I was very pleased at the performance I got out of mine. I have a 04 500 rubicon and it handled it great. There is a hitch pin set up to raise and lower the it for depth control. I picked up a set of plastic car ramps for when I use this though. The rear end of the four wheeler needs to be off the ground to set the depth of how much you wanna penetrate the soil. I believe on their HSOforum they put 4x4s under the tires. This is the only hassel of this product. The faster you go the better off you are. Hope this helps.

[Powerstroke]

A buddy of mine bought this disk this year after lots of research. He uses it on his 01 Honda Rancher. Its a 400 or 425 I believe. Anyway, the thing works great for its size. We used it on previously worked ground and it did amazing.

We also used it in two places of virgin ground, one was in the woods where we cleared some trees for a plot and the other was a fallow pasture. The woods plot went really well. There were some roots in there and the disk rode up and over them, but dug in just fine everywhere else. If the roots were small enough the disk cut them.

In the pasture, we did a roundup spray, then a controlled burn and then the disk. The disk cut the sod base and turned the dirt pretty well. I was happy with it.

The disk does perform best between 8-12mph, that where the dirt really starts flying. That being said, those speeds were hard to create in the small woods plot (20yds x 40yds) but it still did well, even in the turns. A small log or stump is all that is needed to make adjustments and the couple times I got stuck in some muddy ground, it was easy to pull the pin and remove the disk to help get the wheeler free.

Probably the only downsize is the cutting width. Because it works within the path of the wheeler it will take longer than other items, but I think that is more than made up for by its effectiveness at cutting. SOme of the pull-behind units just don't have enough down pressure to cut or aren't durable enough for the task. The Groundhog disk has taken quite a beating from us this season and looks almost new.