Trucks are essential to a lot of folks. They help us haul and tow and get shit done. They're invaluable tools to many. But they're becoming increasingly too expensive to purchase, operate, or even work on, making the idea of the humble work truck almost obsolete. I mean, are you going to treat your $100,000 Ford F-250 with wanton abandon when it'll cost you another $15,000 to fix if you break a headlight?
I think not.
But the work still has to be done. People still need to feed cattle, wrangle horses, guide hunters and fishermen, and do work across the landscape that's dirty, vigorous, and that tends to be destructive toward vehicles. Many still need the utility of a truck. Luckily, UTVs are becoming the go-to for these hard-working people across the landscape, and as Jody Smith of Jody Smith Guide Service puts it, "I put maybe 25 miles per day on [my UTV], I may go five days without starting my truck."
He adds, "They're a lifesaver."
Through my friend at Nosler, and who took a handful of hunters to Jody's last year in collaboration with Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation on a film—one of the very best conservation groups around—I've seen only been able to see pictures of Jody's place in Elkton, Oregon, a town of 200 and an hour, as Jody put it, "from a Safeway." They're the pictures in this very article which he took while on the ground chasing elk. And my god does it look beautiful. The sort of landscape that beggars belief and sets imaginations afire. It's also incredibly rugged and features the sort of terrain that'd likely scare most folks into heading back to the safety and warmth of a farmhouse. I mean, look at the hero shot above and tell me that that swale of sticky wet mud looks like your idea of a good time.
It sorta does for me, but I have a few screws loose.
But Jody's been hunting, guiding, fishing, and ranching these parts for decades, and in a bid to better understand the dynamics of how folks use their powersports machines, I sat down with him to talk about his history with our industry, as well as get his take on the what makes a great machine, and where things are going. He was a font of knowledge.
"We started with Honda Big Reds back in '84 to save some packing out stuff and then of course one person was all you could fit on there so you could drive around with one person and freeze to death and they were a little bit tippy," says Smith. He added, "At the time, they were much better improvement over bicycles or walking." These days, however, Smith has a Can-Am Defender, which he extolled its virtues as just how much of a quantum leap forward in being able to do just about everything his farm demands.
"Then we went to four-wheelers and then we started getting into the UTVs, and oh my gosh, they're a lifesaver," he says, adding, "I've had them all. I've had Yamaha, Honda, Polaris, Kubota. I've had them all. I like my Can-Am the best. It's just, it's comfortable. It works good, the features are good, I don't have any repairs."
And unlike other one-hit wonders, someone that's maybe just doing ranching, just outfitting, just going into the backcountry, Jody's doing it all. He's really hitting all the major sticking points folks want to use their UTVs for and, hopefully, not encounter any issues with their machines or any downsides as they perform those tasks. "I feed hay with it. I can check in on the calves. I'm back and forth all the time on it. I've got almost 5,000 miles on mine and I've never went on any long rides. It's amazing how much saving 500 yards of packing an elk out if you can get the UTV 500 yards closer."
For what it's worth, Roosevelt elk, which is the subspecies in Jody's neck of the woods, is the bigger of the North American elk species. They have smaller antlers, but they're dinosaurs in terms of body size and weight. Packing something like that out with just backpacks is done, but it's the sort of thing that'll haunt your calves for the next month.
A UTV like a Can-Am Defender with its bed makes a lot of sense. And Jody's seal of approval of the Defender should carry the weight it deserves.
Jody also tells me that his rig just lets him stretch the days out longer, to hunt and guide harder—just like the Hushin' guys—as "I can fit five people pretty comfortably, but myself and three other people very comfortably. And it's got a heater, it's got air conditioning, you're dry, you don't get cold. You can stretch out your days longer because you're not sopping wet. It made everything more pleasurable and much better, much easier. It's a lot easier when you're doing it multiple times, you know, over the course of a season."
During the winter and spring months, along with fishing and getting ready for next season's hunts which involve setting up trail cameras and trail management, Jody also runs cattle. About 400 head across his roughly 400 acres of both owned and leased land. His hunting grounds are another 5,200 acres and 8,000 acres, respectively.
"I probably use [the UTVs] more for hunting than I do for ranching as far as total time spent in them," Jody tells me, "Because I'll spend four hours a day in them during elk season or deer season." I can attest you can spend a lot of time in your UTV during hunting season just because you're moving and glassing country.
And because of Jody's wide array of pursuits, as well as time behind the wheel, I wanted to get his take on a controversial study published not too long ago about how deer, elk, and other game species react to UTv and ATV noise, given his experience. We covered the study in these very pages. But Jody absolutely backed up the findings, saying, "You can get closer in the UTV than you can trying to sneak on the road walking on a gravel road or just walking at all. They pick that up."
As for the truck question, "I used to put 25-30 miles a day on my pickup. Down there guiding. And now I can just, you know, use the Can-Am."
