As a kid growing up in the Northern Nebraska Sandhills there are some places you just dont drive and some you certinly dont slow down to cross as we had a 2900 acre ranch bisected by section lines we had road hunters getting stuck (cannot lock gates to a public access road) they would wander off the section line track into soft ground and get stuck down to the axels, there were two that stood out in particular one on our place A spring season turkey hunter had a F350 extended cab job and put it right in a very soft/wet spot next to our hay meddow and walked into our place looking for a pull out, we jumped in the truck and drove out with all the tow chain we could get and there wasent even any firm ground we could hitch up to without getting stuck ourselves, we ended up going home and getting a 460 Farmall tractor with a stack winch mounted (we stack hay not bail) we stripped off the over 100 foot of
7/8"staker cable and all the heavy gage tow chain we could find and borrow = 36 foot, all we did was break our staker cable trying to drag out the stuck turkey hunter, we were lucky to flag down a county road grader passing by our home to see if he could come out and eventually did drag out the truck after rounding up over 200 foot of county tow cable in addittion to our chain's (36foot) we managed to get him out, he did seem gratefull to be out and we were thanked and he left, The ground was so soft that Hi-Lift/Handyman jacks would sink even wood under the jacks, we never did get that cable fixed till that fall when we needed to winch haystacks.
If you see a meddow of hay stacks thers a reason, they stack hay instead of big round bailing, they build haystacks on the highground useing light weight small sweep tractors to bring the hay up on firm ground the less driveing on soft ground with lite equipment the better chances of not weakinging the sod and cutting through.
The other getting stuck story was some fall time Deer hunter's (relative& friends to the owners) on a Large Corporation Farm's pasture parcil up the road, the fellas wanderd right into another Swale/ buffalo wallow not watching where ther going (Ya know that swale grass and tussocks are a dead give away to water saturated ground) they spun the tires till they cut through the sod then on down till it was sitting on the axels, the Farm sent out a couple ther hired hands to pull out the hunters and in the process getting stuck a Stiger Panther tractor (very large articulated dual wheeled tillage tractor) after trying to attach 240 foot of cable and chain to that vehicle, the farm eventually had to hire the services of a Construction Company's D8 Cat to come out and extract that Stiger and the 4x4 ford Bronco.
If you are unfamiluer with the place to hunt, have the land owner show where its safe to drive and places to avoid. It saves cutting up nice smoothe pastures and meddows.
The sand hills country is coverd with sod break through that sod cover and you might as well shut off the truck and get help before you make it a worse problem, having all the traction in the world isant going to help in soft bottomless ground, the key is light vehicles and flotation, we used radial tries with a decent mud & rain tread and ran them slightly under inflated for a larger footprint, we didnt power our way across swampy ground, we backed up and took calculated runs at it useing speed and momentum to carry us across the narrowest points or the least swampy parts because if we spun the tires cutting the sod/root mass it was all over.
Driveing on established truck tracks/trails is best the land owners learned from experence long ago where the firm ground is.............. why reinvent the wheel?
Springtime fence mending we used horses, we had set fence posts in ground so saturated with water if you doug down 6" ther'd be water running in the post hole on a side hill! never assume just because yer on a high ground or a hill yer on safe firm ground.
Clay country they have different methods for getting round and in the end getting stuck cuts up the ground makeing rutts something most ranchers and farmers I know just love to see.
