well after reading your essay i have a question!
so ur saying its making you not want to hunt or ride atvs lol?

 

haha, no. But as you see- both ATV use and hunting are under heavy attack. Mostly by people far better funded and organized than those of us that do in fact enjoy those activities.

So it's especially damaging when a magazine that purports to be supporters of either do something so blatantly stupid that it hurts rather than harms.

The people die hard either for or against will not be swayed either way. It's the undecided, the fence sitters that are the swing vote here. Feeding ammunition to those that paint us as drunken yahoos tearing around the wilderness or blasting every furry thing in sight is worse than a disservice, it's outright betrayal. If that betrayal is the result of subterfuge, so be it. But when that betrayal is the result of sheer stupidity, as Quad magazine has done- then it's especially egregious.

 

i've subscribed to Quad, ATV Sport, and ATV Rider. Quad did mess up that article but they did admit they was wrong to portray the quad like that.

 

well an apology from them goes along way with me. I haven't seen it, so if you have a link to it online, I'd appreciate you dropping it, or quoting it for me. If it's not the current issue I won't be able to see that.

I'll pick up an issue today and give them another chance.

Better- I'll start writing freelance articles and submitting them for their use. I enjoy the occasional journalistic endeavor. I'm on the writer's guild of the Long Range Hunting website with articles on debunking the bias against long distance hunting as well as a primer for rattlesnake hunting.

By and large I find all ATV magazines better than any sport bike mag. Those are virtually worthless, and staffed by small time and failed racers more looking to write about how fast they are at free track days than anything else. There is one other sport bike mag that actually promotes the thug/stunter life that pretty much just uses ebonics and wannabe nonsense to sound like it's got street cred. It even has a writer that I know from being a hardcore HD guy that hated sport bikes when he was paid to talk smack about them, but now is on the staff for a sport bike mag.......how sad is that.

 

I'm going to say that Dirt Wheels gets a bad rap...... if you've been reading it as long as I have, you'd see that the supposed bias people complain about is not really there. It is cyclical and really is a matter of what is happening.....

People say DW is Yamaha bias, but 20 years ago when I was reading it people said they were Honda bias..... the fact is they are bias to whoever is making the best machines at the time..... right now Yamaha is making the best sport ATVs on the market and that is a reality.....if the YFZ and Raptor are winning all the shootouts it is because they are better right now in stock form for most riders.....

DW gushed over the 250R like it was a golden nugget made by God himself...... few would argue with that now looking back, but at the time Suzuki fans and Kawasaki fans were screaming bias because they thought their machine was best. They all claimed DW was being paid by Honda etc....etc....... When the z400 hit the scene, Honda fans refused to believe it was better then the 400ex and claimed DW was in Suzuki's pocket........ now it is all about Yamaha being in their pocket........

IMO Dirt Wheels gives an honest review of things they test. Generally you read the same things in Quad, ATV Rider etc...etc.... with a slight twist of course because all reviews are personal....... If I ask 100 people to eat a piece of Pizza and give a review on it, how many are going to be the same?

Quad Mag is very good too..... but they are not as refined as DW and it shows.... they have nice pics and honest reviews and have come a long way in a short time.

DW is the only one I subscribe to because I had to choose one..... and since I've been reading it since the day the first quad hit the cover I can say they have always been there in full function while many other have come and gone......

 

Other than the poor editing, I prefer Dirt Wheels.

 

I've read them all and I wouldn't recommend any of them. Poor editing, biased, full of ads and mostly useless information. I will still read one if it's free! But, I take it all with a grain of salt and know that I'll never get back the last 30 minutes of my life that I just wasted!

 

Check out Atvscene.com, its a free online magazine or EZine, lots of great reviews, pretty unbiased. Lots of coverage on everything, sport, utility, racing, might be a bit more performance oriented but I think its a great site.

-Krait