I ride both, I think because the sled clubs & lobby groups like the MSA in MI. have
worked & fought so hard for there sport (going back to the early 1970's or before
in some cases) that they don't always work with the orv groups like they should,
to permit more orv use in the off season of there public land trails that they have.
They may feel that if the orv use does not go well, they many not be able to stop it,
or may loose the trail completely. BTW it is not totaly there say for the public lands,
but with out there help & push it makes it that much harder. But with more & more
sled folks getting into orv's, that may change, as they to look for more places to ride.

 

Cant we all just get along??? I met up with a couple sledders, who passed me in the ditch, in which is perfectly legal for both of us. We came up to each other, i waved, they did not. Instead he proceeded to gun his throttle, kicking snow on me and riding away. WTF??. Im pretty easy going, but if a snowmobiler doesnt like atv's, and does that again, i will ram a piece of fence post through the hood of their sled, and drive away.

 

Here's another message supporting the "Winter isn't what it used to be" comments. I had a snowmobile long before I had a quad or dirt bike. The first couple years, it was great fun, and I was out all winter. Then, as we got less and less snow here in Southern Minnesota, it was still fun riding, but I couldn't do it nearly as often.

After I bought the quad in May of 2001, that was the new toy, and of course it got ridden all the time. Something was different this time though. I could ride and have fun with this thing during spring, summer, fall, and almost all winter.

Any friend I have that has a snowmobile now must make a huge trip out west one or two times a winter to get a decent ride in. With as little snow as we have been getting, the Scrambler can go anywhere the snowmobiles can. I have to admit I joke with them about when they're going to sell their sleds to get ATVs.

Even with the dirt bike that can only ride 3 out of the 4 seasons MAYBE, I've gotten more seat time on that so far this summer than I've had on a snowmobile the last three.

Sleds are still great fun. I may be a convert again, when we get snow...

 

I'm like most everyone here .. been a sledder for as long as I can remember. Here on the east coast, the winters are either lamb or lion. This winter for instance, (have to rely on what I've heard since I was in Alberta then) there was no reliable snow fall until the end of january. Then it snowed and snowed until the end of march. When I got home in mid april I was very surprised by how little snow I could see around. People told me that the house I moved into couldn't be reached three weeks earlier.

Why I went with a quad is because I can use it in my neck of the woods for a good 11 months of the year.

At the same time, as a sledder, I hated to see ATV's out rutting the trails and making it generally miserable for snowmobile use. In addition to that, irresponsible/idiot snowmobilers don't make the trails any more pleasant, creating yes-mams with the squatting of throttles .. drag racing has a time and place and public/multi-use groomed trails is NOT the place.

I've torn a strip off more than one young fellow on a heavily modded/expensive snow rocket for blasting by me and my kids, stopped on trail side. Most are courteous enough to say, yeah sorry about that .. others are more arrogant about it. I'd like to find their sleds unattended for just long enough to dump a 1/2 pound of sugar in their gas tanks.

If you could count on people to ride appropriately there would be no problems, but unfortunately, we can't count on most people to do that. If I went out riding in the winter and found I was rutting the trails all to peices, I'd turn around and go home out of it. That's just me, however.

 

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I saw on a snowmobile site a user that was gloating about how some guy has to make payments the rest of his lige or something cause this user was pumping out 55 plus out of his snowmobile in the dark night and hit this other guys snowmobile that was parked on the side of the trail facing the oppisite direction for that side of the trail and got himself hurt doing so. And some of the other users were saying how lucky he was that he wasn't killed but he was lucking that his insurance was there and got him better lawyers. The other guy was only lucking enough that he wasn't anywhere near the sled when this nutcase was racing down a trail at night. I had asked the question "if a deer jumped out and you hit it whos fault would it have been?" He never did answer the question.

I do have a snowmobile too and I do the laid back riding where my average speed is only around 20mph. And this part winter they ran the snowmobile trail right past the neigborhood and if I want to use my four wheeler on this section of area that runs along the hightway I will do it and if a snowmobiler from outside the area gets mad at me so be it. Myself and a few others in the neigborhood were using this area before these other clowns decided to move in on our domain. I get more anoyed of the other snowmobilers that do spin their track everytime they start going from a stop beating that patch of snow down to the dirt. I have seen some punk kids that would go past an area stop and spin many times on a straigt away. We also havn't seen too much snow localy here either but when it does come I do have my favorite spot near some train tracks but not on them or across them that no one else has stumbled on to yet.