I’ll be honest, I think that electric dirt bikes have a big place in the hunting woods. Not only are they easier to maintain, quieter, and generally more powerful than their gasoline-powered counterparts, they tend to be easier to ride as you’re not worried about clutching, shifting, and maintaining momentum so as to not stall it.
Now take those attributes and apply them to hunting situations, and you’ll find that you have a better platform to go off, explore, and get further before your legs and lungs take you those last few miles. I, myself, took Stark’s Varg EX to Oregon to chase blacktail, and while I didn’t come home with a filled tag, I could get places others just couldn’t, or do so with so much more ease; it made the experience all the better.
And it made getting to glassing locations all the easier, but I could quickly stop if I saw something out of the corner of my eye, too. Which happened. A lot. But those were just does…
I, however, am not as experienced a hunter as Elkshape’s Dan Staton. That man has been hunting for decades, and while he’s maintained his health to be a true wilderness athlete, he knows the power of a force multiplier: i.e., a dirt bike or UTV. His latest video, however, shows just how much further you can go when you employ something like an EV dirt bike, and also breaks down the pros and cons of Zero’s new X-line dirt bikes compared to SurRon’s Light Bee X.
He does have an interesting takeaway at the end, though, and one I absolutely understand.
Now, I won’t spoil the video, but Staton and his hunting crew, which involves his cameraman, his dad, and one of his friends, are going after spring black bears in Idaho, one of the best spots to find black bears in the West. It’s nasty, steep, shale-ridden country that’s wet with snow runoff and slippery leaves that are becoming unveiled thanks to the snow melting. There are also ticks galore.
Yay.
But the video does a great job at showing just how capable these two lightweight EV motorcycles can be on technical, tight, and gnarly terrain. As well as how they can take a full-grown adult with a full pack way further into the woods compared to you using just your truck, just your UTV, or just your legs. And that’s the name of the game in hunting, as animals tend to not want to be around humans. They want to be in those thick and gross places, the places where you question your own sanity as to why you walked in, too. Ask me about my elk packout…
Dan, however, has been riding regular gas dirt bikes for nearly as long as he’s been hunting, so his insights are that of an experienced rider, and an experienced hunter, and they’re worth your time to listen to, especially if you’re thinking about one versus the other to add to your stable.
I’m actually heading into the black bear woods myself here in a few weeks, but I’ve got a different method of travel for that. So stay tuned.
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