Thought I would show how well my hitch haul conversion worked. Some may have seen where I built this a little while back on the do it yourself forum. My son took this nice doe a couple weeks ago and it performed perfectly. I am even able to load it by myself if need be.
I forgot I already made a post about my son taking another deer. Oops, but I don't think I made one about the hitch haul yet.:p
Does your atv get light in the front end with the deer in the back? I have a store bought hitch and haul that I install on the back of my Grizzly and used it a couple weeks ago for the first time. I could barely steer it and had to stand and lean over the handlebars to get it to steer at all.
It will get light but not to the point of being uncontrollable. My bike is around 1000# so that does help. This was a store bought that I made a basket out of. Really works well. This deer was at the bottom of a hill and i steered up it with no issues.
Try putting some straps on the hitch haul to your rack. Might prevent the axle housing from rotating as much and keep it from trying to lift the front end. Notice how mine are attached in the pic, they seem to help. Without the basket, you'll probably need to run them to the back side of the basket. Just thought about it, do you have irs? I have a straight axle and that probably helps alot with squatting issues.
I do have IRS. It didn't seem to be squatting too bad though. It could have just been the size of the deer I guess, he still had guts in him when I loaded on the ATV and weighed 184lbs after he was gutted.
I put my son in mine and he is 195# and it did get light but I was still able to steer. I hope irs doesn't make much difference because I am seriously considering a new bike next year and it will have irs. The new honda pioneer 500 sxs is leading the way for me right now and I will need to use a hitch haul setup like this.
I plan on making a basket for gear and bow rack for the rack and use a basket hitch haul on the pioneer. I think it will work well for my intended purpose. At 50" wide I should be able to still take trails and go around field edges and stay out of the crops.
