Bad things hit while bush hogging?

[quicksandfarmer]

A drag harrow the previous owner had left lying in the weeds.

 

[woodlandfarms]

As mentioned, the scariest was the basketball. A Depends sort of moment. The hide from the neighbors moment was doing a good deed by mowing down the edges of the road and hitting the telephone junction box, took the phones out for everyone except me for two days.

The baddest was hitting a tines on a burried brush rake for a D8 dozer. Great find, noisy event. Fencing, Rodents, a fire escape style ladder.

Weirdest find is out on one of the hillsides, away from everything, is a set of concrete stairs. 5 steps, big concrete affair. Not sure why or how they ended up where they did. Can only assume given the previous owner.

 

[cowboy357]

The Bushog Makes for A Great barbwire fence Puller , I snagged a Loose Piece on the Ground Last nite & it pulled about another 300 foot off the Posts Before I Could Get it Shut down , All I Could do Was duck & Try to Protect Myself as it was Flying around in the Air . , Needless to say I Just left it sitting where it Was & Will deal with it today , Getting it out .

I Have No Use for the rest of the old fence so it will be Coming down on Purpose this time .

Other Then The Normal stuff Most post about such as Buryed Treasures , A Big Gate valve off of of an Old Oil rig I Guess Was the one thing I Figured Would be the Most Damaging , But I Got Lucky & It just Killed the Tractor . very little damage came from it . Bob

 

[Tim D]

Rubber tires won't come out from under a cutter unless raised. Barbwire is a lot of fun to cut out from under a hog. We always ran a chain for a top link when hogging uneven ground, I hit a stump with the blades and looked around to see the bush hog almost vertical. Big eyes and brown short moment.

 

[TerryJ]

A big piece of chain link fence. Took a while to cut it all out.

 

[Conservation]

Now that you mention ruts..I have some areas that I am trying to keep up pretty well, so the ground speed can be pretty good. But there are some ruts that catch me off gaurd every time. I always expect to break something. The bad rut is where a fence line was for just about forever. The house will be there soon, so I won't have to mow there anymore!

 

[sandman2234]

Went up to the Church this afternoon, doing the first rough mow of the unused part of the property. Another member mows the grass part, so I just hit the woods a couple times a year. The power company replaced the power poles along that side of the street, and I found the 3/8" guywire that they accidently left. (Surely they wouldn't have thrown it into the bushes on purpose, it HAD TO have fallen there and missed when they cleaned up) It made a lot of noise as it wrapped around the gearbox shaft before it completely stopped the 70 hp pto. I came home and when I get it off, I plan on returning the pieces to them, and tell them to come get the rest out of the woods where they left it. I do plan on running it by the Church officials in case they want to keep it, but hopefully they will see it my way (and I won't run my mouth and end up in jail!!)
Just plain sorry workers to miss that much trash.
David from jax

 

[garydc]

Wasn't really that bad for me but for the property owner whose field I was cutting it may not have been a good thing when I wound about 60 feet of invisible fence into the bush hog and very likely wasn't a good thing for the installer when he had to go back and reinstall the fence properly. Gary

 

[sandman2234]

Anybody got any good tricks for removing guy wire (3/8 cable) from under a bush hog with a stump jumper? Now would be a good time to post it, cause I am having NO LUCK getting the stuff loose!
David from jax

 

[Ryan03]

Anybody got any good tricks for removing guy wire (3/8 cable) from under a bush hog with a stump jumper? Now would be a good time to post it, cause I am having NO LUCK getting the stuff loose!
David from jax

I have had good luck using a torch, vise grips, and a small prybar. One of our operators usualy hits something similar with a batwing flail mower or hydroax once or twice a year. Most guy wire is aluminum and melts pretty quickly.

Ryan.

 

[neucam]

I have hit some rocks and and small pieces of branches, just noise, then I hit a larger rock, it bent one of the blades. I had to get it fixed, as I couldn't find a replacement. I try to walk the area, but some things just hide. They say the blade tips run at about 10000rpm lots of momentum, hard to get that stopped. I did cut off the top of our sewer drainout pipe hidden in the weeds, never even fased the mower.

 

[Midsouth]

Cutting torch and a pair of large pliers or vice grips and a lot of elbow grease. Or go buy a new one

 

[txranger]

Hit a 2 gallon metal hand sprayer that was laying in some brush and never saw it...Have to say, it made the biggest racket under the bush hog of anything I've ever hit that didnt end up breaking the shear pin. Needless to say, it's pretty useless now

 

[MikeD74T]

They say the blade tips run at about 10000rpm lots of momentum, hard to get that stopped. quote]

A 6' mower on a 540 rpm pto with a 1/1.47 - 1/1.97 gear box can swing blades at 15-30K FPM. Even 15000 fpm is 170 MPH. What major league pitcher wouldn't like to throw 170 MPH.
My worst has been backing over a beaver stump which knocked a blade off . Some serious shaking until it stopped. Fortunately the old Ford did not have live power so it stopped quickly. MikeD74T

 

[sandman2234]

I have had good luck using a torch, vise grips, and a small prybar. One of our operators usualy hits something similar with a batwing flail mower or hydroax once or twice a year. Most guy wire is aluminum and melts pretty quickly.

Ryan.

Thanks for the suggestions!
The aluminum cable you mentioned is actually the conductor cable, and probably has a single wire of steel in the middle, depending on the lenghts it was designed to span. This particular cable is 3/8 "Utility grade" which consists of 6 wires stranded around a center, usually with wire sizes of .120 diameter. The cable has a tensile strenght of about 15,000 and bends a lot easier than it's Hight Strength counterparts. I worked for a company that manufactured it for 15 years, so I recognized it immediately.
I hooked a comalong to an end and started pulling, after torching a few easy to reach places. I spent about 3 hours on it, and have about half of it removed. Rain delayed my progress, so I will finish it later.
David from jax

 

[Skyco]

The power company replaced the power poles along that side of the street, and I found the 3/8" guywire that they accidently left. (Surely they wouldn't have thrown it into the bushes on purpose, it HAD TO have fallen there and missed when they cleaned up)

Oh HECK NO...DUKE POWER throws all kinds of stuff in the woods at my NC place, lots of guy wire and even brand new splices. The trees take out the power lines to the house near me all the time. Do they pick up the broken wire they cut out? NO they just chuck it in the woods. Recently they planted a new pole for a new house and had to cut a tree. What did they do with the wood they cut? Well they threw it in the ditch to block it up during the next hard rain.
I'm gonna catch them one day in the act and it won't be pretty.

 

[workmytractor]

Well, I wasn't using a bush hog, but I ripped up a sewer pipe with my box blade once. The worst part was I had to fix it