What have you hit with your mower lately?

[Threepoint]

[snip]
So I'm happy in the morning sun and mowing down the center for about 200 yards.

All of a sudden - WHUP, WHUP, WHUP - and this God awful stink.

The biggest, smelliest pile of cow poop I've ever seen. And the mower "fogged" this big pile and it completely encased the mower and ME.

Have you ever TASTED fogged cow poop. Well, I have.

People keep saying manure is great for strawberries. I'm not making that mistake again. I'm going back to whipped cream.

 

[amhicks21]

I've spent many hundreds of hours cutting new home construction lots so my list is too long to post but here are some highlights. A box spring, chain link fence, barbed wire fence, hundreds of steel pallet straps, hundreds of concrete washout piles, raised manhole covers, stumps, guy wires, rocks, water shutoffs, a cable tv pedestal... and the list goes on. They let em grow until a township sends a letter so sometimes they are 4 feet tall and impossible to scout out first.

 

[Buckeye Guy]

Used to bush hog as a side gig for many years, and I think literally hit everything you can imagine. Cinder blocks, rocks of every size, snakes, animal carcasses, rebar, wire, pipe, fence, stumps, a smashed shopping cart, brake rotors, you name it. The worst ones that stand out that caused the most damage or most amount of work to fix are; barbed wire, a cylinder head from an engine, an ungodly amount of fishing line, rope, and cable of all sorts. The one that made me feel physically sick was a nest of bunnies.

 

[Engineer42]

Used to bush hog as a side gig for many years, and I think literally hit everything you can imagine. Cinder blocks, rocks of every size, snakes, animal carcasses, rebar, wire, pipe, fence, stumps, a smashed shopping cart, brake rotors, you name it. The worst ones that stand out that caused the most damage or most amount of work to fix are; barbed wire, a cylinder head from an engine, an ungodly amount of fishing line, rope, and cable of all sorts. The one that made me feel physically sick was a nest of bunnies.

Yeah, I did that with a push mower when I was about 13. Mowing under boxwood bushes one Saturday morning and poof. Fur blown about 20 ft from mower.

 

[amhicks21]

Yeah, I did that with a push mower when I was about 13. Mowing under boxwood bushes one Saturday morning and poof. Fur blown about 20 ft from mower.

yeah... I neglected to mention all the wildlife.

 

[RandyT]

Neighbor was bush hogging a few years back along the road on his property side of the ditch, not the road side and snagged the new neighbors temporary phone line Wrapped 1/2 mile of phone cable into the blade and stump jumper.

 

[amhicks21]

Neighbor was bush hogging a few years back along the road on his property side of the ditch, not the road side and snagged the new neighbors temporary phone line Wrapped 1/2 mile of phone cable into the blade and stump jumper.

ouch. I used to bury phone service wire 20 years ago. They'll string them temp wires anywhere and sometimes they'd be there for months. cant say ive snagged one with a brush hog but I did manage to wrap 100 feet of buried 50 pair main cable around the head of a directional boring machine. That was expensive.

 

[ruffdog]

Neighbor was bush hogging a few years back along the road on his property side of the ditch, not the road side and snagged the new neighbors temporary phone line Wrapped 1/2 mile of phone cable into the blade and stump jumper.

First time I mowed here I wrapped up 650 feet of that temp wire under my 982 Cub Cadet.

 

[friendlywithbears]

What do you folks with brush hogs do for blade maintenance with stuff like this? Do you just let them ride or do you rework them when you're hitting stuff like this?

 

[RandyT]

ouch. I used to bury phone service wire 20 years ago. They'll string them temp wires anywhere and sometimes they'd be there for months. cant say ive snagged one with a brush hog but I did manage to wrap 100 feet of buried 50 pair main cable around the head of a directional boring machine. That was expensive.

Was helping the nephew with a stump removal job a few years ago. And part of my job was to hold the fiber optic cable up off the ground so he could grind the roots under it. The cable ran across the guys driveway, and into his grass before going back underground. The underground locate guys actually painted the cable while doing the locate.

 

[Alan W.]

Whoever is building always throws their scrap, trash, excess fill and concrete truck cleanout on the adjacent vacant building lot.
Mine field is a more suitable term.

 

[Paul40]

Yesterday after a day of mowing some pretty gnarly trails with the brush hog, I noticed a spot on the way home that I had missed. No problem, popped the PTO on and backed into it. I immediately caught something so big it stopped the tractor dead. Thankfully I had just slipped my clutch the day before, or I can't imagine...

The culprit was a big fat wad of old rusty logging winch cable hiding so well I couldn't see it when walking around. New set of blades are pretty wrecked from it, I'm still cursing today!

 

[Hermio]

Yesterday after a day of mowing some pretty gnarly trails with the brush hog, I noticed a spot on the way home that I had missed. No problem, popped the PTO on and backed into it. I immediately caught something so big it stopped the tractor dead. Thankfully I had just slipped my clutch the day before, or I can't imagine...

The culprit was a big fat wad of old rusty logging winch cable hiding so well I couldn't see it when walking around. New set of blades are pretty wrecked from it, I'm still cursing today!

I actually hit my chain guard when it fell off. I have an 8' dual spindle brush cutter. Hitting the chain guard broke a blade and bent the others. The spindles and stump jumpers were OK.

 

[John Atkisson]

Piece of firewood- hit it with the belly mower on my Kubota BX. Sheared the bolt holding blade to the spindle- deep inside the spindle. New spindle needed but easy fix and only cost 30 bucks.

 

[JWR]

Have hit small rocks, big rocks, huge rocks, old house ruins, stumps, big logs, old steel bed frames, thick rebar, concrete blocks, random pieces of steel, stoves, fencing net. The list goes on and on beyond what I can remember.

Popped a couple shear pins with some of the hardest hits, but I typically just wear them out with all the beating it takes.

Still rocking the original "blades" that came with the mower and didn't even got bent once.

View attachment 755797

That is unique. I have never seen a "chain mower" before. I'd think it would beat up the grass and weeds rather than cut it. Sometimes that would be OK, sometimes not so good. Still very interesting. Thanks for posting.

 

[skeezixsmith]

Ran over a roll of chain link fencing that was covered by some brush. Took me a while to cut it out from the blades. Had to disconnect the mower and use my FEL to raise the mower on its side (with a chain) so I could get in there with bolt cutters. Chain link is tough stuff.

 

[JWR]

Issue with ditch mowing is people discard all kinds of stuff in ditches, called littering, I call it dumping junk. I do a couple fields with drainage ditches (deep) on their borders. The roadside ones are particularly suspect. Everything from old tires to bed springs to garbage bags full of garbage tossed in the ditch. People are lazy pigs.

Amen brother... my 7ft Bush Hug usually stands most anything you throw at it. Cleaning up an old farm takes forever and the debris you hit is just not predictable. My BH seems to pulverize unseen head-sized rocks with only a lot of noise and no damage.

I did hit a hidden boulder last year that was around 2 feet in diameter and stood 10 inches or more high. Left over from strip mining decades ago and the grass completely obscured it. Tractor straddled it so my first clue was when all hell broke loose at the hog. Severely bent heavy blades but surprisingly did no other damage. Gearbox is fine. Of course this was while mowing free for a neighbor who owns no equipment... New blades from the dealer are $105 and getting the old blade bolts out of the blade carrier was impossible at home. Shop had to heat it, suddenly cool it, and even then had trouble driving out the blade bolts. Even if that were not an issue the torque on the bolts is in the 500 or 600 ft-lb area. I got the nuts off OK but that was the least of the problems.

My typical bush hog stoppage and unravel issues over the years have been barbed wire, polystyrene twine, surprise stumps, old posts not quite rotten enough, iron fence posts some nut left in the field, and worst cases are pretty much always in places I had not mowed before -- those are ALWAYS scary. Very rarely had to do anything other than to unwind the trash. The steel fence posts and rocks have always lost to the hog. I am amazed how hard that blade steel is.

 

[Dhub]

i use my mower to find sprinkler heads and hose bibs...

 

[Surshot]

Bought an old home place that was never fenced, so folks being lazy, just pulled in and dumped stuff on the place behind the trees. That was after the house was burglarized and then burned to cover the burglary.The prior owhers just had the junk pushed up with a dozer. I found junk scattered for 1/4 mile, through volunteer trash trees.
I have hit just about everything, plumbing, kids toys, pieces of appliances, bed springs, etc.

My favorite item was a 2” galvanized well pipe with a 1” pipe insert, in tall grass, went right between the root rake forks into the bush hog, cut almost half way through both pipes before it shut down the tractor. That Squeeler is one more tough bush hog as is the Kubota 45 hp standard trans 4x4.

Oh, I finally got a D-8 with a blade and root rake to push the mess up into a big pile, dug a pond, then buried the pile in the bottom 10’ below the pond bottom.

 

[bullbreaker]

I ran over a womans bra in a field with a 7' BushHog Squealer , just temporarily slowed my blade speed down . Later later I discovered a piece of it with the wire caught up under my bushHog blades /stumpjumper . I could barely read the tag on it however it said "48D " .