Nicholas Fluhart

My friends and I have an annual ritual that takes place in Mt. Holly, AR every fall. At the age of 14, my friend Philip and I started the tradition of taking a camping, four-wheeling, and hunting trip every fall on his family property in Mt. Holly. In subsequent years, others joined us and now we have a core group that meets every year. We primarily squirrel hunt, because it allows for multiple people and provides some lively action, and squirrel is a game that we can easily process and cook right at the camp site.

The first day, a couple of us get there early for an evening hunt in hopes of getting some meat to cook for dinner. As seen in the photos below, my friend Matthew and I were successful.

Then, we harvest some wood for the cook fire…

After the hunting everyone relaxes. There’s plenty to eat, lots of guns and target shooting, sometimes even some fishing, but it’s not until later that the real fun (in my opinion) begins when we hit the trails. Our riding style demands us to push the limits of our machines…

Almost lost it.

Almost lost it Part II.

…so it’s not uncommon to have to improvise when there’s an incident on the trails. In my case, I had a tire issue. While night riding, I hit a log in the trail and it applied so much pressure on my front tire that it shot an old patch-plug out of the tire like a bullet with a stream of pressurized green slime. Unfortunately, we were miles away from camp. It’s in situations like this that you have to analyze your surroundings and improvise with whatever you can find, or “MacGyver” it so to speak. On the side of the trail I found an old cigarette butt. I smeared some of the green slime sealant on it and used a small stick to plug it into the sidewall of the tire effectively sealing the hole. Fortunately, someone had a 12V air pump and we were able to air up the tire and finish the ride. Below you’ll see the cigarette butt in the tire.

And that’s the basis of our annual event. There will be more of these kinds of posts to come as I find more and more photos from the many years we’ve been doing this.

Until next time…

I recently joined a 1,200 acre lease in East Camden, Arkansas. I don’t have much time to hunt any more, but I really wanted a place to ride my dirt bikes and ATVs year-round without issue. The location of the lease is known in this part of the state as “The Area” which is in reference to the 68,000 acre WWII era Naval munitions depot. It’s a very historical and interesting place to say the least. Here’s a link to some general information (scroll down to the last plant discussed, the Shumaker Naval Munitions Depot). One of the most impressive facts not mentioned is that the entire depot was constructed in 5 months. Unbelievable. In years past I studied maps and photos of the place and have been out there on ATV rides a few times, but in late winter 2010 we decided to launch a two day exploratory expedition to familiarise ourselves with the lease and the surrounding area.

Setting up camp.

Coordinating the Camp

Once we had the camp set up, we shot some targets and ate lunch before setting out on our ATVs.

Crossing deep water.

Below you see my ATV parked next to a fence warning of the nearby ordnance well. What is an ordnance well? When the 68,000 acre depot was built, there were several homesteads that were removed. These homesteads of course had water wells. After the depot was finally closed, they disposed of the equipment and explosive ordnance. One such method of disposal was to dump it down the old water wells. It wasn’t until decades later in 2006 that the Army Corps of Engineers determined this may be a hazard, so they constructed a small fence which serves more as a warning than an actual barrier.

Fence surrounding an ordnance well.

We explored several interesting structures, such as the old explosives plant shown below.

A break at the explosives plant.

Small Arms Testing Facility

Then we were off to the gravel pits. To build such a massive complex of mostly concrete buildings, several large gravel yards were needed, some of which are still in operation today. Also, rail road tracks linked all of the facilities in the depot. Subsequently, the largest railway network in the state of Arkansas was constructed to facilitate the needs of the depot.

Surveying the Gravel Pits

One of the gravel pits from the area.

The last day of the trip, the weather pretty much rained solid. It made for some awesome riding, but it was a bit difficult cooking breakfast as seen below…

Breakfast in the Rain

Then we set out for the trails. Being the last day, we pulled out all the stops and rode hardcore, and as such, what ride would be complete without an incident? On the final leg of the expedition, a tie rod end on my ATV suddenly failed resulting in my loosing control of the steering which caused me to run off the trial.

The incident.

Below is a fantastic slide-show of the trip from beginning to end. However, I didn’t get many pictures of the magnum mud ride we went on because it was raining steadily and as you may have noticed from my last post, my camera is not amphibious. More on the way!

Most of my posts have centered around working, whether it be building or rebuilding machines, so this time I wanted to post about the “fun” portion of the process.

I don’t go nuts with snorkels, big tires, and gonzo mud. I prefer to take a more stock machine with some performance modifications and see what I can get away with. This tests my riding skills while keeping the ATV universal enough to use in various applications. Back during the spring of 2010 we went on a good ride just south of El Dorado, Arkansas that was perfect for what I like to do. It was a swampy, hilly, muddy, fun place to ride and I got some of it on tape (check out the video clip below). We had a great time, however it wasn’t without incident: we crashed in a deep hole. But alas, we survived and I was able to salvage my high-dollar HD camera. Whew….that was a close one!

Yeah, good times…. OK so we kept riding and encountered some awesome, gnarly terrain. We crossed several questionable bridges, including an old bridge made from a tractor trailer floor:

…and this is what happens when a bridge fails:

All of the trails were good and slick, so we got to test our tire traction in more than just deep mud. Overall, it was a great ride and I’m looking forward to going back.

Welcome to the jungle.

I’ll be posting a lot more riding/camping/hunting trips, so stay tuned…