America’s Side-By-Side Catastrophe – Jimmy Mac On Two Wheels

In 1973 The National Lampoon ran an ad for the fictitious DOA Deerslayer Motorhiker Side-by-Side. The ad copy explained that the Deerslayer “lets you and your family have all the fun and freedom of the outdoors life and all the comforts of home.” The Motorhiker included a Swedish-steel chainsaw bumper and “Pow-R-Prongs to blaze your way to beauty, cutting your own trails to the scenic hideaways only the kookiest nature nuts ever used to see.” The vehicle came stock with an insecticide spray, a Grubstake ice chest (to “cut the dust”) and an 8-track tape deck.

I thought the ad was hilarious because its premise was ridiculous. Fifty years later, the ad is not so funny anymore because it has come true. While Side-by-Side (or SxS) vehicles don’t have chainsaw blades on their front cow-guard bumpers, they do have the motor power and a large enough tire footprint to strip the top soil off steep, graded dirt roads. These vehicles turn dirt roads that have been used for years into loose, rocky, rutted canals. Yes, canals of rocks when dry and drainage canals when it’s raining.

**So long terra firma:** I won’t believe a study funded by the SxS industry that claims their vehicles do no more harm to roads than any other user. I’ve witnessed the deterioration over the last five years and I know it is real. The only thing worse would be driving a Deerslayer.

The SxS has quickly transformed dirt roads into something only other SxS users and people in rock-crawling jeeps can navigate. A family using a station wagon or minivan to reach a picnic area or campsite on a National Forest road, can’t do that anymore. The mountain biker or gravel-bike rider is now hike-a-biking more miles both up and down hills. The hunters in pickup trucks, even four-wheel-drive pickups, are forced off the dirt roads they used to drive. Riding a motorcycle on this rocky surface requires expert-level riding skills and even then, expert riders will quickly tire of bouncing through extended rock gardens.

BAN THEM BEFORE THEY DESTROY MORE
Just because a manufacturer can make a vehicle that is easy to operate (meaning little skill is necessary) and rips the living daylights out of dirt roads, doesn’t mean land management agencies are obligated to welcome them with open arms. If allowed to operate on public lands, they are pushing all other users off that land. While the SxS claws itself to the top of the off-road hierarchy, it is destroying and reshaping the landscape for everyone else.

**SxS playground:** There is terrain that heals itself after the onslaught of high horsepower and trench-digging tires and that’s where SxS belong. They don’t belong on forest service roads even if they have been converted to “street Legal.”

Are there places for these modern-day Deerslayers? Maybe on sand dunes. Maybe carefully-selected areas in a desert. Or maybe the companies that sold 586,944 units* in 2023 can purchase land and open SxS parks. I just hate to think my tax dollars are used to fund the destruction of land I used to enjoy on my mountain bikes and motorcycles.

WELCOME THE DEERSLAYER
The Side-by-Side craze will push all other recreational vehicles off the road if left unchecked. So what’s next? Once the SxS ruin all the roads, the only thing left is a Deerslayer, a joke that has become reality.

*According to research performed by Minneapolis-based research firm Power Products Marketing (PPM).