OK, here is a story about a Zetor tractor. It was a big one though. It was
about 100 HP with a full cab. About 10 years ago I was asked to "farm sit" a
friends farm in Scotland while he and his wife went away on holiday for 10
days. It was in Perthshire in the central highlands and was about 500 acres
of hill with sheep and a few suckler cattle. No crops. I had worked on a
lot of farms at college for holiday money and so I was asked to do this so
the sheep stayed fed and cattle did not escape. I had the run of the place.
There was a Zetor Four wheel drive Tractor and a Land Rover in the barn.
the Zetor was brand new and was the farmer's pride and joy. It was actually
bloody good, a lot of power and electric on demand four wheel drive with
bigger than normal front tires, power steering A/C and a stereo. The Land
Rover was an old Series beater of unknown age to me then. It was much like
the old Land Rovers on all the farms across England, Scotland and Wales. The
land was grassland with some woodland and dry stone walls here and there.
Nothing was flat and as you went further uphill the "fields" gave way to
open hill with heather and bog on it. The tradition, if you are running
sheep on a hill like this is to cut drainage ditches up and down it so the
peat drains a bit and lets grass grow so the sheep have food. It is hard
land to farm. It is where Land Rovers live and die unrecognised.
The deal was that during the 10 days I had to shoot a deer on the high
country so that they had one for the winter. The farmer had a Rigby 270 in
the cupboard that I could use and he indicated where the deer normally
appear and then he left. I thought that I would shoot the deer late in the
10 days so that it could hang for a day or so in the barn and then the
farmer and his wife could butcher it themselves when they got back. The
only words of caution that he gave me before he left was NOT to take the
Zetor above the stone wall that separated the fields from the open hill
because it was rough and boggy. I said that I would not even have a need to
use the tractor at all let alone go up there in it. So on that note, off
they went. It basically rained almost full time. I fed the sheep and cattle
each day and walked the hills with my air-rifle when it was not raining. I
drove the old Landy about in the mud and left it at the hill gate when I had
to go further. I saw deer a few times and noted when and where they were
for later. About 5 days in, I thought that I better check the 270 was
zeroed in and so I took it into the upper field with 20 bullets and sighted
it at 200 yards on a gallon orange juice container which exploded very
satisfactorily when hit. After three shots I reckoned that it was good
enough. Remember that in Britain, there is no Fish and game, no rangers, no
limits and no tags and amazingly contrary to popular belief over here in the
US, the sound of gunfire in the countryside is so common that no-one pays
much attention to it. I lightly oiled the gun and put it away knowing that
any red deer I could get within 200 yards was history.
When there was only two days left until the owner came back I took the
270 out again and put it in the gunrack in the Land Rover and headed out to
the hill. I parked it in the trees and carefully stalked around downwind
from where the deer normally were. When I eventually saw them, they were
much higher than normal out on the open heather up the hill. "What he hell"
I thought and followed them up there, it was only a few miles. After a few
hours of cunning manovering in open country I had positioned myself so that
I had a clear shot. I scanned the 30 or so deer through the scope and
picked out a good one. Not too big so and not too small, just one that the
gene pool would not miss too much and that I could easily get back to he
farm. Down it went with a single shot and off the rest ran. I went over and
gutted (Graulloched) the deer which lightens them up considerably. A normal
red deer will weigh about 300 Lbs with no guts. The ones in the woodland are
bigger than the ones on the open hill, they are the same species as an Elk,
only smaller. They roar instead of "bugle" and they have the same mane and
the dark antlers. I shouldered the rifle and started to drag the deer down
hill to the Land Rover or at least to the gate. They drag surprisingly
easily with the direction of the hair and on sloping wet ground, but after
200 yards or so I was sweating, hot and pissed off. I deceided that I could
get the Land rover over the drainage ditches and through the heather and
drive right up to the deer so I set off without it to get the Land Rover. A
few hours later I was on my way back in the Landy which was a SWB truck-cab
and was doing quite well in 4WD low when the left side wheels both fell into
a ditch that was covered with heather. That was it, it was stuck, bellied
out on it's chassis the full length. Time was passing and evening was only
a few hours away so I had to get the deer in and free the landy, and he only
way to do it was with the shiney new Zetor. Against my better judgement, I
took the tractor through the hill gate and out onto the hill. In Four wheel
drive it bridged he ditches, it drove effortlessly over the heather, if a
wheel went into a ditch, I stamped on the diff-lock and drove right out.
The farmer would never know. I would free the Landy, and pick up the deer
in it and get the tractor back in the barn. I got to the Land Rover,
attached a chain and simply yanked it out of the ditch with ease not running
and with no-one in it. Once on terra firma again I drove the half mile to
the deer and loaded it in the back with some difficulty and some swearing.
Once in there I turned the Landy round and headed back and promptly bogged
it down again. This was getting stupid, I thought I could drive off road
and had been stuck twice now. I was about 5 miles from a road of any sort
and I had two vehicles and a dead deer up here on the hill. A bit annoyed, I
walked back to the Zetor and fired it up and drove straight to the Landy
without much care. It seemed as if it was impervious to getting stuck, so
why not take the shortest route right? Well I found out why not when the
Zetor started to slow and wallow even though I added power. Before I knew
it I was well into a peat bog that had grass on it. Some of these things
are bottomless. "Bugger" I thought as I selected reverse. It wallowed some
more and moved little and sank a bit further in. Forward, nothing, back,
worse, it was sinking into the bloody bog. Soon, because of all the
vibration I was up to the base of the axle in the rear, about halfway up the
big rear tires. the difflock did nothing and the 4WD only meant that the
front wheel could bury themselves too. There was no traction at all. When I
finally admitted defeat, the arse-end of the tractor was almost completely
buried. All the hydraulics were buried in peat and it was leaning at such a
crazy angle that when I opened the door, the bottom of the door touched the
ground. It was he most stuck thing I have ever seen, and I have seen a few
stuck things! (I have a picture somewhere) And, worse, it was about 3 miles
above where I was told never to take it. Now that all my options were gone
I tried very hard to get the Landy out. Because I had gone straight for the
tractor, I had not really trid before to get it out. I managed to free it
with the added weight of the deer for traction I managed to get it back onto
the tracks I had made on the way up the hill. A little later I was back in
the farmyard and I hung the deer in the barn and hosed off the Land Rover
and went into the house. It was dark by now so I left the Zetor to the
night out there on the hill. The next day I tried to arrange a big forestry
tractor to come and pull it out. They have four wheels all the same size
and can pull anything except a stuck, bogged down water logged Zetor tractor
I found out. There was nowhere to sit the monster tractor without all it's
own gyrations making it start to sink. Where it was jerking and pulling and
backing up, it looked like the Somme and amazingly the Zetor was not moving,
like it was in concrete. The peat had settled an all around it. The top
third of the right rear wheel was visible, half the left and half the front
ones. It has settled in the night so that you could only get in the left
door AND they opened forwards. I did not get it out before the farmer got
back. He was actually OK about it. It took a day to recover with some
really heavy equipment and when they did, it's gearbox and rear axle was
full of water. In the end apparently, it took a persistant pressure on a few
chains to get it to move to break the suction rather than jerking it. He
was happy that the livestock were still alive and that I had got him a deer
and was a bit quiet about the tracto!!. I apologised profusely and he said
that he would have done the same if he had had to drag the deer that far. I
got off lightly and after a few oil changes the Zetor was as good as new.
They are very popular with the smaller farmers because they are cheap to
buy. I never had a problem with one other than getting that one stuck, but I
was using it for things that I should not have been using it for.
Thanks, I had not thought about that for a while.
Kind regards,
Mark Pilkington
christian147@juno.com wrote:
> Strange question, I know but does any one have any experience with them.
> they look to have the best deal in the US in the 30-40 HP range just now
> but are they crap?
>
> thanks much
> Chris Hall
> _______________________________________________
> LRO mailing list
> LRO@land-rover.team.net
> http://land-rover.team.net/mailman/listinfo/lro
_______________________________________________
LRO mailing list
LRO@land-rover.team.net
http://land-rover.team.net/mailman/listinfo/lro
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Nov 30 2002 - 16:07:07 EST