I've never personally seen 1, but they did exist, at least years ago



Not the worst idea

man I almost hit went through a barb fence one time all of the sudden the trail turned and I might have been going too fast I stopped touching the wire side ways with the sled skidded into it , just touching

pulled it over a bit and got going again

I recall years ago, a well known local was decapitated by a fence while riding his sled. Kinda took the enthusiasm out of snowmobiling for awhile.

Young lady when I was in school hit barb on a snowmobile, cut her face up pretty bad. Almost had my head taken off on my place a couple years ago, had Amish kids running barb in a swamp, the strung a piece of electric across a gate for their horse. Almost took me at the neck on my ATV.

I could see three things happening if someone tried to actually use that thing for the intended purposes. Two of them are bad. The last thing would be bad if the fence owner caught up to you .

I don't even know how they would be mounted on more modern snowmobiles of the last 30 years

They look very similar to a wire strike kit on a helicopter and I can speak from experience, they DO work.

Are they homemade?

Could save your life.

It's not so you can go through fence rather it's to keep your head from being cut off if you are ridding and don't see a wire.

yup , even on a 80s sled it was going to bust the fiberglass hood up , just hopefully not kill you

I saw the fence I nearly hit even if it was rather late. I was lower and than the handle bars and was going to ride through it behind the sled sliding sideways like I was laying down a motorcycle when I came to rest against it. it seemed like my best option at the time.

I Remember them. during the depression the government bought up a lot of land up here there was and is old bare wire around to this day i

Why are you crossing fences? Down here fences mean stay out.

Here in Virginia a fence means "please cut me and come on in"! Hunters here have no respect for private property. I have pictures to prove it. But the law does nothing so they keep doing it. You should hear them scream and cry when you "look for your dog's" on their property.

No, they are commercially made for the make/model of aircraft. They look very similar to the top picture and are located at the top and bottom of the cabin.

Around here they used the old sickle sections on a bar. Not only on sleds but also on the front of the hound pickups.

Warrior- just because you cross a fence doesn’t mean you are crossing to a different landowner. There’s lots of 2-3-5-10-20k acre ranches out here

If I’m on private land I know where the fences are cuz I’m familiar with my or my friends land. This looks like it was made for guys just flying full throttle around where ever they can. The only fences I do run into are the abandoned ones in thick bush, usually the chainsaw finds it.

a solution that was designed by a Manitoba engineer and a good proto-type is in the Royal Aviation Museum in Winnipeg a trip well worth it to see all inventions of flying up north through the ages.
We had them on the air boats when duck banding and they sure dooooo work. It was always interesting to hear the gggggggggggggning and the twang in the end. When you went from 25 mph down to 15 mph. and just hoped you did not slide sideways

here everything might be buried under snow , might pile up feet deep at the edge of a fence row

many of the trails are on private land with owner permission most clubs have a land owners banquette to thanks them for allowing the trail to cross their field , since the ground is frozen and covered in snow the sleds hardly even touch the owners land underneath.
most of them have good signage to mark where the trail is and people stay on the trail

just like a helicopter you never intend to hit wires

but if you can't see one because of a terrain feature before it is too late at least you live to go back and fix the fence

or as someone else pointed out someone decided to start running fence where they didn't own , through a swamp or woods seen it happen we hunted a parcel and the neighboring land owner thought since no one lived on it he could string up fences all over it and keep his horses on it. he had moved them off by deer season but the poorly constructed fences were every where from tree to tree with the occasional t-post

probably more of an issue in the year the photo was taken

seriously, you think people purposely try to cut their heads off. ( they dont see the fence).