Hauling dogs behind a snowmobile

[Yotehunter89]

Hey I'm new to the site. Been running hounds for about ten years. We run coyotes year round. Been hunting off sleds quite a bit in the winters. I'm looking for ideas on building a tow behind sled. I know it's been brought up before. Was thinking an otter sled which works good but like the idea of the single set of old skis and pivots at the point of the skis. Seems to take up some of the bumps. I made one a few years back but seemed to have a lot of tounge weight. Usually haul 3 hounds at 50 or so lbs a piece. Any ideas on how to build one and not have a ton of weight on my hitch.

[brodieross]

I would build the box and tongue of the sled first before mounting the skis. Once you have that built set it all on top of the skis and move it back and forth until you find the balance point, mark it, and mount the skis there. If the skis are in front or behind the center of the box at all, the balance point is going to change though when you load the dogs in it, so keep that in mind and maybe check it if you can with the dogs loaded before mounting the skis.

[JustinKeller]

I built one a few years ago that worked really well. The skis were mounted 2 inches behind center for positive tongue weight. The tongue is about 4 ft long to reduce weight on the machine. And it has about 14 inches of clearance. I put 4 hounds on it regularly and had 6 on it once, I also loaded it with gear for camping with the dogs . It pulled well even loaded to about 350 lbs. Make it as light as possible, snow machines are not made to pull trailers. I blew up one sled.
Then a friend got me on some atv tracks. I sold all my snow machines for scrap. This wheeler on tracks will go any where and haul the dogs and all my junk. Tracks are expensive, but so are snow machines and shoulder/back surgery.... I have not yet been stuck with the tracks. Good luck. And build it as light as possible

[USU]

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