Mounted search and rescue

["Kate Beardsley" <katebeardsley@hotmail.com>]

Wow. I'm all for ATV use in SAR work, but including them in Mounted SAR? 
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And maybe I'm just not understanding 
how someone would want to include them in mounted SAR work. Besides having 
distinctly separate training and safety issues, ATVs  and equines have their 
own sets of advantages and my experience says those advantages are very 
different. Using them both on the same search may work out great, but when 
considering using them together in a unit as Jorene described, I think 
you're cancelling out each team's strong points.

We use ATVs for road searches and for the road parts of general searches. 
When we use them, we frequently have to radio coordinate sound blasts as the 
noise of other searchers' motors get in the way. ATVers can search large 
amounts of road or developed trails quite quickly with very little fatigue. 
They also can haul supplies with ease.

Horses may not clear roads quicker than the ATVs, but the riders do not have 
to deal with the noise pollution factor. About half of our MSAR team members 
bring a pack horse, so hauling equipment is not a problem. Of course, the 
horses themselves bring so much to the search, their role should not be 
downplayed. My experience with MSAR is not the same as Tomi's -- ATVs 
definitely cannot go where horses can go where I live. Beyond being illegal 
to use mechanized transport in designated wilderness areas, our mountains 
are rough and volcanic and anything with wheels doesn't have a chance. For 
us, there is nothing faster for clearing wilderness trails than our horse 
team.

Our horse team is just one of about a dozen teams on our larger SAR team. 
We've taken our training seriously and our horses and riders are as good as 
they get. We definitely have a niche within SAR to fufill and that niche is 
a different one from ATVers. (Perhaps in a  different area with milder 
terrain and a larger, less-specialized horse team, joining with an ATV crew 
could work better.)

So...ATVs in mounted SAR? Well, the ATV riders do 'ride', so I suppose thery 
'mount' their machines, but I think this is where the including ATVs in 
Mounted SAR really ends...

Kate
with Deschutes County Sheriff's Search & Rescue, Central Oregon


"We are what we repeatedly do."

Kate Beardsley
...building relationships
...developing athletes
..."driven" to excellence
Central Oregon




> From: Santafearabians@aol.com
> Subject: [MSAR] Mounted SAR to include ATV?

> Hello Fellow MSAR,
>
> Has any one included or thought of including ATV units  with your search
> groups? Our new liaison officer with our Sheriff's  Office asked me the 
> other day
> what I thought of the idea. Any experience  out there with the concept of
> MSAR, equine and  ATV?