Winch a Tree up a Slope the Easy Way

Pulling trees up a slope can be a difficult task. The tree’s weight seems, if not insurmountable, then at least a lot of work to drag up the hill. However, you can do it the easy way and use a Muvalift Max or Muvalift Mini mounted to an excavator or tractor bucket with your chosen winch.

The Muvalift winch plate can be used with most winch systems. The winch, electrical connections and battery are not included with Muvalift. We use a Badland 3500 winch, connected with snowplow quick connections. You will need to drill 2 holes for the power source into the Muvalift winch plate. If you are using your Muvalift with a compact tractor, the front tractor bucket is a great place to store the battery. We use deep cycle marine batteries as they have a couple extra connections.

Just mount the Muvalift body to your bucket and attach the winch to the winch plate following the user guide.

Once everything is properly connected, you are ready to go. Make sure you use the “free spool” feature on the winch to release the drag on the line when pulling the cable to desired location. Re-engage it to use the winch to pull. Then let Muvalift do the heavy work pulling the tree up the incline.

Unlike an ATV or vehicle mounted winch, the Muvalift winch can be raised or lowered by the bucket to lift materials over obstacles that may infringe pulling it up or down to the desired location.

Above: After winching the tree to the edge of the hill using the Muvalift, we lifted the tractor bucket and backed up which drug the tree over the hill’s edge.