Just when you think you’ve seen it all, some dude straps a Sherco enduro bike onto the pillion seat of a 1000-pound Honda Gold Wing and takes the works on a wild trail ride into the mountains. Why? you ask. To retrieve a giant moose skull and horns he’d previously cached in the bush of course. 

Hard enduro rider Matt Spears is known for doing risky things on two wheels, but this ride into the mountains just outside of Big Sky, Montana, and the resulting eleven and a-half minute video has to take the cake. 

At the beginning of the video Matt introduces his 120-horsepower “flat-six” 2006 Gold Wing GL1800 as “the heavy dog” and boy, that Gold Metallic barge looks pretty hammered already. Most of the bodywork was jettisoned while rough, handbuilt engine guards and a skid plate were added.

ADV Pulse caught up with the 21-year-old while he was out elk hunting over Labor Day Weekend. Matt tells us that the likewise rough-looking Sherco riding high in the pillion seat is the 2023 300 SE Factory he uses in the AMA US Hard Enduro series, where he placed 1st in the A class and 16th overall at this year’s Grinding Stone in Arizona. He works for Inside Enduro, a major Montana-based Sherco outfitter where he’s currently the track manager and media wrangler for the annual Silver Kings Hard Enduro, an event presented by the company. 

This video is the most hilarious foray into unorthodox off-road riding involving Gold Wings we’ve seen since the two friends known as Dos Honduros used a couple down-on-their-luck 1980 Gold Wings to ride the Washington BDR and then later had the big touring bikes railing berms and clearing tabletops on an MX track built just for the occasion. 

Well, Matt Spears takes it a step further when he straps the 300 SE onto the GL’s plush backseat and first rides on the highway about 50 miles from Inside Enduro’s shop to the trailhead where he meets up with his buds. You think he’s going to pull the dirt bike off here and ride that up the mountain, but nope, he’s going to ride the touring bike shod in street tires instead, just to see how far it will go. 

The Sherco is light at 257 lbs, and yeah, we’ve seen some Gold Wing passengers in that weight range, but a totally different effect when the weight is rigid and sprawling 5-feet lengthwise. Matt says the dirt bike was levering side-to-side constantly, making for a real rodeo ride on the already soft steering Wing.  

The ensuing scenes are too funny, with the Honda giving all it’s got, its suspension, so luxurious on the road, undulating and bottoming under the strain of the load and steep, rutted climbs, with Matt saying “it’s a lot gnarlier in person” as he rides. We believe him. Anyone who’s ridden this style of bike knows — and it shows in the video, too — there’s a huge disconnect with the front wheel because you literally can’t see it.  

The first time he drops the bike you can hear in his laugh he’s having more fun than he should, as a buddy riding behind hands him a part off the Wing. Luckily he kept all the hard bags on since they come in handy for stowing stray bits and pieces. To the amazement of his friend, Matt engages the Honda’s reverse gear to get it back on trail and away he goes again. 

Eventually there’s a bigger get-off that sends Matt tumbling, giggling all the while, but the Gold Wing has sprung an oil leak, so it’s time to deploy the dirt bike. On the Sherco Matt makes short work of the rest of the ride, arriving at a conifer stand where he unearths a cool moose skull and horn set he’d found and stashed earlier. 

And off he and his friends fly, back down to where the Gold Wing has been resting. But is it dead? Far from it. Yes, it’s leaking a little oil, but Matt goes right ahead and mounts the Sherco back onto the Honda “almost like a baby in a car seat” and the dang moose head and horns, too, which according to taxidermy info online can weigh as much as 80 pounds. 

The ride down the mountain is actually the funniest and looks to be the hardest part, too, filmed by a buddy on another bike who can’t stop laughing because it’s such a sight. Matt’s youthful bravado is on full display here, but it’s his skill that keeps the bike on track, avoiding what would become a massive yard sale for almost any other rider.

And man, you’ve got to hand it to that Gold Wing, not only for taking all those punches and getting Matt home in fine style despite an oil leak, but for sounding like a Porsche 911 while doing it. 

Matt says the “bringing home some bones” day was a bunch of fun and his Gold Wing, which he estimates he’s into for around $3,500 at this point, has seen many off-road adventures since. In fact, just after that piggyback video posted, he put up another fun watch where he does more technical trails on the Gold Wing, about which he says the big tourer does surprisingly well off-road, at least without a second bike strapped on back. 

During our convo there was also a mention of a custom paddle tire having been recently applied to his golden Wing, as well as a forthcoming video that follows him and his girlfriend as they rode the same big Honda tandem on the Idaho BRD. 

And if that’s not enough of a tease to get you to subscribe to his youtube channel and follow on Instagram, Matt let us know he also just acquired a Suzuki Hayabusa and he plans to do some off-road rides on that, too. Boy, the vigor of youth, right?  It appears sometimes it isn’t wasted on the young. 

Author: Jamie Elvidge

Jamie has been a motorcycle journalist for more than 30 years, testing the entire range of bikes for the major print magazines and specializing in adventure-travel related stories. To date she’s written and supplied photography for articles describing what it’s like to ride in all 50 states and 43 foreign countries, receiving two Lowell Thomas Society of American Travel Writer’s Awards along the way. Her most-challenging adventure yet has been riding in the 2018 GS Trophy in Mongolia as Team AusAmerica’s embedded journalist.