The Drunk, Naked ‘Mudders’ of Maine
· Vice
This interview is from the spring 2026 issue of VICE magazine, THE NOT THE PHOTO ISSUE. Get four issues each year, sent straight to your door, by subscribing here.
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After a long day of driving their cars into thick quagmires of brown sludge, the “mudders” who swarm to Maine, U.S. for off-road fun go into the woods to get naked and party till they collapse. This is the world of the crazy horny mud truckers, and for the last five years, photographer David Horton has been walking among them, capturing their primal shenanigans.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA“The night parties are basically complete insanity,” says Horton. “As far as we could tell, as long as you didn’t kill somebody, it was pretty much anything goes.”
VICE sent Horton to their last Labor Day party and he came back with a bunch of pictures that were frankly impossible to print, even in this magazine.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAVICE: How did you discover the mud truckers?
David Horton: It was actually by chance. We walked in and started taking photos, but very quickly security stopped us. So we found the organizers, explained what we were doing, and from there, we had carte blanche.
What are the core rituals that the good people of Proving Grounds hold dear?
The core rituals all involve mud: diving in the mud, wrestling in the mud, dancing in the mud. Another important ritual is women (and men) bearing naked breasts in exchange for bead necklaces. The phrase the “mudders” use is “Dump ‘em out!”
And the pretext for this is some kind of racing event?
They hose down these huge mud pits for weeks, and then they get a kick out of seeing if they can drive through them. Most of the time they can’t and these huge military vehicles go in and chain ‘em up and pull ‘em out. This is what they do for fun.
What happens when the sun goes down?
The really interesting stuff happens at the private parties out in the woods. They build stages and, as you can probably see, the pole dancing goes to far extremes. There’s heavy drinking and I’m sure heavy drugs. The racing is intense, and people die. I was told that one of the trucks flipped once and a teenager was killed. So it’s not without things going wrong.
It strikes me as a distinctly American celebration.
It’s 100 percent American. They stand on a side of the political spectrum that I don’t. But people bring their families, a lot of it is about community, friendship, all those things.
What’s the end goal for you?
My goal was always to make a book of the work. I think I have enough material for it now.
Find more of David Horton’s work at HortonPictures.com.
This interview is from the spring 2026 issue of VICE magazine, THE NOT THE PHOTO ISSUE. Get four issues each year, sent straight to your door, by subscribing here.
The post The Drunk, Naked ‘Mudders’ of Maine appeared first on VICE.