Wow, that is a lot of good feedback. My take on the Ulterra is that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. That may be because without it, fishing is way more difficult or nearly impossible without it. My travel partner and I are both anglers that use wheelchairs and have been using the digital steer with a hand remote since Motorguide came out with it. We have since moved on to Minn Kota and are a part of their pro-staff.

Another member mentioned that the real deal is using the hand remote and taking the time to get use to the digital response. Its not that it is slow or less responsive as much as it is simply different. You learn to pay more attention to your surroundings and like driving a car, react sooner. The real joy is if you record a track and avoid trees, you get to hit return, and avoid trees and simply fish with no steering on the way back.

I've never had one deploy on its own and hope I never do! You do have to alter your launch technique because if you sling it off the trailer at Mach 1 or are on a really steep ramp, you will hit the mounting bracket.

The best advice I can give you is to try one out before you make up your mind. The best decisions are always the well informed ones. If I wasn't headed out on the road for two weeks of tournaments, I would offer to take you out and use mine.

Good luck and I hope you give the Ulterra a real try. It will change your life!

I can't give you any comparisons buy I have researched this a lot and found a few fixes for some of the issues brought up here. One, get a slide bracket or some people modify a quick release bracket to slide. The only place I saw the slide bracket was from skeeter boats so you might have to call a dealer about it. The slide will stop the loading/unloading issues. 2nd, guys use quite a few different ways to tie down the motors while under way. I've seen bungie cord, ram mounts, a few different things. 3rd, if you have the money, I've seen a few guys that have a fortrex and a ulterra and use the quick release bracket to switch them out depending on the type of fishing they will be doing that day. The one guy I watched do it didn't take but about 15 minutes and that was remounting transducers and all. That's the best thing I've seen done

The Ulterra will not deploy on pad period. The Terrova would if you did not stow it as per the manufactures instructions or put a ram troll motor saver on it.
And Fitter you don't have to tear your stuff u p in a stump even if you are " doing it right". There might be a few people on here that have owned as many boats as me or fished as many hours but I would rate up there with them and I have never torn up a trolling motor fishing stumps or trees.