Do we really NEED barkbusters?

Bark busters don't necessarily have to attach to the end of your handle bars. There are some that do keep the cold out and protect against impacts without boxing your hands in. You can also run composite arc levers, they won't break. There is a company working on very strong non-enclosed bark busters, they should be out soon.

I do.
View: http://youtu.be/hHU6hEbbCxw

Looks like South Jersey.

Is there any legal riding around you?

It's always the 3rd tree that gets you. Tree #1 deflects, tree #2 redirects, tree #3 smack!

Actually, it's north Florida . . . and we don't have as much as we used to.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Apal...a na&t=h&hq=Apalachicola National Forest&z=10

I think you do as well

Haha I think I can agree with you on that. I've pinballed myself off a few trees in that exact order.
There are some single track trails I ride where Im actually hitting trees on both sides at the same time. Some stuff they used to use for the RORR enduro apprarently. A friend of mine did an enduro last summer and actually broke both metal wraparound handguards on his DRZ. I think we definitely need them out here in the East.

Bark busters are not much help on Yucca or Joshua trees. They are armed with sabers. I use my handle bars to steer around them.

Cut my bars to 29" and heaviest bark busters I can get. I still destroy them on trees, rocks, downfall and trailer incidents. A lot of our riding is through burns now and it is getting worse. The new pine thickets are extremely dense and a constant battle to ride through. We are going to have someone carrying a hedge trimmer now when clearing so he can nock the limbs back and all the seedlings down so we can have a 3' wide trail anyway.

Speaking of Yucca trees, one of those little bastards jumped out in front of me this weekend! Those things hurt.

In my first racing career I used to cut my bars down to 28-29" with bark busters and did just fine. In my second racing career (vet class after 10 years off serious racing) I quickly learned the hard way I was way faster and safer with the stock width 30-31". Southern Ontario enduros and hase scrambles are pretty tight, and with the wider bars it gives me more leaverage when I do clip a tree and I often do. With the extra leaverage it doesn't throw me off balance as much and I rarely go down. Also with wider bars stearing accuracy is much improved and I don't clip as many trees even in the tight stuff. As I got older I found I don't have the same strength to run narrow bars. And yes bark busters are a necessity up here, everyone runs them for offroad in Ontario.

NICE!!! If you were logging, I give you an A+ for creativity.

I run Cycras and would say I NEED them, I mostly ride tight high Sierra single track, some trails the trees are so close you have to stop and lean the bike both ways to get through, they save my hands often. I believe in running them tight so they wont swivel, when my bike hits the ground (which it does often) they save my levers.

Every bike in my stable has barkbusters, even the wifes bike and the supermoto. Other than direct impact injury prevention, they prevent injury by guarding the brake and clutch levers. I ride lots in dense small trees, but mine are on steep uphills and downhills. Having your clutch or brake lever pressed to the bars by a tree when negotiating a steep downhill at speed can really send you off on a line you hadn't planned on. I started off using the all-plastic acerbis rally-II. Those worked very well as they absorbed some of the "whack" when hitting trees and are still alive 15 years later. The aluminum ones transmitt all of the impact I find. Cam.

Most people know when to let go of the bike. It would be possible you could get flipped over so fast you don't have time before you're stuck, but I project the odds of that ever happening to me at 4 billion to 1. And the odds of me breaking a lever without full on guards on at 1 to 1.

Just nuts if you dont.

I have seen more legs and arms in the back wheel than hands in the barkbusters. This year, I did have a friend manage to get his finger into the fork stop during a crash which severed the first joint of one finger. We are still not sure how he did it. Now we call him nine. Cam.

I had a friend a few years ago who crashed and got his hand caught between the chain and the rear sprocket. It was pretty ugly! He suffered permanent nerve damage in his hand but still kept riding after he healed up. We called him "eggo" (as in waffle) afterwards.