My buddy has a lot with a primitive camp that he stays at while visiting his family. I was having issues with my mowers in limited capability with the Raider 10 with a broken hub and bad keyway. With a substitute transmission installed, we had at the tall orchard grass with the Raider and 42" deck. The pictures do not show it, but the grass averaged the height of the hood with some sunny spots a foot over the hood. Pictures do not do it justice. The first pass was with the lift handle all the way up--maybe 70% of the grass was cut. We felt our way along and were able to go over the top of 2" limbs booby trapped into the grass. Then we discarded the big limbs and hit it the second time shown in the over the hood picture.. The third pass and it was about two inches high.I did keep the cutting width down to two blades to keep the grass throwing clear
i have my doubts that a later model Horse with its longer deck drive belt would have survived the abuse, but the mid mount belt is much shorter with less tendency to stretch. i mowed in second gear low range most of the time with first gear high range at the end. No issues. I let the Kohler talk to me and just kept the ground speed slow enough to avoid much load at all.
What a machine!