Over the logs and across the streams in the western mountains of North Carolina, a mammal of incredible speed navigates the tough terrain to get ahead and stay alive. He knows how to move and he knows when to move. It’s not a deer or a cougar, but when he’s on the trail the roar you hear is even louder than a lion. It’s the experience from those mountains that has let Scott Kilby take his ATV to the lead in the GNCC Utility Modified races and to second place in the new Pro Stock Quad Terrain Challenge of the World PowerSports Association.

“I think a lot of it is in your head,” he explained, “A lot of thinking goes into it instead of speed. You’ve got to be smart. Sort of like the old buck in the woods. The old buck lives longer than the spike.”

This 39-year-old has no trick to staying quick. He said he doesn’t drink a shot of Whiskey, smoke a cigar and thank god each day. “I just work hard at my job. I don’t really work out or anything as far as weight,” he explained. What he will do, if he can, is use all his might to avoid turning 40.

If anyone could do that, he would be the one. He’s just returned to racing after a terrible accident at an Indiana race November 22. “I broke a collarbone, three vertebrae and three ribs. I’m just now recovering really good from that,” he said. “I’m 98 or 99 percent. Still not 100.” He didn’t get thrown into anything. He was gripping the handlebars as his machine rolled forward and came to a rest on top of him. “My helmet hit the ground first and just wadded me up underneath it like a fly under a flashlight. 750 pounds right there on your back. That’s definitely the worst accident so far.”

As he lay in bed, in pain and in frustration, he started to think his competitive races were all over. “For about a month, I was really undecided what to do. After I laid there long enough, I thought, a man could get hurt in a car wreck the same way, and he could always go back to driving a car. I just picked it up and haven’t looked back since.”

He’s recovered his strength and got right back to winning races. He’s first in points in the GNCC series, but he’s not sure he’ll still have it in the end when each racer drops the results from his worst three races. “I don’t have as many first place wins as I should have to hold onto it,” he said.

In the WPSA he’s winning a tight race for second place. “It’s going to be tough because there are so many good people out there,” he said. “It could be anybody’s game, but I think I’ve got as good a shot as anybody.”

In the GNCC he’s faced and beaten competitors from across the country, “But what makes WPSA more competitive is they let the pro racers into our class, and I’ve never really raced against so-called pro class racers. I’ve always raced against amateurs or utility-oriented people.”

His home turf is the Great Smokey Mountains, which means he’s practiced his whole life on some of the country’s roughest terrain. “That may have a lot to do with my ability to ride. We don’t have any roads or trails much around here. We have to make our own paths through these rugged mountains. Pretty Much, any kind of terrain they throw at us, I’ve seen before. It’s no big deal. It’s in my backyard.”

He was an avid rider before he was a racer. “All my buddies rode motorcycles, so I had to learn how to ride fast and hard to keep up. Then once I wanted to go race GNCC back in 1999 just to see what it was like. I knew Mike Penland from the magazines. I wanted to go see him race. He’s part of the club that I’m with, the Smokey Mountain Off Road Vehicle Club. Instead of watching him, I wanted to go ride with him, so I entered my first race.” He rode his 10-year-old Honda T R X-300 Utility and won.

“I thought that first race might have been a fluke, so I went back to my second race and I won it, and I won the next one. So I pretty much was hooked from there,” he remembered.

“From competing on such an old machine, the engineers at Yamaha, at the Newnan, Georgia plant, they noticed me, I guess from riding such an old machine and doing such a good job. They offered me a 1999 Big Bear to compete on for the rest of the season.”

He switched to a Yamaha 4-stroke in 2000, rode it for two years and then switched to PBR. “Then from there I went to racing for Kawasaki Team Green. For two years I’ve been Can Am.”

He rides an 800 in the GNCC and a 650 in the WPSA. “Basically, it’s the same machine with smaller cylinders on it,” he said. The horsepower on the 650 is in the 40’s, he said. “My 800 is highly modified, it’s like 800 hp.” Besides riding different machines, Kilby rides very different tracks in the two series. In the GNCC, he said, “We do have rocks and logs and stuff to cross occasionally but there’s just not as many put together. Our tracks are ten miles.” On the new, short and obstacle-filled WPSA tracks, each race is over in 15 minutes. “I actually enjoy it pretty much, because I don’t get as tired,” he said. “I’m having to break myself from pacing myself like I normally do.”

It’s his first year fulltime with the Can Am team, and Mike Rogers leads the engineering side of the team. “The past two years we gave him a parts account and let him do his own thing,” Rogers said. “This year he rides in the big rig. He’s pretty much the biggest supported rider we have.”

Rogers does all the modifications to the machines to increase speed and improve handling, and he said he watches Kilby take the ATV like a pro. “He’s really focused to completing the race. He does the GNCC endurance races, so he knows what it takes to finish and win, and win a championship, too.”

As for fixing Kilby’s machines, “He is actually somewhat, I wouldn’t say a gentle rider, because they’re all guerillas, but he causes less damage than other riders to his machine.”

With a family to go home to, Rogers said Kilby likes to get away from the races as much as he likes to ride them. “He has his priorities. He has a real job besides his racing job. He strikes a good balance between everything.”

When he’s not on the track Kilby manages an electrical supply house. When he gets home to his wife and 16-year-old son Hunter, the talk is often about racing. Hunter races GNCC and was holding third place in his class in June.

As for his wife, “Yes, she’s supportive. She’s a little skiddish when it comes to Hunter racing, but it don’t seem to bother that I do.”

What does the future hold? “It’s hard to keep two series going,” he said, “plus a fulltime job. So If I can make a go with the WPSA and pick up a little more support, maybe I can quit my fulltime job and race for a living. That would be my goal.”