Up here, like talked about on GN, we have Winter. You can't just toss on a mudding tire and drive it on the road and say F the noise. Because mudding tires are absolute garbage on Winter road, would actually be better off driving in the ditch than the road since some of them are great in deep snow.
So it's kind of a pain, if you have a truck and you are driving it in Winter, but want a good set of mud tires, you need to find a nice set of MT's, you can't go extremely radical like Southerners can

But the Goodyear MT/R's are rated up there with true mud tires, and the Kevlar sidewalls really allow them to hit the rocks without having to worry about puncturing a sidewall.
Mud you want that gap to release the mud, I think your average mud tires cleans the lugs out at about 3 - 5mph, where as a good MT/R is a bit higher but a really good MT/R like the Goodyear is only about 6 or 7mph, and allows Winter driving. Also, a tire like the 900-16 doesn't look to be a very good rock tire, and up North (especially Northern MN) is all about rock.