Originally Posted by JCL

I would call it winching when referring to getting it out of the ditch, as towing implies going down the road. I used to do a fair bit of both regular and offroad recovery, with a 4x4 tow truck. I always used a single attachment point, not two, unless I was extracting a vehicle using two separate winches. If you don't pull on them straight, the screw-in hooks break off really easily. Constructing a yoke with two attachment points reduced the load on each hook, but resulted in a pull on an angle.

If the vehicle is not level when it is in the ditch, and it usually isn't, you pull from the higher hook and the vehicle will remain very stable. You don't select which location to use based on getting the straightest pull, but rather on getting the most stable pull, and on bringing the vehicle back out on the identical path it went in on (which results in much less damage than creating a new path)