BillyB
ArboristSite Member
I'm in the process of reclaiming a few acres of a wild woodland of mature oaks. I think it would be beneficial to prune dead limbs of the oaks. There are alot of oaks and alot of dead limbs.
My pruning tactics to date have involved employing the tallest pole saws I could find on the parts of the trees I can reach with them. I purchased the Silky Hayauchi (21') manual pole saw and the echo PPT 280 (17') power pole saw. Beyond that I plan to take a climbing course next spring (2019) so as to access higher parts of the taller trees.
I've really just begun to prune. After pruning the lower parts of a few oaks with the pole saws I'm beginning to have second thoughts about my strategy. I'm reaching 25' with the Hayauchi. It slices off the limbs quite well I think but still there is often a lot of tree left above where I can reach. I don't know much about climbing yet but still I wonder if I'm not just making my eventual climbing job more difficult. How handy would it be to have these lower limbs that I'm removing for stepping on to move my butt up the trunk? Granted, they are dead but still I suspect they're reasonably supportive where they meet the trunk. Won't there be a lot more rope climbing before reaching the lower branches without them?
Though I think the trees would benefit from from having their dead branches pruned as soon as possible, I don't want to make my job more difficult than it need be. Not knowing much about climbing yet, there is surely a chance that my pole pruning should not effect the difficulty of climbing later. Alternatively, I could forgo the pole pruner on trees I will have to climb and prune them up close when I eventually do, if that would be easier.
Appreciate your thoughts on how best to approach this work, whether to pole prune now and follow up with climbing later or forgo pole pruning on the taller trees altogether and wait until I climb to prune. When commenting, it would help if you would let me know from what perspective you come and if you climb or not.
My pruning tactics to date have involved employing the tallest pole saws I could find on the parts of the trees I can reach with them. I purchased the Silky Hayauchi (21') manual pole saw and the echo PPT 280 (17') power pole saw. Beyond that I plan to take a climbing course next spring (2019) so as to access higher parts of the taller trees.
I've really just begun to prune. After pruning the lower parts of a few oaks with the pole saws I'm beginning to have second thoughts about my strategy. I'm reaching 25' with the Hayauchi. It slices off the limbs quite well I think but still there is often a lot of tree left above where I can reach. I don't know much about climbing yet but still I wonder if I'm not just making my eventual climbing job more difficult. How handy would it be to have these lower limbs that I'm removing for stepping on to move my butt up the trunk? Granted, they are dead but still I suspect they're reasonably supportive where they meet the trunk. Won't there be a lot more rope climbing before reaching the lower branches without them?
Though I think the trees would benefit from from having their dead branches pruned as soon as possible, I don't want to make my job more difficult than it need be. Not knowing much about climbing yet, there is surely a chance that my pole pruning should not effect the difficulty of climbing later. Alternatively, I could forgo the pole pruner on trees I will have to climb and prune them up close when I eventually do, if that would be easier.
Appreciate your thoughts on how best to approach this work, whether to pole prune now and follow up with climbing later or forgo pole pruning on the taller trees altogether and wait until I climb to prune. When commenting, it would help if you would let me know from what perspective you come and if you climb or not.
