biggest tree fell?

[John Ellison]

Yes, and then Rick was killed in that shootout in Thorne Arm. I worked at Port Alice in 83 or 4. Are Luke and Slyvia still around the corner at Tokeen?
Never worked for Blackwell or Bueler.

 

[tramp bushler]

What did you do in Port alice ??? I was there in 84 I think .. Was Carlisle hookin on the 208 when you were in port Alice ??

 

[John Ellison]

I think I was chasing. Was'nt there long. I had just bought a liveaboard boat and was wanting to see some country.

 

[tramp bushler]

Did you cut for Tri Star in Tolstoi Bay ??

 

[John Ellison]

Yes

 

[goatchin]

dont mean to side track you guys with this question: All of these camps and companies that yall have worked with and are talking about, are they still in operation other than the ones you have already said have closed?

 

[Real1shepherd]

dont mean to side track you guys with this question: All of these camps and companies that yall have worked with and are talking about, are they still in operation other than the ones you have already said have closed?

Hopefully, Frasier Brothers Logging died with them and that nitwit son isn't running it to this day. Don't even remember some of the gypo shows that I worked for in OR.....hell we're talkin' like almost 30 yrs here....lol. I'll say one thing though, the worst was guys hung over from the night before and ridin' 'crummy in the crummy' as we used to call it-nobody was doing dope or pills that I knew of and we all watched each others' backs....for the most part.

Kevin

 

[tramp bushler]

Yes

..

.

. Had to go to work this morning , sorry about that ...... We cut next to each other , but I,m trying to remember what strip .. Did you also cut @ Polk Inlet ??
I left a couple /few weeks before Steve got killed ...


I remember the strip .. It was the one with that nice patch of Spruce on it . I was stressin about .. I was having problems with my place in Sitka at the time so had to tramp to fix some BIG problems at home ..... That was a nice strip , I just didn,t have my head screwed on straight at that time ...

 

[tramp bushler]

dont mean to side track you guys with this question: All of these camps and companies that yall have worked with and are talking about, are they still in operation other than the ones you have already said have closed?

.

.

. Ya sorry about that ..... No , almost all the Alaska camps are gone .. I think Phoenix Logging is still in Cocoa Harbor , but I,m not sure ...SEALASKA is a hard corporation to deal with , they have run off most of the logging contractors .....
. I don,t know what their plan is , bringing in slave labor to do the rest of their logging ................??????????????????????????????????????
.
. If they were still in operation , I would still be fallin timber and would probably be computer illiterate ............ But I would be putting 15-40 k b f , net scale on the ground every day ...............

 

[tramp bushler]

John , what kind of dog did you have there ???

 

[John Ellison]

That was Trapper, a Blackmouth Cur. We brought him here to Arkansas and he lived till 2004.

 

[tramp bushler]

. Yup !-----------------------------------------------------------------------, . One of the other cutters for Tri Star was named John , he had a float house over @ Naukiti somewhere .. He was bull buckin @ Polk Inlet for them ....
. . Alot of the Tri Star crew is dead .
. Russ Howard died in a skiff incident , to Hydaberg or somewhere from what I heard ..... I sold that brute of a 2101 to him .. That was a good saw !!!
. John Clark , got killed in Washington cuttin timber
John Handel got all busted up ,doin something , I forget what ............
.Then of course Steve Crooks .....
. What are you doin now ??
. I remember talkin about runnin bears with dogs ....... I found the perfect dog for fightin bears , brown bears ,,,and them , the dogs stayin alive ........ I,ve gained ALOT of experience with that starting in 94 .........

 

[Greystoke]

Logging camps

You worked for Hawkeye .. He passed away a few years ago ...... I camp watched for him on his float camp in Windy Bay , Dall Is ... Windy bay is the right name too ... His and Rick Zog,s Cessna 185s were wrapped up in each other . . It blew so hard the staples pulled from the logs Rick had used to tie his plane down , It picked up his plane and sent it nose first down beside Don,s plane ... We had to use the A Frame to pick it up ......... It wouldn,t have taken much to get in a fista cuff match with Harbour ......... He could start an argument with himself ..................... I worked @ Port Alice , and Coffman Cove , but never @ Naukiti .......... Course I cut for Whitestone ........... Ever work for Blackwell , or Bueler ???? John , did you ever work @ Rowan Bay ???

.
.
.

Tarzan ,, You drove back and forth from Thorne Bay to Hydaberg , Everyday ???????????? .. Not for me .... But then . Pheonix was pretty suck about camp , no commissary , my phone didn,t have reception , and the mail was always 2 weeks late ....

Yep, I drove only drove for short time though...I think I might have a grand total of 6 or 8 days falling timber on Dall Is. I chose to drive because I hate camps! Last time I went to Dall was spring of 06, to work for Tongass cutting. Was goin through a divorce...definitely did not have my wits about me, decided to go anyway, so I loaded my tools on the boat, and made it to camp. Unloaded my tools and carried them into the bunkhouse...took a look around and said f### this! Loaded my tools back on the boat before they left and said get me the hell outa here! First job I ever took and quit without even cuttin a tree. Now that I look back, it was the best decision I ever made, as I would probably would not have made it off that island(alive anyhow).

 

[Greystoke]

Were any of you guys in Ak. before 94? I worked all over S.E. Maybe I know you.

My first year in Ak. was in '96...I was an eighteen year old greenhorn punk timberfaller.

 

[tramp bushler]

.. Tongass Cutting ,, Not really my favorite outfit . However , Dall Is is without a doubt the worst ground I have ever fell timber on ....... They did I think as good a job as any outfit could have there .........But It,s Dall Is.....

 

[oregoncutter]

Great responses...enjoyed some of the stories!

I started loggin' in the late 70's out of Woodburn, OR and Molalla, OR. Problem there was that I was an 'outsider' and well, everything you hear about native born Oregonians is true (or was). Of course they started me as choker setter...teens have the reflexes to avoid death better than older dudes.

I wanted to learn falling....but someone has to die and you have to be standing there when it happens....or have some sort of suck that I never got figured out. One older guy who was a faller did take a shine to me and I started working with him, on 'probation'.....LOL, whatever. He was a big fan of Douglas Dent and gave me his book to absorb. So...biggest tree I was 'allowed' to fall (after my probation period was over, of course), was a second growth Doug Fir that ran 10' inside the bark. Didn't completely swamp out the lay, broke part of the top.

Anyway, never quite fit in with the Oregon crowd and I got tired of fighting in their bars and being expected to do same every weekend. So I headed out for CO. All I can tell ya there is that their best gypo shows were nothing but cowboys....even though they got into decent timber. I did all my work on the Western Slope...know nothing about Eastern Slope logging.

I worked in their big timber for a gypo named Frasier Bros Logging (don't remember how they spelled their name anymore, or care). What a joke and they were 'the best'. They were also the best for cheating you on scale. I'd cut three loads a day and they would scale them as 1 1/2 loads. They're all dead now (most probably), so I don't care what I say. I think I was the only directional faller they had ever seen. One of the Frasier brothers had his son (Ron, I think) work for them every summer. The dude was about my age, college boy, used no wedges, let the trees fall about where they were inclined to....worked with a saw 10-12 hrs a day. He was an accident waiting to happen and I stayed clear of his lays. No hard hat, tennis shoes etc, just a virtual 'thrasher'.

Soo...we got a contract on top of The Grand Mesa and I moved my trailer up there. This was in early Fall. We were fallin' first growth Englemann Spruce. The Forest Service had marked all the trees. Basically, loggin' in CO was just tree thinning. Day in and day out I had 6-7' trees, many of them over 140'. Not spectacular by OR standards, but damn nice stuff. I only ran Husky 2100's souped up, with a six foot bar. I had a O75 once, but too much vibration and not good power to weight ratio IMHO. Last yr I did this, one of my 2100's was stolen from my trailer. Since the Frasier's were cheating me and starving me, I couldn't spring for another 2100. So for a backup saw, I bought a freshly rebuilt Jonsered 80. It was OK and serves me well still today in my business....although parts are well...mostly unobtainium.

I really miss the work even after all these yrs, but ya know what, as hard as ya work, it doesn't make sense to be cheated and always running down your money with gypos. I worked for Crown Z for a little and Boise C, but it was like they lived in another world...as far as your work day-too slow of a pace for me after gypo work. I'm sure others had different experiences, but those were mine in the loggin' woods.

Kevin

PS/ Safety glasses???? HA! We weren't even required to have fire extinguishers in those days!

Hey now easy on the native Oregonians! And not much has changed since You left most of our loggers that are worth a damn average about 30-50 years old, still a few young guys that are good but they are few and far between. For the most part the stereo typical rowdy oregon logger has calmed down quite a bit the last several years with age. As I recall about the biggest I fell diameter wise was a 9' foot doug in the Elliot, other than that most of the wood anymore I cut averages about 30'' or so and some jobs more like 24'', every so often though I''ll run onto some nice 6'-8' old growth leave trees that are mixed in with the second growth we are cutting that they want to take now or an occasional big cedar that was left. Been into some jobs where the oldgrowth stumps are cut for jacks, luckilly have'nt had to do too much of that myself. Who were You working for in Oregon? that was before my time, but my dad, and uncle spent alot of time cutting from Northern california up into the Northern Oregon coast during the late 1950- 1970s.

 

[Real1shepherd]

Hey now easy on the native Oregonians! And not much has changed since You left most of our loggers that are worth a damn average about 30-50 years old, still a few young guys that are good but they are few and far between. For the most part the stereo typical rowdy oregon logger has calmed down quite a bit the last several years with age. As I recall about the biggest I fell diameter wise was a 9' foot doug in the Elliot, other than that most of the wood anymore I cut averages about 30'' or so and some jobs more like 24'', every so often though I''ll run onto some nice 6'-8' old growth leave trees that are mixed in with the second growth we are cutting that they want to take now or an occasional big cedar that was left. Been into some jobs where the oldgrowth stumps are cut for jacks, luckilly have'nt had to do too much of that myself. Who were You working for in Oregon? that was before my time, but my dad, and uncle spent alot of time cutting from Northern california up into the Northern Oregon coast during the late 1950- 1970s.

Let's see...worked for an old logger named Curtis....then a show where the boss was Dale something or other. Some other guy named Pittman....that's all I can remember. God...re-cutting old growth stumps....that's crap work, gotta be. That's like the shake rats hauling big pieces of cedar out on their shoulders. I always wanted to cut on the coast and maybe some Reds in CA...just went to Colorado instead. I bet your dad and uncle told some REAL stories on coastal logging. Did they high top?

I came back into OR about 1980 or so to visit a friend for the summer...but not for logging. I did notice that things were starting to settle down and more younger guys were married with responsibility. So I guess that was the beginning of some change. A 9 ft Doug is a decent tree and one to be proud of. If people are claiming they're falling those routinely in the States, they're lying. Or it's some unusual, private sale. Did you ever clear cut any right-o-ways? I heard that was some serious money in daily scale.

Kevin

 

[goatchin]

Sorry bout not gettin back to reply to your answers-been away from the puter the last week.

I guess at some time or another all things have to come to an end, for better or worse. now for the land that these timber companies and camps worked on, who has this land now? other companies, FS land, state land?

Reading into some of the responses i get the idea that some camps/companies went out because of management issues, did the rest go out because of market conditions at the time or just that the harvestable timber was cut?

just curious, thanks

 

[tramp bushler]

Southeast Alaskan Logging Camps .

The camps closed because they were done logging the sales .. Mostly USFS land .. Some Native Corporation camps , like Long Island ,Point McCartny or Hobart Bay , Big Salt , Polk Inlet , ect.ect.ect. ...... If you can get ahold of an Alaska Atlas and Gazetteer . you will see clumps of little red roads out in the middle of nowhere in Southeast ....And P.W.S... Those were timber sales ,either Federal or Corporation land ..

 

[goatchin]

ok thanks. makes sense, but was just wondering