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ArboristSite Lurker
I'll certainly weigh in on the forest Service stuff, looks like you're getting beat up enough going the private industry route. The USFS, USFWS, BLM, BIA and state DNR all work off a system recognized by the National Wildland Coordinating Group (NWCG, sick of acronyms yet?). They rank their fallers A,B, or C. C is the highest level. You first would need to complete S130/190 basic wildland fire fighting which is 5 days. Then go back and take S212 which is another 4 days. When you graduate from S212 your a Faller A (FALA). This means you can cut anything 16" and less, which translated into: your a swamper for a FALB. FALB's can fall trees 25" and less. Once you are comfortable with a saw you can initiate a task book and it requires you to cut a couple of trees in different scenarios to be signed off as a FALB. Overall your FALB takes maybe a couple years to complete (if you're totally green when you take S212). Your FALC is highly sought after and tough to pass. I can't remember how many trees we had to fall and all the scenarios but it wasn't easy for me to get. I had a good friend that flew from MN to TX or AZ to take his FALC and they failed him within a couple seconds because he started with the angle cut on his face and not his horizontal cut 1st? Their reason was if you start with your horizontal cut, and you're off target it's really quick and easy to adjust. If you start with your angled cut you have to make an entirely new cut. I fortunatley passed mine the 1st time but lost alot of sleep and drank quite a bit of beer after I passed due to the stress it puts on you.
Now for the bad news. Wildland fire stresses the importance of getting the tree on the ground, the safest way possible which 9/10 times completely contradicts production logging. If I could make any reccomendation to you it would be to not jump in feet first. Get a job locally logging and work your way up. This will prevent you from being laughed out of Vernonia like some other person on the thread. Also don't beleive everything you see on TV. For the few days it's a blast the rest of the year it's very difficult, strenuous work that isn't always if never compensated for.
If there were countless timber faller jobs that all paid 100K plus a year, we'd all be out there.
Now for the bad news. Wildland fire stresses the importance of getting the tree on the ground, the safest way possible which 9/10 times completely contradicts production logging. If I could make any reccomendation to you it would be to not jump in feet first. Get a job locally logging and work your way up. This will prevent you from being laughed out of Vernonia like some other person on the thread. Also don't beleive everything you see on TV. For the few days it's a blast the rest of the year it's very difficult, strenuous work that isn't always if never compensated for.
If there were countless timber faller jobs that all paid 100K plus a year, we'd all be out there.
