is this professional ?

[rwoods]

Mike, the best I can tell from my research is my trees must be young hackberrys. I don't know for sure as the leaves are gone. Like everything, the web descriptions are all over the lot. USDA compares it to elm and ash. Others describes the wood as strong and one of the most flexible of hardwoods while others describing the wood as weak and brittle. They all seem to agree that aside from wildlife, the tree is basically only fit for firewood. The birds may like them but I hate their droopy branches - you wack them off so you can mow and before you can turn around the next ones up begin to droop.

Ron

 

[Gologit]

Doing the government work for the state they make us leave dead standing trees and create snags even in young thinnings.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

That's a darn shame. The guys that have to deal with those probably don't like it much.
Most of my work was on private ground and we'd drop every one we could. Sometimes on burn salvage we might leave a few that looked like they could make it, but usually it was total clearcut.

 

[treeslayer2003]

Mike, the best I can tell from my research is my trees must be young hackberrys. I don't know for sure as the leaves are gone. Like everything, the web descriptions are all over the lot. USDA compares it to elm and ash. Others describes the wood as strong and one of the most flexible of hardwoods while others describing the wood as weak and brittle. They all seem to agree that aside from wildlife, the tree is basically only fit for firewood. The birds may like them but I hate their droopy branches - you wack them off so you can mow and before you can turn around the next ones up begin to droop.

Ron

i don't think we have them here Ron. sounds like an understory tree to me, as such its good your cutting them. i tell my LOs to cut beech and stunted oak for their wood and leave those straight pretty oaks to grow for a harvest. some don't seem to get it that you have to let the nice ones grow if you want a good pay next time.

speaking of beech, i saw some i girdled with the saw twice a few years back, they healed and are thriving. what has to be done to them short of cutting off?

 

[slowp]

That's a darn shame. The guys that have to deal with those probably don't like it much.
Most of my work was on private ground and we'd drop every one we could. Sometimes on burn salvage we might leave a few that looked like they could make it, but usually it was total clearcut.

Hey, it's a chance to make more money if you can bid it right. If there's enough profit on the FS side of things, they'll put out a contract for bid to make snags and drop green trees to be left as rat logs. Low bid gets it. That's here, not everywhere and depends on how high the bid on the timber sale went..above base rates.

 

[Gologit]

Hey, it's a chance to make more money if you can bid it right. If there's enough profit on the FS side of things, they'll put out a contract for bid to make snags and drop green trees to be left as rat logs. Low bid gets it. That's here, not everywhere and depends on how high the bid on the timber sale went..above base rates.

LOL...If I think about that long enough will it start to make sense to me? Or should I just disregard logic and common sense and adopt the good old "as long as we're getting paid the hell with everything else" attitude?
If I thought about it hard enough I could usually figure out why things were done a certain way but I gotta confess...some of the things the FS did I never did get a handle on.
Must be me, eh?

 

[Woos31]

Oh my...I understand that removing road/trailside hazards where there is no serious traffic is a loved way how to get some practice and into bigger timber, but hell, those who do that shall be kinda judicious about capabilities of their own and their equipment. The photo may be misleading sizewise, but I see 28"-36" stumps chewed by 15" bar. Good fun for a "pissing contest" of those who know their $hit and consider tape racing boring on that day ( ), but this is absolutely unacceptable-at least in my neck of woods. No way to leave half cut tree standing, no flagging at all and not cutting it down right on next sunrise in a production unit. No way to leave such a tree anywhere else... To leave a comb of fiberpull on the stump is definitely not a pro manner-somebody trips and ends up with splinters in the neck, so probably dead...

The series of plunge cuts on that rotten punk is going into gold division of WTF/how not to cut down a tree. Good example for students...

Especially being that rotten and it could just drop or collapse straight down on a guy or who knows what the hell them rotten buggers will do

 

[SliverPicker]

Ron, thanks for setting me straight. I was a bit suspicious that those might not actually be some of my stumps. I usually don't do such a good job.

 

[SliverPicker]

The FS foresters here now call the FS law enforcement folks if there is a mistake made. One guy on a crew I was cutting for last month accidentally put the horizontal part of the face in an 8" live pine before realizing his error. Law enforcement was called. No citation was issued. I also cut a cluster of 5 dead pines. One of them was 6 and 5/8" in diameter. The spec. on this project was 7" and up if its dead it goes. The forester threatened to call law enforcement because of that 3/8". The result was 4 people standing around the stump trying to figure out what to do. 20 minutes of drama over 3/8". This is one tree out of about 20,000 that were cut. I offered to glue the tree back on the stump, but no one took me up on my offer.

We were also told that if we cut any spruce live or dead law enforcement would be called. 5 minutes after telling us this the forester proceeded to mark a skid trail with 2 dead spruces standing in it.

Some things, I guess, I am just plain incapable of understanding.

 

[treeslayer2003]

sounds like you found the rare A hole. i'd see how many sticks i could fall any time he is following me around, maybe self preservation will change his attitude.

 

[slowp]

They call law enforcement on such things because they HAVE to. Yup, any time an undesignated tree is cut, the LEOs must be told. No exceptions. That doesn't mean citations are written, or that the LEO will even come out for a look. I'd lay the inspection report on his desk, and he'd read it and initial it. No site visit required unless I had a suspicion of evil intentions. I did have one of the LEOs come out when the faller couldn't understand that he wasn't cutting on a state job and I had to mark the trees in the skyline corridors BEFORE cutting started. In fact, things got a bit nasty and I thought I was going to get smacked by a fist. But the faller cooled off thank goodness. I like my teeth. The gypo logger, who was in charge cowered behind me during that conversation, and didn't say a word.

SliverPicker, if your contract is a normal timber sale contract, it will say that all timber must be marked in advance of cutting. You don't go ahead and start cutting out your skid trails without that taking place. I hope your SA gets out there early enough to get it done so it doesn't slow things down. You can help that by getting things flagged out on the ground well in advance. Both parties work together, and it makes things more pleasant and efficient.

 

[slowp]

We had a major screw up on a sale with many colors of paint on the trees. It was an old unit and purchaser mark for this attempt. There were blue marked trees from the previous attempt at a sale. We'd walked the unit but the cutters got confused and for a half day cut all the trees marked in blue. I hadn't gotten up there. I got a call to come into the office and the cutters were there. Their bullbuck walked through their strips and realized what was going on, shut them down, wrote up a beautiful account of what happened, and all came into talk. The LEO was there, we all worked out a solution using the contract provisions instead of law enforcement. Everybody worked together and all was well in the world except my boss and I had to spend a couple days in the fell and buck scaling logs and marking them.

 

[SliverPicker]

He never once said he was required to call the LEO. He would, literally, stick his chest out and proclaim that "If X happens then I cam calling law enforcement."

I told the superintendent on that job that if law enforcement was called because of an honest mistake on my part he would immediately be looking for a faller to replace me. "I will be gone before they even get here.".

Make a mistake at work and the law will come have a talk with you? No thanks.

 

[SliverPicker]

Most trails and all the landings were marked ahead of time. About 30% of the skid trails were not marked until a month into the job. It really made for a lot of wasted time.

 

[slowp]

He never once said he was required to call the LEO. He would, literally, stick his chest out and proclaim that "If X happens then I cam calling law enforcement."

I told the superintendent on that job that if law enforcement was called because of an honest mistake on my part he would immediately be looking for a faller to replace me. "I will be gone before they even get here.".

Make a mistake at work and the law will come have a talk with you? No thanks.

Sounds like you have to deal with a bit of a jerk. Is he new to the job? Maybe trying for his certification? Do you guys sit through a pre-work meeting where all the hoops and processes are explained? Those are boring as hell but can answer a lot of questions and prevent some problems.

It isn't really "calling" law enforcement. It's more of a notification...letting them know of a happening and what was done about it. This is supposed to be a check to prevent timber theft and maybe even prevent collusion between the SA and the loggers. There's been a bit of that in the past. Although the timber out here is not nearly so valuable as it was in the bad old days, the powers that be insist on that notification. It's one of those That's Just The Way It Is situations.

 

[slowp]

Most trails and all the landings were marked ahead of time. About 30% of the skid trails were not marked until a month into the job. It really made for a lot of wasted time.

You want to be careful. If you really have a jerk as a sale administrator, they can insist on being notified in writing that they need to come out and mark the trees and they have up to 10 days to do so. I've heard of a couple of guys who insisted on that method and they milked those 10 days. It is a rare thing, but every once in a while, one insists on that.

 

[bnmc98]

Not enough money in it here to deal with buttholishness... (for us anyway)
I have run into some real winners. We had one guy that we asked if we could have a few unmarked trees in the cut area and because of deep snow he said no. So I asked if I marked them if we could have them, which he replied Yes to. So I did. That's not real ambitious. You would think they would give us everything they could because that would increase the probability of a return logger.

Whole clumps of trees dying in hazard removal projects and they would not give them to us because they did not only have 10% canopy left, most were 30% or under left green.

I have also cut blocks of select timber that were marked for cut, not a single straight log in the bunch. Crooked, rotten.... As if to say, these are all the trees we don't want and want removed, good luck selling them, but we got what we want... But you can't leave them either.

I have viewed sales up for bid that were the same thing. How's a guy supposed to make a buck?

Sales of burn areas that they will not allow skidding by tractor, only line machine (or suspended skidding). Of which there are not many around because it costs too much to operate vs what you get from your buyers.
Didn't really matter anyways because it was already slated for law suit before the bids were opened.

Some administrators seem to be so red tape oriented that they don't make it lucrative for the logger.

We had one guy that would not pass our slashing for anything. "has to be 18" or lower" The area we were working in was so windblown and thick with deadfall that it was not uncommon to have 3' - 4' of debris before we even started logging. They even had trail crews that came up and got lost trying to cut out the trails because they could not find them and eventually just said forget it and were told to leave them and not reopen them at all. We had to fight tooth and nail for him to pass us finally he did with two other officials suggesting that he should.
Ridiculous. If they ran it like a business then maybe we all might accomplish something, but as it is, I don't see many people doing much FS sales here anymore because FS doesn't even want us there and it shows.
We had one office tell us that they were trying to get out of anything that has to do with timber.

Some guys bid on FS sales, but I don't know how they survive, or make it happen. I can't wrap my head around it.

Welcome to the "Last Best Place" (not for a Logger)

We just had a deal on the news where two major mills in the state here were interviewed and said that only 5% of their wood comes from FS sales. 10% from state. (our state forester seems very open to getting timber put up btw) 85% from private

Probably me just on a rant... ignore it.

 

[rwoods]

Ron, thanks for setting me straight. I was a bit suspicious that those might not actually be some of my stumps. I usually don't do such a good job.

I still scratch my head as to why many FWs and CSs can't seem to appreciate the fact that many loggers fall more trees in a day than they will in a lifetime. Though I have been around a little while, I have no doubt that you could compress all my fallings (including the midget trees) into just a couple of weeks of yours. I appreciate that you guys and slowp put up with me.

Ron

 

[madhatte]

a sale with many colors of paint on the trees

These are always a mess. That's why we always try to limit the moving pieces to boundary color, cut color, and maybe do not cut color.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Guess it's not just around here.

They have stolen out of my log decks and make a freaking mess with what they leave behind. I don't understand it, but they will take a pile of normal length long logs (~40-45ft) and cut right in the middle, taking maybe 10-15ft worth of firewood, then move on to the next log.

They are quick too. Last winter we had a deck of logs, about 30 cords, on a land clearing job near the local Walmart. A contractor did the land clearing to prep for an indoor go cart track/fun center thing and we worked out a deal for the logs from them.

Went to look at it Friday evening after they called to say it was ready to go. 2 nice piles of birch, both around 15 cords each and a 3rd pile of spruce and poplar, maybe 6-7 cords. We figured a good 4 loads of wood.
By the time we got there with the log truck Sunday morning, there was one pile of birch left, barely had enough for 1 load. The whole time we were loading there were pickup trucks pulling in and leaving, realizing that the "free" wood was being claimed by the owner.

Got told by one person "Well the wood was just laying there"

Then there was the unhappy logger who had his log deck ruined over a weekend. He muttered, (add expletives) "Why couldn't they have cut one log up at a time?" The cutters had lopped off the ends of many logs and ruined the lengths. I started actually painting NO WOODCUTTING on decks after that because signs get ripped off too easily.

.

 

[northmanlogging]

In regards to the FS woes...

Few weeks ago I looked into a deck sale, lots of wood 40 loads or so on one some old growth fir, or at least huge second growth, and another 20 loads on another sale, both bidding about the same time.

What the FS wanted for a minimum bid is about what I would have gotten for one of my private jobs, granted all I had to do was get a loader and line up 3-4 trucks and be done with it in a day or two per job,

Problem is that once you get past all the BS, you realize that 20 miles of road maintenance are included in each sale, the timber had been down and sitting for at least a year (sauk river rd rebuild) and the lengths where all screwy. So even if you managed to get a mill to buy from you instead of them just bidding on it, they wheren't apt to be giving top dollar...

I still hope to get involved in some smaller DNR/FS sales, say a camp ground rebuild or parking lot clearing etc, but I'm really not sure its going to be worth all the bull shat.