Outer bark damage from logging

[tramp bushler]

Well Curly , I guess if you never fell trees that have been standing for over a thousand years , and still view them as just some crap you need to get on the ground then you can,t understand that a little oil on the ground don,t matter ...
.
. You want to clean up oil ,whindoner , . Back when the Penobscot river was flowing bank to bank with suds from the pulp mills , and people were working , and we were saying the Pledge of Alligance ( Under GOD ) in school , life was alot better than it is now that the Penobscot is all clean and there is no work there so bored men have nothing to teach their sons execpt how to live on welfare , be a druggy or drunk . and have no future ...
.
. The millions of Borgs who think like you have little or no future , because it seems your future is connected to sucking up to the college indoctrinated mini over lords .......... Your ( Foresters) ........aka piss fir wileys .................
.
. Obviously burning used oil in a burn barrel is better than having benzene seep into the ground . However it really doesn,t matter ........ The price of petroleum products dictates that leakage is greatly reduced if not totally eliminated ...........
.





.
.It is people who exhibit apparent traits such as the ones you are ,who oppose things like the Pebble .......

.
. If you create , own , pay for , and operate your own company .......especially if you start it from your own sweat . And arn,t just some stupid employee who needs to be led around by the hand and who will gripe and complain about the company , .... You may have a better understanding why doing ONE thing the easy way , like burning oil on a sawdust pile is gratifying .... It may be the only easy thing that operator got to do all week ..!!!!!
.
.I would say that I don,t give a ---- if anyone feels I,ve cast aspersions on them with this post :chainsawguy:

 

[Oldtimer]

Next time write it in the contract that damaged trees cost them triple stumpage.

I would have to see the site but a good operator DOES NOT damage leave trees.

You're out of your mind if you think conventional cable logging can be done without damaging leave trees. It can not be done. Even mechanized logging will damage some. Can there be more than an acceptable amount? Absolutely.
But rub trees are a fact of timber harvests.

Rub trees generally live, and almost always produce more mast because of the damage. Leave them alone. When one dies, or falls down, utilize it, or don't . A healthy woods/forest has debris and residue of dead trees. A woods that is cleaned up tidy because it "looks better" is the worst possible thing you can do for it health wise. If you really care about the woods, leave it be until the next round of timber harvesting, and see to it the next harvest is done in a manner that leaves as much of the limbs and under-brush as possible right in the woods to rot.

 

[headleyj]

You're out of your mind if you think conventional cable logging can be done without damaging leave trees. It can not be done. Even mechanized logging will damage some. Can there be more than an acceptable amount? Absolutely.
But rub trees are a fact of timber harvests.

Rub trees generally live, and almost always produce more mast because of the damage. Leave them alone. When one dies, or falls down, utilize it, or don't . A healthy woods/forest has debris and residue of dead trees. A woods that is cleaned up tidy because it "looks better" is the worst possible thing you can do for it health wise. If you really care about the woods, leave it bee until the next round of timber harvesting, and see to it the next harvest is done in a manner that leaves as much of the limbs and under-brush right in the woods to rot.

I don't mind the limbs around, I know that's part of it.....I do want it to look nice for sure (it;s got a Loooonnng way to go there, trust me). If a rub tree dies I'll prolly take it down.

It'll never be 100% free of debris, and like you said nor do you want it to be. I do want it to be healthy, but passable/ accessable as well.

 

[Curlycherry1]

Well Curly , I guess if you never fell trees that have been standing for over a thousand years , and still view them as just some crap you need to get on the ground then you can,t understand that a little oil on the ground don,t matter ...
.
. You want to clean up oil ,whindoner , . Back when the Penobscot river was flowing bank to bank with suds from the pulp mills , and people were working , and we were saying the Pledge of Alligance ( Under GOD ) in school , life was alot better than it is now that the Penobscot is all clean and there is no work there so bored men have nothing to teach their sons execpt how to live on welfare , be a druggy or drunk . and have no future ...
.
. The millions of Borgs who think like you have little or no future , because it seems your future is connected to sucking up to the college indoctrinated mini over lords .......... Your ( Foresters) ........aka piss fir wileys .................
.
. Obviously burning used oil in a burn barrel is better than having benzene seep into the ground . However it really doesn,t matter ........ The price of petroleum products dictates that leakage is greatly reduced if not totally eliminated ...........
.





.
.It is people who exhibit apparent traits such as the ones you are ,who oppose things like the Pebble .......

.
. If you create , own , pay for , and operate your own company .......especially if you start it from your own sweat . And arn,t just some stupid employee who needs to be led around by the hand and who will gripe and complain about the company , .... You may have a better understanding why doing ONE thing the easy way , like burning oil on a sawdust pile is gratifying .... It may be the only easy thing that operator got to do all week ..!!!!!
.
.I would say that I don,t give a ---- if anyone feels I,ve cast aspersions on them with this post :chainsawguy:

I think you have me pegged a bit wrong. I see a big difference between burning a little oil out in the back country of the West Coast vs the back yard of some Easterner. Out West you folks have big swaths of land where nobody is around for miles, whereas back where I used to cut you only needed to drive at most a mile or two to find a house. Big difference in those two locales.

There is burning a little oil on some sawdust and there is letting the entire hydraulic system drain into the bare ground and then trying to set it on fire. I have observed both first hand and the sawdust method works great and often leaves little no damage. If I owned thousands of acres then I myself would not even care about a full oil dump, but back East the woodlots are much smaller and almost always in someone's back yard. That is a problem in those areas where folks count on their wells to provide clean water.

I was discussing the oil thing last night with my brother because he has to recyle a lot of oil he goes through each year. He said a guy near him used to use motor oil around his house to kill the weeds. He would pull back the landscape stones, spray the used oil down, and then cover it back up. Well the dork forgot that his old farm well in the corner of his basement was the classic ~20' deep hand dug well. The oil got into his well. He had no one to blame but himself. Worse was when he tried to sell the house and retire out of the area the water well did not pass and he had to explain what had happened. He ended up not selling the house.

 

[Curlycherry1]

You're out of your mind if you think conventional cable logging can be done without damaging leave trees. It can not be done. Even mechanized logging will damage some. Can there be more than an acceptable amount? Absolutely.
But rub trees are a fact of timber harvests.

My step mom's brother was a magician in the woods with his little JD440. That guy could skid big wood out and one would be hard pressed to find a leaf turned over he was that gentle. He did not make big pulls, often just 1-3 logs per trip, he cut long logs down so as to make corners better, and he never worked in bad wet conditions. He always said mid winter and mid summer was for when to get into the wet areas. He prided himself on being gentle and he never got rich logging. But he milled the wood he skidded and he turned it into flooring and paneling and made enough to take care of his family. And he always had a list a mile long of places he could log because he was in high demand. But he always was a one man operation with ballet slippers for log shoes.

 

[DK_stihl]

440's

I love em!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1pBPH0svns

 

[Humptulips]

Well Curly , I guess if you never fell trees that have been standing for over a thousand years , and still view them as just some crap you need to get on the ground then you can,t understand that a little oil on the ground don,t matter ...
.
. You want to clean up oil ,whindoner , . Back when the Penobscot river was flowing bank to bank with suds from the pulp mills , and people were working , and we were saying the Pledge of Alligance ( Under GOD ) in school , life was alot better than it is now that the Penobscot is all clean and there is no work there so bored men have nothing to teach their sons execpt how to live on welfare , be a druggy or drunk . and have no future ...
.
. The millions of Borgs who think like you have little or no future , because it seems your future is connected to sucking up to the college indoctrinated mini over lords .......... Your ( Foresters) ........aka piss fir wileys .................
.
. Obviously burning used oil in a burn barrel is better than having benzene seep into the ground . However it really doesn,t matter ........ The price of petroleum products dictates that leakage is greatly reduced if not totally eliminated ...........
.





.
.It is people who exhibit apparent traits such as the ones you are ,who oppose things like the Pebble .......

.
. If you create , own , pay for , and operate your own company .......especially if you start it from your own sweat . And arn,t just some stupid employee who needs to be led around by the hand and who will gripe and complain about the company , .... You may have a better understanding why doing ONE thing the easy way , like burning oil on a sawdust pile is gratifying .... It may be the only easy thing that operator got to do all week ..!!!!!
.
.I would say that I don,t give a ---- if anyone feels I,ve cast aspersions on them with this post :chainsawguy:

Tramp,
Quit beating around the bush and tell us what you really think.

 

[slowp]

Tramp, I believe you need to add the other sex to your condemnation, let me see, it would be lords and ladies. And Piss Fir Willominas of which I happen to be one.

Now, all loggers are not perfect, and not all foresters amazingly enough. I've come across guys letting their yarder leak antifreeze into a creek. What would you do? Let the leakage continue because it was something easy they could do?

Do you know how many eyes are out in the woods just waiting to find that kind of thing going on. The eyes belong to people who want to run you out of the woods and send you to a city to live because they think that is where all people should live? Do you know the pressure that is on that forester from BOTH extreme sides? Come and follow me around when things get busy.
I have the job that nobody much wants to do anymore. We're damned by both sides.

On the topic of scarring up trees. Yes, a good operator can work without much damage. It depends on the time of year, the pride of the workers, and the understanding of the lords and ladies. One doth not (I felt like working in ancient royalty speak) go outeth into the woods and just start whacking down trees. But most of you know that.

I will work WITH operators. If we royalty get too uppity, they too will become so. It is a two way street. Things are not as wonderful as they were in the old days. I'm not hearing about so many loggers getting killed and injured, and the surviving guys seem to take more pride in NOT leaving a mess behind. Remember when life seemed cheaper? It isn't that way anymore and that is a good thing.

Back to the tree scarring up. I had a skyline operator show me that he could yard without any dings that went through the bark all the way. We had a kind of bet going, it was winter when the bark is tight, and he had a pretty good crew for once. He did an exceptional job that time. He never was able to duplicate it.

I'm also responsible for damage because I'm the one that marks out the corridor trees for width. I can't give myself the stinkeye. Well, maybe if I carried a mirror around.

In my neck of the woods, I don't find anybody anymore who doesn't care about having a good reputation and being a concientious logger. The way things are, if you are a bad logger, you won't get any good work after your first job.

There's no need for ranting and name calling. There's enough of that going on in the real world. If you are frustrated, suck it in and go take it out on some firewood.

 

[Gologit]

Most of the restrictive rules and laws we deal with today are a direct result of mistakes we made in the past. When I think of some of the stuff we did in the "good old days" I'm surprised that they even let us log at all. Things had to change...and they did.

I won't go into specifics but anybody who's logged long enough to wear out a pair of caulks knows what I'm talking about. The old days are gone and they're not coming back. If we, as loggers, don't adjust to that fact it only makes our job harder.

Do I like all the new rules? Hell, no. A lot of them are ridiculous, not well thought out, and just plain get in the way of getting wood down the hill. But they are the rules. If we loggers don't like a law, get it changed if you can. If you can't get it changed, learn to live with it. That's the deal, pure and simple. We can stand around and scream and yell about it but all we're doing is wasting time.

Every time we send a log down the hill we're sticking our thumb right in the eye of all the people who don't want us to be logging at all. Let's keep doing that.

 

[Mike PA]

Wow. I like reading the logging section because I usually pick up something useful or read good stories, but not today. I just have to respond to some of these because they are just so bad. Yes, I am not a logger. I am a geologist. You want historic perspective, talk to one of us. We think of recent as being in the last 100,000 years. And, as far as being left, the next person that calls me that will be the first. I am not a global warming/ climate change alarmist. What I am alarmed at with climate change is the fact that people seem to think climate doesn't change... but that is subject for a different post.

I do environmental work, but I am not an environmentalist. I have worked on sites where oil was applied to keep the dust down. On these sites, there was three feet of oil floating on top of the water in a drinking well. I think that is a problem. Doing the work I do, I have certain perspective for what is important and what isn't. Loose that perspective and soon you have rivers that burn. Believe me, it happened.

I don't know what rules and regs you have to deal with. I am sure they are similar to mine in that some work and some don't. Some of the regulators can't see the forest for the trees and you just have to deal with them the best you can. You have to take the good with the bad. Believe it or not, things are better as a result of some of these rules, as some people, left to their own devices, will not behave well and will leave behind whatever mess they want to. This attitude is extremely short sighted and ultimately self-defeating.

 

[woodlotguy]

I just finished a small stand improvement cut.We used two big percherons(horses) it is always amazing to se them work,and the only thing they leave in the woods is some fertilizer.Well thought out skid roads and shorter logs can minimize damage to other trees.

 

[floyd]

Ah, no I am not out of my mind. All it takes is a good operator. Obviously this does not include you, however.

 

[RPM]

in my neck of the woods, i don't find anybody anymore who doesn't care about having a good reputation and being a concientious logger. The way things are, if you are a bad logger, you won't get any good work after your first job. .

+1

 

[redprospector]

Getting trees out of the woods with the least amount of damage to leave trees is a concerted effort.
If the person laying out the skid trails dosent do a good job, then trees will be skinned up no mater how good the fallers, and skidder operators are.
If the fallers just let the trees go wherever they want to go, then trees will be skinned up no mater how good the skid trails are layed out, or how good the skidder operator's are.
If the skidder operator's don't care, then trees are going to be skinned up, no mater how well the skid trails are layed out, or how well the trees are layed out. Everyone has to do their job to keep leave trees from getting skinned up.

I know that in some places truck's are set up to haul short logs, but in the west you have to have enough log's cut at least 33' to "bunk out" a truck so cutting logs shorter isn't alway's an option.
Since none of us are perfect, the more people on a crew, the less likely the unit will be layed out, felled, or skidded perfectly. There will be some leave trees skinned up. How many trees are skinned up is a result of how good the crew is, and how much they took pride in their work.

Andy

 

[Curlycherry1]

The one forester in charge of a kid's camp I worked on would walk each contract with the loggers in charge of the lumber cuts and he would basically point out what he thought they should do and where they should do it. He had been a logger for 15 years so he knew what needed to be done. He thought about the dropping of trees and especially the placement of skid roads when he marked the sites, and if the loggers paid attention during the walk throughs their work would be easier.

When he marked trees he often looked around and thought about the lean of the tree and if another tree was going to prevent the one he was marking from getting onto the ground easy. If it was going to go right into another tree, he would consider marking the second one as part of that cut. It was the same with skid trails. He would often mark a path where he tagged every tree to come out along a nice straight dry route. Then he would work off of that with his marking of timber to be removed.

I got the job of removing the tops and remaining bad culls from some of those contracts and they were real easy for me to work in. The ground was often not all mashed up, few to no trees were skuffed up, and the trails were nice and straight and often had decent turn around areas in them.

 

[floyd]

Nicely stated, Andy.