Wood Collecting Ettiquette

These days, if you have a street address, you can likely go to the website of the county and find all the public records including the owner's name. Rick

Ditto to the above, although the procedure varies greatly by location. In Milwaukee County you can look it all up online by address, adjacent properties, name, all sorts of things. In Racine County, at least a few years ago, you had to sit through a training session at the county building downtown and then go through microfiche and ancient books to get the info you want.

An easier route is just to stop and ask at the houses across the street if they know who owns that property with the trees down. Around here when I ask similar questions (I am a wood scrounger, too) the neighbors usually know.

Many landowners would be very pleased to have someone clean up the cut trees, if they are neat and cause no damage. How about offering to share a portion with the landowner as an easy way to obtain permission. I have offered to give the landowner 1/2 and I take 1/2. They usually refuse and say I can take it all.

Trees, standing or fallen, belong to the owner of the land. Find out who owns the land and ask, or you may find ourself in some significant difficulty.

This also is generally true if the power company comes through on line clearing and piles the cut trees along the way. Unless the power company actually owns the land rather than having an easement to cross the land, or unless the easement transfers tree ownership to the power company, the person who owns the land owns the trees.

This also is often true on road right-of-way clearing, but it gets a little more complicated. The cut trees may be owned by the road authority or may be owned by the abutting land owner. In either case the trees are not free to anyone who wants them.

You can't take a cut down tree anymore than you can cut down a tree a take it.

Plat books help find out the owners too.

One problem is a lot of folks are so afraid of sueing. Somebody cuts wood on their land and gets hurt, so comes with a law suit against the owners. That is sad as it hurts a lot of people by cutting off a lot of good things. We have too many lawyers and too lenient of courts.

Backwoods Savage said:

...That is sad as it hurts a lot of people by cutting off a lot of good things.

Click to expand...

There ya go...tell him that if sues ya, you'll cut off a few of his good things. :bug: Rick

If your in Snohomish County you can access all the public records you want on line. if you have an address even look at the maps which show the tax account numbers which in turn you can find out who ownes it very easy.

Yeah- I've been asking around thinking it was subdivision property wehre I saw some nice trees(dead ones) but found out it's private. THinking about how to approach land/ home owners................