Have you worked in the bush?

[mainstation]

Just curious, as alot of posters here cut there own wood or at least have chainsaws. So how many have actually worked in a bushlot, logging, felling, harvesting, clearing etc. Post your stories if you want.
Myself, I work on & off in the bush in the winter , when I would get laid off for a few months. Running skidder, and bucking cull logs, and scaling hardwood logs for a farmer/friend of mine. Cash work.
In my twenties for a number of winters I would cut cedar sawlogs and posts for my own use/resale$$.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I do a little lot clearing and woods thinning. No equipment bigger than a 6 ton tractor with a winch, 9 ton backhoe and a 12 ton excavator. Is a skidder an overgrown 4 wheeler to drive or is it more like work?

 

[mainstation]

Skidder is sorta similiar to your heavy tractor with a huge winch, articulating body , loud as hell and is like driving a tank comfort wise. I have always run a cable/choker skidder, never a grapple.

 

[LLigetfa]

I've had a few career changes in my life and work as an IT professional now. I grew up on a farm where we cleared land and heated with wood. As a younger adult I worked on pipeline construction ROW slash, harvesting for corduroy roads, and chainsaw cleanup work. I also worked other slash operations. My last pipeline construction job was around 16 years ago so I've gotten lazy and out of shape. I figure I'd have to sell wood for $1,000 a cord for the time it takes me now to process it.

 

[Tony H]

I have a couple acres of woods I cut down and clear dead stuff and also have worked for a fellow clearing dead trees and trimming from his small orchard.
I do scrounge alot of wood many times after the tree service takes the tree down I cut it up and haul it away. Pretty much work with a few tools saw, 4wheeler, hand cart, trailer ect.

 

[savageactor7]

We've done everything in the OP's post. When we 1st got here back in the mid 70's the undergrowth was so thick you couldn't walk 50 yards either way without low crawling at some point.

First summer we were here we heard a noise about 70 yards from the garage like wounded animal...it took my son and I a good 10 minutes to duck walk and belly crawl the distance to discover my neighbors lost crying 4 year old son. He lives abouyt a 1/4 mile away but was closer to us with his dad gathereing firewood in the swamp.

Before harvesting any trees we had to take the brush down with a weed whacker with a saw blade or a chainsaw. Used a wheel barrow to ferry rounds to a trail where a tractor w small trailer would move rounds to a processing area...couldn't overload because all the vegetation shaded out the ground water from evaporating so getting stuck was always a concern.

After awhile the making and constant improving of logging trails made a big difference. Getting a 48" brush hog in the 90's that was a God send...small enough to wind it's way through the woods.

For a few years I worked PT for a neighbor that use to process firewood for sale...learned a lot more about safety, maintenance, efficiency, chains, cables, proper hook ups. Working smart not hard etc. Well worth the experience.

 

[NHFarmer]

We have always heated with wood so I grew up cutting wood.we usually cut, split and stack our wood 4',I think it drys faster that way. We have a tree farm of about 50 acres, clear a house lot now and then.The farm tractor with a winch is what we use most of the time. Ran a skidder once and it was a lot of fun. I wouldn't want to cut for a living.

 

[mtnmizer]

I live in the forest, not a lot of loggers left, very few mills
still operating. There's a crew clearing some beetle kill lodgepole
down the road from us. 1 feller buncher, one tracked and one rubber
tired grapple skidders and a couple of delimbers and two loaders.
Some of the hardest working men to be found anywhere. They got
diesel and pine pitch in their blood and love what they do.

They're on the job when I leave at 6:30am and still at it when I come home at dark.
They live in campers on site. The amout of cut they pile up in a week has
to be seen to be believed. I've done some work in the woods years ago
including some free climbing. Lots of cripples around, woods are for the
quick and the dead. My dad and his dad both worked in the woods and
the lumber camps back when horses were used and the logs were sent down
the rivers with the spring run off. Crosscut saws and double bit axes, very
tough guys ... I just bought a skid horse to get out some beetle killed pine
to use for a cabin. The mechanical equipment while very effecient
have to make wide trails and I want to leave the dougfir till its
ripe.. MM

 

[mainstation]

The oldtimers around here always say "You can't beat a horse in a cedar bush" And that is true, three winters I hired a horseman to come skid for me. I had piles of sawlogs in the bush which would have really marked the remaining trees and gutted the trail had a skidder or even a tractor come in. The fellow showed up with two Big Percherons, one worked in the morning and one worked in the afternoon. By the end of the day the horses had skidded over 2,000 bf of cedar sawlogs out through knee deep snow. Horses are smart, after the first few hitches the skid trail was plowed and the horses did all the walking, I stayed at the log pile and the Horseman stayed at the log yard--all we had to do was hitch & unhitch the chokers.

 

[Duetech]

Worked for a county parks department for two years. Cleared land and cut brush, cut trees (mostly with brush axes and single bit axes and a chainsaw once in a while), dug ditches and mowed lawns in the summer. During the winter I became the primary wood splitter with eight pound mall and three wedges to feed the double barrel wood stove that heated the shop. We kept the park open all winter so we plowed snow and repaired and prepared summers equipment.

 

[JustWood]

Done it all. Ran skidder at age 12 all summer for my dad.Never got out of the cab all day. Fallers wood choke my set for me. At 16 started felling softwoods and hardwoods at 17. Won regional Game of Logging contest 2 years in a row at 19. Done everything else in the last 20 years from stack/haul lumber, run feller buncher, debark logs, build logging roads etc. If it has anything to do with logging or sawmilling I've done it.My blood and sweat runs thick with sawdust.

 

[LLigetfa]

Fallers wood choke my set for me...

Watching them shift those old manual square cut gears between forward and reverse without grinding them... dropping a load of logs so they spread and loosened the buttons yet didn't unspool and tangle the mainline... A good skidder operator is pure poetry in motion. I learned from some real pros. When felling smaller trees, we would grab the butt of the tree and run with it as it was falling so that we could gather more trees into each choker. We cut the stumps low enough so that the skidder could move faster and not snag and break chokers on the stumps. We worked hard, drank hard, and fought hard... I don't miss those days.

 

[fyrwoodguy]

started out cutting and selling split firewood.then went logging for 15 years,during which i started selling HUSQVARNA hand held equipment. logging and selling became too much,went back to selling firewood with cordking firewood processor.still selling hand held-and stayed away from "total source"clasifcation of dealer. atv logging now for own use.

 

[SmokinPiney]

Out of highschool i worked for a tree service doing pretty much everything but climbing. Ground work, ropes, bucket work etc. i did it all lol. Now my dad and i do some land clearing and tree work on the side. My grandfather and great grandfather also did some logging in this area way back in the day..

 

[JustWood]

Fallers wood choke my set for me...

Watching them shift those old manual square cut gears between forward and reverse without grinding them... dropping a load of logs so they spread and loosened the buttons yet didn't unspool and tangle the mainline... A good skidder operator is pure poetry in motion. I learned from some real pros. When felling smaller trees, we would grab the butt of the tree and run with it as it was falling so that we could gather more trees into each choker. We cut the stumps low enough so that the skidder could move faster and not snag and break chokers on the stumps. We worked hard, drank hard, and fought hard... I don't miss those days.

Reminds me about a bunch of years back got done work and drove down to Nelsonville ,OH to the paul bunyan show on a Friday nite. Got our hotel and headed to the bar still in work clothes.Just needed some refreshment. Don't remember the name but the chicks really dug my crew. Needless to say it was a short nite due to some pissed off boyfriends. My guys wanted to just get some grub and beer and sleep it off in the hotel room but these girls woodn't leave some of my guys alone and it got ugly. Work , drink, fight hard was a way of life. Lots of sissy wannabe loggers nowadays

 

[smokinj]

Fallers wood choke my set for me...

Watching them shift those old manual square cut gears between forward and reverse without grinding them... dropping a load of logs so they spread and loosened the buttons yet didn't unspool and tangle the mainline... A good skidder operator is pure poetry in motion. I learned from some real pros. When felling smaller trees, we would grab the butt of the tree and run with it as it was falling so that we could gather more trees into each choker. We cut the stumps low enough so that the skidder could move faster and not snag and break chokers on the stumps. We worked hard, drank hard, and fought hard... I don't miss those days.

Reminds me about a bunch of years back got done work and drove down to Nelsonville ,OH to the paul bunyan show on a Friday nite. Got our hotel and headed to the bar still in work clothes.Just needed some refreshment. Don't remember the name but the chicks really dug my crew. Needless to say it was a short nite due to some pissed off boyfriends. My guys wanted to just get some grub and beer and sleep it off in the hotel room but these girls woodn't leave some of my guys alone and it got ugly. Work , drink, fight hard was a way of life. Lots of sissy wannabe loggers nowadays

good story but how did the next day go at the show?

 

[mainstation]

Fallers wood choke my set for me...

Watching them shift those old manual square cut gears between forward and reverse without grinding them... dropping a load of logs so they spread and loosened the buttons yet didn't unspool and tangle the mainline... A good skidder operator is pure poetry in motion. I learned from some real pros. When felling smaller trees, we would grab the butt of the tree and run with it as it was falling so that we could gather more trees into each choker. We cut the stumps low enough so that the skidder could move faster and not snag and break chokers on the stumps. We worked hard, drank hard, and fought hard... I don't miss those days.

Pipelining in Northern Ontario. Someone should write a book about those times.

 

[btuser]

1ST job I ever had was shagging rounds to the splitter at the age of 12 for my neighbor (well, he lived over 5 miles away) who used to process firewood when times were slow. $3.00/hr. I'd ride my bike 5 miles, work for 8 hours, then ride home in the rain, or dark or whatever. I was considered THE spoiled kid in the neighborhood, because I had time to get a job.

I can't even imagine how hard kids must work today. I mean, everthing was better back in the day, right?

I worked with my best friend and by the age of 14 he was running a saw, and I was running the splitter. One day we processed 7 cords together, tossing by hand into the back of a 10 wheeler. He was one real salty son of a groan, and I was told explicitly by my parents NOT to bring home any of the language I may hear at the woodlot.

I started burning wood again when oil went to $4.00/gallon. Wood's a PITA, but I'll rot in hell before I become a slave to the pellet man.

 

[LLigetfa]

Fallers wood choke my set for me...

We worked hard, drank hard, and fought hard... I don't miss those days.

Pipelining in Northern Ontario. Someone should write a book about those times.

Eh, were you around on the Geraldton job where half the crew landed in jail? The funniest was when a machine operator pulled up to the OPP station and started honking his horn. When the cop went out to see why, the guy told him to "fill'er up". In his drunken stupor he thought the yellow OPP sign was a Shell gas station. DOH!

Crown Royal was the standard currency back then. Cold hard cash would be an insult but that blue bag always got results.

 

[mainstation]

Pipelining--- worked in T-Bay, Cochrane , around New Liskeard- Temagami, and a brief spell in Kenora. Gambling your paycheques on the bus, bussie selling everything you could think of, midnight lower-ins, fighting, divorces, etc. You are right about the Whiskey....
Saw a dozer hand one time show up off the bus with his lunch pail in one hand and a 6 pack of beer in the other.
Talk about rough'n'tough sons'o bitches.

 

[LLigetfa]

Gambling your paycheques on the bus, bussie selling everything you could think of...

We'd sign our cheques over to the bussie and he'd cash them for us and buy us our booze because we worked such long hours. One payday the boss had been drinking all day and ran out but he knew there was booze on the bus so he blocked it from leaving. I finished my stint as a saw hand and was working as a swamper and rode in a crew cab, not the bus but when the boss invites you to drink, you don't say no. Anyway... the boss wouldn't let us leave until all the booze was drunk and there was peer pressure to help drink it so we could leave. My straw was too drunk to drive so I took the keys away from him and drove us back to town. The next morning he was frantically looking for his crew cab which I had taken home with me.

 

[LLigetfa]

I worked slash on the Atikokan coal fired GS site. It was a union job which paid well but they also paid bonus per acre. We worked in pairs and were each given a strip to cut and were expected to clear an acre per day with anything above that as bonus. My partner and I figured the bonus wasn't worth busting our ass for so we paced ourselves to only cut an acre and a bit each day. The other guys were doing two acres a day and when they got to the end of their strip, they were laid off. The boss was on our case but being union and exceeding minimum, we got to stay on. In fact, we stayed on MUCH longer.

It was waist deep snow which slowed us down as we had to trample it down around the trees and while we didn't exactly bust our ass, we wondered how the other guys were cutting twice as much as we were. Well... we found out when they brought in the skidders. The other guys cut all the stumps at waist height and the skidders couldn't move. We had to recut every stump the laid off guys left and laughed all the way to the bank.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Born and raised on a good sized dairy farm. When I left the farm I went to work in a sawmill. When I finally got to ride carriage I knew that very soon I'd be sawing by myself and I did on a portable mill. It was hard work but I loved it. After the mill closed we went to logging. I still dabbled with farm work but finally left both. Those were both good and bad times but I am very happy to have experienced them.

 

[mainstation]

LL...tell me there is not a book in those stories.





Keep' em coming boys.

 

[JustWood]

We cut alot of huge hardwood timber in the 90's. Jobs other crews woodn't touch because of difficulty etc. Swamps , deep ravines, near housing , timber overhanging roadways.

One time my dad hired a new skidder operator. Told us he was experienced.
I was in some 24-40" tulip and sets of 2-4 trees 70'+ long were common and the ground was loam . Made for some slow skids. I'd get 2 or 3 sets ahead of the new skidder operator and he wood be phaqin' around hookin' his own sets and gettin way behind (because he WASN"T experienced) so I took a break and helped him hook sets and catch up . I figured for best production I was going to lay the sets out a little straighter and tighter and help him hook and not get ahead of him more than 1 set. This was a mistake on my part and a mistake on his part.

One of the well known rules of skidder logging is every time you return to the next set ALWAYS look for the cutter to see if he needs a tree pushed/pulled, is hurt, or wants a certain set removed so he can lay out the next without making a clusterphaq. Well I had my back to the skid trail and was deep into my "zone" bore cuttin' a big tulip with my 066 MAG barkin like a bayin' hound and I see movement out of the corner of my eye which scares the B-Joseph out of me cause its only a foot or 2 from my head and I tuned to see the skidder blade only feet from my head. By the time I shut of my saw he had the skidder shut off and he recieved an azz peelin Paul Bunyan heard from the grave. Don't ever sneak up on a cutter . Remain at a distance till he knows you're there then use hand signals or voice instruction. Next set he came back in the woods and did the same thing and I was ready to teach this guy a lesson I gaurantee he remembers to this day.

Next set I told him to stop by a certain stump and don't move till we had eye contact . Next set he came back and didn't stop at the stump I told him to stop at.I had a 30" tulip notched ,bored and about 8 wedges beat into the back side aimed at the stump with about a 2"x2""kill cut" ready to snip off to send that tulip flying. He got almost to the stump and no sign of stoppin so I let the tulip fly. It was winter and the branches were brittle. When the top hit the skidder it was like someone threw 10,000 boxes of chop sticks at this guy. I've never seen a skidder travel that fast in reverse. I think he may have hit 4R. He went out to the landing empty told my dad what happened . My dad laughed his ass off and the guy quit. A couple of weeks later he came back to work as a truck driver and refused to get on the skidder if I was in the woods.