Too Sketchy to Drop?

[Turbo89]

Can you use a come-along/winch to pull it over?

 

[Whitenuckler]

Welp, I finally dropped the other trunk. Or partially dropped. Now I have like 2,000 lbs of tree hung up at a 65 degree angle. I am good with wood for this year so hopefully the winter will drop this mess when things freeze and get brittle. Otherwise, I am kinda at a loss. I feel like bucking from the bottom with upward cuts on the trunk is 100% a deathwish and I don't have anything big and heavy enough to attach to the bottom and drag it out/down. Add a large and brittle canopy and I now have about as much of a "nope" situation as one could imagine.

Yes it's quite a mess. Better to wait for cooler bug free weather and bring it all down. Other option would be to get a truck near it and try and pull it from the top sideways.

 

[bigealta]

What ever you do clear out all that brush mess around the base before you do anything. You need clear escape paths in all directions.

 

[Toasty-Yote]

Can you use a come-along/winch to pull it over?

This did occur to me but there isn't really anything to attach the winch to that is in the direction I would want to pull it. I am going away for a month and when I come back, it will be kinda late to split and stack for this winter since the main trunks of these recently dead ash have quite a bit of moisture. This time I think I am really done dealing with this for the year. I feel like there is a very good chance it will end up on the ground by next April anyway.

 

[John Lehet]

Last Christmas my son gave me a — I call it a “grabber claw.” There is an official name for this thing, but I can’t remember. I can use it with a tow strap or rope, or use it with a boom pole on the back of the little kubota 3 point hitch. It’s less than $200 I think. You mentioned a lawn tractor. You would need a hill probably to help pull it, gravity helping, with a tractor like that, unless you’ve got 4wd and chains on the wheels.. So the trick with a tree like this is to pull perpendicular to the trunk axis, or something like perpendicular. If you pull on-axis, toward the stump, the butt of the tree will dig into the ground and nothing will move. I’ve gotten a handful of hung-up trees un-stuck with this thing since I got it. Having it means that I’ll go ahead and cut a tree even if it might get hung up on other trees, while before I would have passed on those trees.

Right now I’ve got a corridor of ash trees by some sugar maples. I’ve been working from the end. I’ve got to fell into the relatively narrow area of already cut trees, or it’ll get hung up in a sugar maple. OK, go ahead, fall into the sugar maple. I’ll just pull the trunk with my tractor until it falls out. I’ve done this before with a tow strap tied around the trunk, before I got this thing, but that is a much worse solution. I was working in my neighbor’s woods cutting sugar maples, and at first it was pretty hard to fell a tree without it getting hung up. Couldn’t have done it without the tractor. Could try a come a long too, but I trust that a bit less, afraid something might snap. Got to trust the come a long, not use some cheap Harbor Freight one.

 

[stoveliker]

Do you have a picture of that thing?

 

[John Lehet]

First, pulling with the tow strap. This butternut log was threatening to fall into the pond. I couldn’t budge it until I cut a few rounds off of it. Second one a sugar maple log I had pulled down from my neighbor’s hill, hanging from the boom pole. The boom pole has also been an amazing help.

 

[stoveliker]

Okay, nice.
But pulling it sideways wouldn't need such a claw? The strap around the tree would do the trick, no?

 

[John Lehet]

I’ve done it without the claw too, but I feel a lot more secure with the claw. With just the strap I always felt like I needed to catch a lower branch with the strap along with the trunk to make sure it didn’t slip. I’ve sort of wrecked a strap doing just the strap. The knot pulled so tight I couldn’t get it loose. That strap still has a loop at the end of it, and it was hard to get it off the tree. Pro tree people use ropes, not straps, and are better with knots than me.

 

[stoveliker]

Ok. I use circular straps (to pull logs from a pile, up to 3 ft), that I loop through itself, so no knots needed.