What is the best way to log?

[Matthew]

What do you think is the best way to log, if I was getting lots that people wanted logged with horses and I am not a forester would I be best to use a mill that would mark the timber, truck the wood and put in a acessable landing for the log truck then pay by the thousand board feet cut snd skidded no matter the spices of wood. Or would it be best to hire a forester cut and skid the wood and pay for the trucking and pay the land owner. I worked years ago for a logger and we found all the lots ourselfs we worked for the mill by the thousand the mill could of cared less that we used horses in fact I think they would have ratherd we just found them the lot and they sent one of thair skidder crews in to do the job. We did about six jobs for them and they never gave us any work only what we found. Can you cut wood for a land owner without having a licenced forester mark the timber and act in the land owners behalf? Is it better to pay to haul wood to the mill or have log buyers come to the landing and buy it on the landing. With todays firewood prices sky high does it pay to do firewood with horses?

[mitchmaine]

hey mathew, you don’t need a forester to cut wood for a land owner, but you are not working on his behalf. it’s a deal between him and you. whatever you arrange. i beleive he can mark his own wood, but you can’t or shouldn’t. you can’t call yourself a forester or behave like one unless you are one. different states may have different rules. but firewood is a great wayu to make money with horses. it lets you cut and move wood any length you wish from tree length to stove length and haul yourself. it’s pretty much your deal. as to the real question, which is the best way to log, man has been asking that question for many moons, and i haven’t heard the best answer yet. good luck with that one. mitch

[PhilG]

Matthew,
I have had good luck with some joint ventures with other poeple, most the timber fallers I know don’t have horses or a self loader, and many foresters only consolt land owners and don’t do any tree falling, skidding or hauling. try contacting others in your area to see if you can just contract out the skidding part, or hit up foresters and sell them on the low impact easy move in and out, lots of jobs are too small to lowboy a skidder, harvester and all the crap that goes with them, look for those jobs. There is a lot of value in getting the logs to a landing with horses, there is a lot of value in pulling up with a selfloader and getting logs to market, there is a lot of value in knowing what to do with what log, there is value in managing the forest….. if you can find some honest folks that are wiling to part out there portion of the jobs value it might be a start. I agree with Mitch, don’t call yourself a forester unless you are, I’m not an eucated forester either, so I do my part and let them do theirs. I have also seen a few educated foresters with some pretty screwed up motives (the almighty $) driving there decitions vs. my un-forester-educated common sence, but that is a different topic, read that healing harvest web sight ,it is right as rain. Have fun logging.

[Carl Russell]

Being and “educated Forester”, I would argue that just because you mark trees doesn’t mean you are pretending you are a forester. If you work out a deal with the landowner to improve their forest resource, then cutting trees to facilitate that is exactly what you are being hired for.

That doesn’t answer the question as to whether you have experience and knowledge to back up the claim of improvement, but there are no guarantees that a “forester” will actually improve the stand either. If you are not interested in forest improvement, and merely in sawlog liquidation, then you certainly don’t need a forester then either.

I am a staunch supporter of forest improvement. It is the residual stand that is the product of logging, not the log pile and stumpage check. I see no reason to log with horses or machines without offering a service. If you leave yourself at the mercy of foresters to administer your jobs, then it will be them who gets paid for the service, and you will be relegated to some squeeze between the mill and the landowner.

You do not have to work for a mill to get paid straight-through. I contract with LO to improve the woodlot at a flate rate, $X/mbf to cut, skid, and land their timber and wood. When I get paid by the mill I pay an independent trucker his fee, take mine, and pay the LO the remainder. I find that in this way, I cannot be accused of making out financially based on my harvesting choices. In fact the better logs yield me the same as the junk, because I want to be able to afford to cut the junk (my service), but the higher the value logs, the more the LO makes.

By the way the best way to log is WITH HORSES!!!:D

Have fun, Carl

[lancek]

You hit it right on the head Carl!

[Matthew]

It sounds like you can get a lot, explain to the land owner what you intend to cut and do so with out a (licenced) forester, am I corect in saying this? You are being hired by the landowner to cut and skid the trees and what trees are cut are choosen by you. It seems like you would ether need to 100% trust the landowner or have something in wrighting. I know lots cut in the past the trees were marked on the tree and stump so you could not be accused of cuting more than was marked. If you are accused by the landowner of cutting more than they are getting paid for how would you be able to defend your self. I use to sell alot of firewood I had a one ton flatbed with oak sides I would throw the wood on and stack the back row. I went to a coustomers house that orderd a cord of wood and they thought the stacked back row was thair full cord, they had no clue what a cord was. A nother coustomer orderd four cords I droped of one and said I was going to be back in a few hours with another load they said we only orderd four cords, I said I know that is only one cord they said oh we thought that was four. I would think you would run into these types logging also, they think that they will get a lot more money than they get and if you don’t have a number before you start they have nothing to go by. You can show them the tally sheets but you need more to cover your butt. Maby I am just to use to the sue happy people of connecticut. Carl you wrote on your farm website a horse logger can make between $175 and $225 a MBF. If you are charging a landowner that to cut and skid by the thousand and then take trucking out and give the landowner the rest that can run in the red with soft wood and low grade logs. How do you convince the landowner that they are really making a investment and how long untill you come back and put thair investment in thair pocket. I have all these questions because I am seriously looking to getting into logging with horses part time at first then hopefully full time. I live ware thair is a ton of small pieces of land and I know If I do good work and get my name out I would be able to log for years.

[Scott G]

Matthew,

My primary profession is as a forester, although in a government capacity as a forest health specialist who deals primarily with forest insect & disease issues as well as administering contracts. This current position is what pays most of the bills (keeps the wife happy) and I fill up the rest of my available time with the horse logging biz.

Previously, I owned a forest management company that included a large-scale logging operation.

The realm of procurement foresters is more prevalent in other areas of N. America, including yours. I have known a few procurement foresters, some have an interest in sustainably managing a woodland, but sadly, I have to say most that I have encountered or heard of are more in the liquidation frame of mind. Procurement foresters exist only in a very limited quantity/scope in the Rockies and I am happy to say that almost all of them have sustainable silviculture as their primary focus.

I have known many sage woodsmen who could put many of my so called “peer” foresters to shame when it came to silvicultural knowledge and application. That said, IMO thorough knowledge of what you are doing is paramount as the results of your actions are influential on what is left as far as ecological integrity & productivity. I, like Carl, am focused on forest improvement. What is left in the residual stand, its ecological integrity, and future growth potential mean much more to me as opposed to merchantable volume removed.

With that in mind, sell your operation as a service. There are folks out there that will recognize yours as being the superior harvesting system for their woodlot. If some folks balk at the bottom line, the key word is “next” and move on to the customer who recognizes the increased value of your services and values their woodlot enough to use them. Latch onto someone who has the local silvics knowledge of your area to layout the work. Avoid getting into the “cut” scenario where you are giving one another some coin for the job. The “forester” gets paid for laying out an improvement cut, you get paid for harvesting and skidding to the landing, and someone (you or reputable others) find appropriate markets. Just starting out you would be much better off trying to work yourself into the equation as a superior harvesting system than to take care of the whole show. Starting out part time is a great way to receive an education while taking on limited risk. Really shoot for that niche of the small affluent landowners of CT. That is a demographic where you should be very well received as most of those types of folks objectives lean more towards aesthetic & ecological values as opposed to strictly timber production.

You should charge for volume or time, $/mbf to the landing or an hourly rate for your services. Keeping your services reasonable to start while not selling yourself short. You do not want to be paying for the work…

Firewood in your situation is viable, just make sure it pays for itself. Keeping the job simple without a layout or sales strategy you could log windthrow, storm damage, culls, etc.. without getting too involved. Be cautious though, logging windthrow and storm damaged timber is often the most technical and hazardous material to remove. It also often takes the most time as the felling done by nature wasn’t done with you in mind…

Good luck, be safe, and have fun.

[PhilG]

Hey Foresters,
my intent was not to get any one riled up, I am also a staunch supporter of forest improvement, in the last sixteen years I have been dealing solely with the pine beetle in Colorado. I have never in all that time cut down a live tree! My encounters with the “foresters” in my area have been a little unique, there are several ranches and ski resorts in my area that I have been scavenging logs from for over nine years, I think if they had cleared more trees in the begining, instead of marking random “infested” trees they could have maybe lessened the impact or at least not logged the same hillsides year after year after year…After a couple years doesn’t it seem obviose that that approach was not working ?
Scott, what is the best way to deal with what is happening to the LP ? What do you advise land owners to do ? Can you possibly cut to many trees in an infested area?
Carl, a-men brother, the ONLY way to log is with horses!!!! those 1,000,000’s of acres of dead Colorado Lodge Pole Pine should be employing hundreds of horse teams for years to come.

[Gabe Ayers]

Well, I have been accused of trying to apply my silvicultural prescription to all forest types on here before, so keeping that cheap shot in mind I will limit my recommendations to the eastern oak hickory forest type.

We practice “restorative forestry” based upon “worst first” single tree selection with skilled directional felling and the ultimate low impact overland extraction method of modern animal powered logging.

We work in all sorts of scenarios economically. We work by the hour, by the board foot and sharecropping. It depends on what the landowner wants. I agree with and repeat my often stated approach of only working for people that appreciate the value of the services of low impact forestry. In the east the forest is being sold into smaller and smaller tract sizes over the last twenty years or so and those new smaller forest landowners have different values for their woodlots than commercial forests interest or industry. These new landowners have a greater concern to the natural appearance of there for or it’s aesthetic beauty.
Yet they recognize that the forest does have natural mortality or that trees to die and should not be wasted for immediate human use.

I am a certified forester in the state of Virginia. Yet I am also a logger, so I straddle that fence of consultant and practitioner. It is a good position in that I can define what I mean in any terms, forestry or common sense. It is also good to be able to prove the work by ground truthing in the actual practices.

If the landowner wants all the money they can get from the onset, then you can’t help them as a horselogger because of low production. So why not provide your services as superior at accomplishing their objectives and charge what you need to make a living at it. That will be an individual situation with the practitioner and their economic needs.

There have been many discussions on these issues on DAP. I am not sure how to find them but they are here somewhere. Everyone will have to adapt their methods to their community and forest type.

But the main unaccounted portion of the work is the preservation and enhancement of the value of the ecological services provided by the forested landscape. This will become a greater value in the future and the non industrial private forest landowner is the gateway to that new value set in the forestry practices of our world. Animal powered forestry is using a form of renewable energy that is superior in every regard – other than being labor intensive. It does take more human hours to do this form of forestry. But to quote an old friend, “What are people for?”

Maybe there will be further discussion of the details of how to log. There are many ways to arrange the economics and we support doing that is such a way that support the ground level worker of “restorative forestry”.
We promote bottom up change by supporting the ground level work of superior services. It does happen one landowner at a time, but every successful job is proof of the services being acceptable to other landowners.

There was a big study done by the Pinchot Institute a few years back to try to discover how landowner’s make decisions about their forest management. They spent hundreds of thousands on this study. When I first read about it I thought, Wow – they could have given us that money to train more Biological Woodmen and we would have told them the answer for free. The answer is that most landowner’s do what their neighbors do. Monkey see monkey do or if it is good enough for them it is good enough for me, or some other expression of human behavior that is poorly informed.

Another point is that in the east, 78% of all logging is a matter of a handshake between a landowner and a logger and no forester is involved. That is not the best system, but it doesn’t need to be the excuse to give up private property rights to brain washed clear cutters being pumped out of land grant Universities of Industrial Forestry.

The best way to log is the way you can make a living improving the natural world around all of us. It should be about being a steward of your surroundings or improving things from your efforts. That is exactly what Healing Harvest Forest Foundation is about.

~

[Scott G]

Phil,

In endemic population situations, a.ka.“normal’, individual tree sanitation is an excellent way to keep bark beetle populations in check across all species of conifers . In epidemic circumstances, individual sanitation still works in some forest cover types and species, although lodgepole is not one of them.

Grand, Summit, Pitkin, Jackson, and Routt Counties all tried the individual sanitation method in lodgepole early in the epidemic until they realized it was somewhat a futile effort on a landscape scale.

I will state to landowners that are motivated, that it is better than doing nothing and often folks need to feel like they are trying to do something. We refer to it as the 5 stages of beetle grief…

Other species, such as ponderosa, D-fir, and spruce definitely benefit from active, ongoing sanitation efforts throughout the course of the epidemic. The reason being that there is much more age & structure diversity in those forest cover types as opposed to lodgepole.

So, on a landscape scale with larger projects, multiple entries year after year to cut/remove the ‘bug smack’ is not a desirable situation. This falls in line with constant multiple entries being avoided for forest management projects in general, at least in our neck of the woods. Primarily for soil compaction and disturbance issues as well as encouraging other bark beetle species, such as Ips pini, to build to epidemic levels and cause widespread tree mortality.

As a side note, it is important to put the issue in perspective. This is not just a mountain pine beetle issue. We have several other species of bark beetles that are tree species specific that are at epidemic populations as well. Spruce, D-fir, true firs, pinyon, & juniper all have bark beetle pressure that is off the scale. We also have other species of bark beetles, such as Ips and various twig bark beetles, that are causing severe mortality on their own within the pine species.

What is a major concern for us is that the epidemic populations, building across all bark beetle species, is something that is not within the normal range of variability nor the landscape/western continent-wide scale at which it is occurring. There are other factors at play here other than overall forest health and many of us within the field strongly believe it is climate. Multiple generations of bark beetles occurring in species where that is not normal as well as earlier/later flight times coupled with an increase in elevational tolerance.

From an on the ground agency management perspective, our primary concern is safety and resource protection. Lodgepole has a notoriously shallow root system that is extremely susceptible to windthrow (hence why heavy thinning in lpp doesn’t work). As these trees die they start coming down fast within a very few years. As you can appreciate, when you are looking at a landscape that is pure dead lodgepole as far as the eye can see, that is a major problem. Roads, power lines, buildings, and other infrastructure are at extreme risk when all of this stuff starts coming down. Many campgrounds and trails have been temporarily closed due to this.

Where all of this fits in for a horse logger is the small privately owned forest parcels that are either a primary residence or a second home. Removal of the hazard trees and/or windthrow will be a delicate operation, especially in the mixed-conifer forests where other species are not affected. As time goes by, regeneration will be very prolific and the only way to effectively remove the material without excessive residual damage will be by hand or horse. There will be more than enough work to go around as people ‘clean’ up their place for multiple objectives including fuels reduction.

Probably more info than you wanted to know…

[Ira]

Just out of curiosity, do the bark beetles have any natural enemies (species of birds) ?

[Scott G]

Hi Ira,
The answer is yes, specifically woodpeckers and a few predatory insects. There are not near enough of either to make a difference.

Another looming issue we have related to the bark beetle epidemic is severe obesity being observed in our woodpecker population…:D

[Ira]

@Scott G 18362 wrote:

Another looming issue we have related to the bark beetle epidemic is severe obesity being observed in our woodpecker population…:D

ROFL

I rememeber hearing/reading something about increased insect population because of lower bird population. So I was just wondering if that was an underlying cause

[Scott G]

Nope, the underlying cause has more to do with current over-stocked, over-mature forest conditions in the West, coupled with climate and other environmental factors.

[Matthew]

@Scott G 18362 wrote:

Another looming issue we have related to the bark beetle epidemic is severe obesity being observed in our woodpecker population…:D

Nothing wrong with having a big pecker.:D

[Author]

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