The pine beetle has just decimated some parts of the western states forests, and our family ranch has not be spared. We’ve dealt with beetle kills for decades, but the number of trees has skyrocketed in the past few years. I started keeping track of trees felled in 2023, when I dropped 57 trees. Last week I felled #100, #101, and #102 for 2024. I suspect there are still another 75 dead pines in the wings, just waiting for wind or chainsaws.

The average tree I fell is likely 16 inches in diameter and 50 feet tall. Beetles don’t seem to affect trees smaller than about 10 inches in diameter. The largest ones that I’ve cut so far were around 28” in diameter. I’ve marked trees for felling that are up to 36” in diameter. Our tallest trees are likely in the 80-85 foot ballpark. I realize that most of our trees might be considered saplings by the guys who harvest timber in the Pacific northwest, but can be pretty large for this neck of the woods.

Here’s tree #100, which died 3+ years ago. It was shedding limbs, leaning heavily, and showing signs of trunk rot. As I am working in this area, such a hazard tree needed to come down. 20 inches diameter at the felling cut, 65 feet tall. It was leaning towards a smaller live tree, so I wanted to steer the fall away from the good tree and into the open. Think of the tree as wanting to fall towards 11 o’clock – I wanted it to land at 12 o’clock, and I had to aim the fall to around 12:30 to compensate for the lean. Bingo – it landed exactly as planned. The trunk broke about 2/3 up upon landing, which is common for weakened snags. I used my Stihl 400 with a 20” bar.






The crispy limbs shattered upon landing. Picking them up is just a tedious job.

Here’s the stump. I prefer to make felling cuts about 2 feet above ground, when cutting from level ground. This allows me to be standing while the tree is falling, which means a faster escape in case the tree doesn’t fall as planned. The “notch cut / face cut” is on the right side of the picture, the “back cut / felling cut” is on the left side of the pic. The holding wood was pretty sound in the center of the tree, but the top and bottom parts in this picture show substantial rot. A strong wind might have blown over this tree.




Here it is all limbed and bucked up. The limbs go into smaller gullies for erosion control. When the trunks have relatively sound wood, I cut them to 6’ lengths and haul them to our larger erosion gullies. More on that to come.

There were lots of ants in the bottom 9 feet of this tree. Once a tree has been felled, I cut the stump down to about ground level.

What are you doing with all that fire wood ?

Sounds like he is using the wood for ‘erosion control’ in gully’s. I’d think they are awash in firewood.

Yes it’s pine or Fir, depending on where one lives, choices are limited. At our camp we have a lot of pine, use it a good bit.

Why not just call Duluth Trading Company to order a colony of angry beavers?

( Of course, you'll need to mark the good trees with beaver repellent, also from Duluth Trading)

Man, dealing with those mountain pine beetles is a real pain. Sorry about that. Are they any closer to coming up with some kind of repellent/killer that is any good?

We HAVE THEM HERE IN THE SOUTHEAST ALSO.I have lost a lot of trees the past 5 years. Clear cutting seems to be the only thing that stops them.

Good stuff, Fritz! And beautiful scenery.

I think the pine's only defense is to make a lot of sap but they need a plenty of water in order to do that.
I sometimes wonder what trees we're going to have left? Chestnut, pines, ash, elm, beech, hemlock, and now cherry and oak are being threatened.

It takes a man’s man to drop big trees with a short bar saw, even with the extra displacement. Bravo!

Wow. That's a lot of work.

We have way more firewood than we need, so dealing the with excess wood from the beetle kills became an issue. Years earlier, I began to eliminate the huge numbers of large yucca plants from our pastures. Truckloads upon truckloads of yucca. I dumped then in smaller erosion gullies just to get them out of the way. Low and behold, those gullies stopped growing in size from the large summer rainstorms. So we started adding to the biomass in the gullies with tree branches and tree trunks. It all worked well on the smaller gullies. But not so much on the larger ones -- those that drain 100+ acres of open pastures. The water volume & water speed in these big gullies just flushed everything downstream, then made another mess to clean up.

I'll get to that in a bit.

Here’s tree #101, which died about 2-3 years ago. I suspect it was substantially weakened by a lightning strike many years ago, then lost its fight with beetles. 26 inches in diameter at the felling cut, 65 feet tall. The tree was leaning slightly to fall at 11 o’clock, but this was on rolling ground, which would have almost certainly broken the trunk in multiple places. I wanted it to land at 12 o’clock, on level ground which should save out most of the trunk. I aimed at 12 o’clock and it landed right on target, with only the top part of the trunk breaking upon impact. I used my Stihl 400 with a 25” bar.






Lots of shattered limbs to pick up. There is the start of a smaller erosion gully directly beyond this tree, so I carried & dragged to the limbs to clog it up.




Here’s the stump and the felling cut. The rot from the lightning strike is evident on the left side of the stump. I left a little more holding wood on that left side, being a little uncertain about the wood’s strength. In reality, the wood was quite strong at the felling cut. But there was evidence that ants were in the tree. I do not like ants.

And….ants. This was about 15 feet up on the trunk, where they were the worst. Ants were present in the bottom 30-35 feet of the tree, where the best wood should have been. I quickly decided that none of this tree would be bucked to 6’ lengths and hauled to other areas – the entire tree was carefully going into the nearby gully. I still got many ants on my gloves and clothes.




The next morning – here’s the tree all limbed and bucked. The prior day’s limbs are in the gully in the upper left portion of the picture.




And...done for the day. I’ll return later to cut the stump off at ground level. Too many angry ants crawling around at that moment. I will be kneeling on the ground, and the cut won’t go quickly.

On to log hauling. Once or twice a year, with the help of my sister and B-I-L, we rent a dump trailer and haul the 6’ logs from the forested areas to the big erosion gullies. That occurred over the 4th of July holiday this year. The rest of the time I’m generally working solo, so I needed some southern engineering to move the heavy logs. Voila – a ramp, climbing webbing, carabiners, a comealong, grunting, and a fair amount of cursing. This is the good wood from tree #100.




On to log placement. This is one of our mid-sized erosion gullies, which I started working on this summer. The logs inside the gully were hauled over via the dump trailer in July. I “secured” all of these logs to the ground with pieces of rebar, so they won’t wash down stream in heavy rains. The logs on the grassy areas are what I just hauled that afternoon. They will be placed on top of the logs in the gully, then tied to the lower level with more rebar. I started doing this a couple of years ago in other gullies, and so far it’s working.

Full respect, fritz.

That many trees can't be felled without some moments, huh? Any close calls, widow-makers avoided, whatever?

That's a heck of a workout regimen, love the old Ford you use for work, better than some $100K New fangled internet connected vehicle!

What about getting a smaller electric winch you could mount in the bed to pull those logs up into the truck?

Part of me is jealous that you get to work outdoors cutting trees and using man tools.

The other part of me is happy I don't have to do all that damn labor.


Looks like a beautiful property though.

quote:

Originally posted by Ripley:
That many trees can't be felled without some moments, huh? Any close calls, widow-makers avoided, whatever?

Yeah, forestry work is considered one of the most dangerous professions out there. I'm just a weekend warrior -- not a professional -- so I take every tree seriously. When I'm not comfy with the way a tree might fall, I'll cut good trees around it first and/or use a comealong or two to control the fall direction.

I recall 4 or 5 widowmakers this year, where the top of the dead tree got hung up in a nearby tree as it went down. One of those widowmakers is still hanging, the others have dropped from wind storms. I'm hoping this winter's snow and wind will drop the remaining widowmaker. A few weeks ago I had to thread the needle of a tall beetle kill between 6 live trees. As the dead tree brushed against the live trees, it shook one pretty hard. The top 7-8 feet of the live tree broke off and flung back onto the stump I just cut. As usual, I pulled back about 10 feet from the stump after I cut the tree. So...not really a close call, but it was an eye opener. AKA, get the hell away from the stump once the tree starts to go down.

I did have an "oopsie" in July when I was helping my brother-in-law drop beetle trees on his property, in the foothills to the west of Denver. It was a really windy morning, with winds of around 20mph, gusting to 30-35. Here's the snag -- oval base of 24-28 inches, 80 feet tall. I used the Stihl 400 with the 20 inch bar. My felling cut was decent, but not perfect. At our ranch I often keep the felling cut even with the face cut, which leaves a fairly flat stump. At my B-I-L's place -- where the land isn't flat -- I often use a stump shot cut, which in theory reduces the chance of the tree jumping back at me when it lands. My cut wasn't perfect on this tree, but it wasn't bad.

Anyway, the wind changed right as the tree began to fall, pinching the bar. I had to make a split second decision to wait for a moment, then grab the saw as the tree leaned further, or abandon the saw and get the hell away. I chose to get out of there. The saw continued to be pinched as the tree went down, and the butt of the tree crunched the handle portion of the saw. The handle and the gas tank had to be replaced. My saw shop tech said that was a cheap price to pay for being safe.




I finished bucking the tree with my older Stihl 310, which has a 16" bar.




After I cleaned up that snag, close behind it was a sorta-kinda-live tree heavily infested with beetles. It wasn't going to make it. 23 inches in diameter, 75 feet tall. A bit of a challenge with a older saw, with a 16" bar, at high altitude. But like the prior snag, I dropped it exactly on target. Even better, the stumps I left from other trees supported this tree and kept the trunk from rolling down hill as we bucked it.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
That's a heck of a workout regimen, love the old Ford you use for work, better than some $100K New fangled internet connected vehicle!

What about getting a smaller electric winch you could mount in the bed to pull those logs up into the truck?

We retired an 80's F150 last year when my B-I-L found this 90's 4WD F250. "Red" has high mileage and has its issues, but it does the job. We've looked for an electric winch, but have not yet found a good solution. The comealong works OK for logs up to around 24" in diameter. The really big logs need the combination of our old tractor (with forks on the bucket) and a rented dump trailer.