tap it or not to tap it?

[blissville maples]

so we have all walked up to a nice 20'' perfect specimen, get around to the other side and oooffff. half the tree is dead, is wrotting in to center from losing a major limb or branch, or has cull working from ground up. what do you do tap it and risk losing vacuum, or getting poor sap, or any other reason?? you hate to let it go by since you know it has nice live cambium on good side?? i have many of these probably 20 in a 700 tap bush, i have traditionally not tapped some of them but am extending a mainline this year and am thininking why not?? do many try to avoid these trees, and for what reasons? beliefs or experience?

[Thompson's Tree Farm]

Tap it. If there is a leak on that lateral, be prepared to pull the tap and cap it off.

[buckeye gold]

I say tap it. I don't run vac but I do have some trees just like you discribed and i tap them. Some of them run just as good or better than my healthy looking trees. When they start dropping too many dead limbs they becoome firewood, so I look at it as get all you can from it before it hits the ground.

[Bucket Head]

My answer depends on where the tree is and who owns it.

Most of the tree's I tap belong to others and are in view from the home owners residence and/or the road. If it's health is in question, I don't tap it. If "seeing it" isn't a concern, I'd tap it. It will still produce sap and it may live for years in that 'poor" state of health.

[jmayerl]

One of my best producers was only hanging on by 1/5 of its trunk. Trapped a couple of coon out of the hole a few years ago.

[stewardsdairy]

Tap them. They will produce, just watch that you get good shavings.

[buckeye gold]

I tapped 4 trees yesterday that are just as you discribed and all four of them produced over a gallon a tap this morning. I think that more of the tree's sap is transduced through a smaller area in those trees and they often do better than others. If you kill it thens it's great forewood.

[DrTimPerkins]

The proper way is to adjust the diameter downward based upon the amount of tapping band affected. So for a 20" tree with 1/2 dead or damaged, you would tap it as if it were a 10" tree. If only 1/4 of the tapping band was affected, it would be considered a 15" tree.

[blissville maples]

buckeye, the bottleneck effect seems to make sense and wonder if that does have some effect, i have also noticed one tree here that is wounded and seems to run good. i thought maybe it was robust due to it knowing its hurt. i wasn't sure if poor quality sap resulted, years ago i used 5 gal buckets, i happened to notice that 2 large trees about 2/3 way thru season had very yellowish sap, one day i thought someone took a leak in one. i happened to notice this tree had a huge dead spot about 15 feet up and thought maybe sap had contacted some of this area and soaked in the sap(knowing dead is nonconductive doesn't seem possible) seems how im looking for all i can get out of it, im going to put them in, mainlines already there......

[Farmay]

so we have all walked up to a nice 20'' perfect specimen, get around to the other side and oooffff. half the tree is dead, is wrotting in to center from losing a major limb or branch, or has cull working from ground up. what do you do tap it and risk losing vacuum, or getting poor sap, or any other reason?? you hate to let it go by since you know it has nice live cambium on good side?? i have many of these probably 20 in a 700 tap bush, i have traditionally not tapped some of them but am extending a mainline this year and am thininking why not?? do many try to avoid these trees, and for what reasons? beliefs or experience?


Nice thread to get information.

[Ravenseye]

I have one of those right beside the house. On one side it looks perfect. On the other, it has half the trunk gone. I do tap it and I get a lot of sap, mainly I think because it has a very exposed crown.