Best Time To Do Repairs?

[Bruce L]

Winter storm warning for area tomorrow,figured better check the bushes for tubing down before it freezes down. Only got one bush done,finding a lot of damage. The little ?$&@'"(:/ have been having a field day chewing lines,sometimes as much as three breaks per lateral. This particular bush my Brother hunts deer in,and ticks are quite prevalent so we wait for cold weather to go in and check it out. We had the lines snapping tight,hoping when they chewed them the line whiplashed and broke their necks,but probably not.Anyway,hard to get the lines back stretched to where they were,my wife wondering if they will just re chew what we fix before spring,right now just have the lines strung up so they won't be frozen down

[maple flats]

That's a tough question to answer. Your wife is going to be right to a certain extent, but they will not chew a high percentage of the lines. You will gain. We try to fix damaged lines as soon as we find them, whether it is from storm damage or tree rats (or other critters). I've had tubing since 2004 season and in all those years I think I've only had deer chew the lines once, tree rats, that's another story.

[The Sweet Spot]

We have been using tubing for over 8 years. The critters / tree rats can do a lot of damage to your tubing. In my opinion storms that are capable of bringing down large branches and trees must be tended to immediately. We live in Northern Michigan at a high elevation and can get feet of snow with little notice, thanks to the lake effect snow off the bay in Petoskey. One year I had injured my back and did not pull the lines up out of the snow often enough. The amount of work to get them out of the 4-6 feet of snow on the ground that year was increadable. It just so happens that it coincided with record breaking snowfalls that year. Even with low snow fall years, if a line gets pulled to the ground by tree fall and the hard crusty snow freezes along with ice on the ground it can be a bear to pull out. Last year we had a spot where a branch held a Lat to the ground in a low spot on a hill. Some time during the winter it melted and the low spot filled with water. Frozen with a 6" branch under 8" of ice we had to cut out the space and recycle the old line in the spring. Chew repairs can be made just before the season if you want, but pulling the lines up and removing downed trees on lines can not wait. We had a wind storm 2 days ago and I saw a large ash come down from far away. I'm not going to do it on turkey day, but we will get it this weekend. Make sure your drops are about 3' each so that when you repair your lines their will be plenty of room to reach your tree. Hope you have a good season!

[DrTimPerkins]

Heavy seed year for many tree species, so we're likely to see more squirrel damage for a while.

[buckeye gold]

This is my first year with tubing. I'm putting up 3/16th in at least half my woods. I have completed 4 runs so far and wouldn't you know the day after I put one long run up a big limb came down on it. It hasn't seen a drop of sap and I already had a break. I was having trouble getting my tension back and slipping it on a coupler. I remembered I had a couple of the pictured fitting and was able to pull it tight and slip it in and it seems to be holding. Does anyone have experience with anything like this? It's a shark bite 5/16th OD
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[ennismaple]

Bruce - we always try to walk the woods before we get snow and ice on the ground. We at least get the damage repaired that has happened since we pulled the taps in April. Having to dig lines out from under branches on the ground slows tapping down to a crawl. I give the guys in our deer hunting gang instructions to pull branches off the lines as they hunt and tell me if there's anything big we need to cut off with the chainsaw. This won't prevent the damage caused by deer and ice storms in the winter but it at least cuts down the work during tapping to a minimum.