NYS maple tour

[Fred Henderson]

I attended this function at Lake Placid this year and learned something new but also came away somewhat confused. We went on a tour of Henry Uihlein's old sugarbush to see a recent logging operation going on. We were told that the selection of the logger was done with great care. The person in charge of getting a logger wanted the best man for the job. As we walked into the forest we could hear a chainsaw running and soon came upon the logger. To my surprise there sat a very large 4X4 tractor with tire chains on all 4 tires. Because tires impact the root system so greatly I would have thought that a Forwarder with tracks would have been a better choice.

[Randy Brutkoski]

Your right, in a couple of towns over from where i am there is a 150 acre piece of woods that is being thinned out to be a sugarbush, and what ever isnt a maple it is hitting the ground. And there is alot of heavy machinery in there. He will be doing more cutting in another year or 2 from dead standing maples.

[3rdgen.maple]

When my dad had his 100 acres logged of 15 years ago he demanded the logger to take the chains of the skidders or he was not gonna log his land. He took hem off and did a pretty good job, he was very careful not to damage any standing trees with the skidder, cable or logs. I have 2 neighbors who recently had there land logged. What a mess they made. One Landowner's agreement was nothing over 3 inches was to be left laying on the ground. Well they are just fishing camps and 2 years later I am still cutting dead trees and tops. Alot of trees root systems were damaged and killed some good maples, ash and oak trees. I found some big oak that they dropped and never even skidded out. Landowner is very pleased that I was willing to clean the mess up and I was pleased to get the wood.
Fred I agree it does seem very odd and if that was the best guy he could find seems like he would of logged it off when the ground was frozen and some snow pack on the ground to protect them maples roots. But then again what the heck do I know.

[Fred Henderson]

When my dad had his 100 acres logged of 15 years ago he demanded the logger to take the chains of the skidders or he was not gonna log his land. He took hem off and did a pretty good job, he was very careful not to damage any standing trees with the skidder, cable or logs. I have 2 neighbors who recently had there land logged. What a mess they made. One Landowner's agreement was nothing over 3 inches was to be left laying on the ground. Well they are just fishing camps and 2 years later I am still cutting dead trees and tops. Alot of trees root systems were damaged and killed some good maples, ash and oak trees. I found some big oak that they dropped and never even skidded out. Landowner is very pleased that I was willing to clean the mess up and I was pleased to get the wood.
Fred I agree it does seem very odd and if that was the best guy he could find seems like he would of logged it off when the ground was frozen and some snow pack on the ground to protect them maples roots. But then again what the heck do I know.

We don't have to have college degrees to know what we want the land to look like when its all done. My neighbor leases his 1800 tap bush out but before he did he had some logging done. He did not want a skidder in there he told me. He kept looking around until he found a guy that had a Forwarded, big floation tires and tracks when things got really bad. One of the reasons that I put the tracks on my RTV was because of the tractor tire impact it was making on my tap lease land.