MAINE - Life in the Slow Lane
Bill
Some years back I hunted out of a place in New Brunswick called the Eagle's Nest for bear in the Spring, and then a fall hunt for deer. The deer hunting was mind boggling. Your bucks up that way rub on trees 8 inches in diameter! HUGE bucks!!!
One thing I found really over the top was the clear cutting that went on. For some reason it must be sacrilege to put a chainsaw to an apple tree because they never touched one. Well when the cuts started growing back in and the whip sticks were so thick you had to move sideways to get through them the apple trees were buried right in the middle of the maze.
I followed a heavy deer trail into one of those whip stick mazes and when I got to the old apple orchard there was flags going everywhere. A rifle was a waste in that tangle, a shotgun with buckshot maybe, but even then it would have been tough.
Here in NH we've evolved in our timber cutting. These days they'll lay in a road with a skidder and when they have a barrier left so the public eye can't see what they're doing they'll rape everything standing. Oddly, they aren't big on cutting for lumber or fire wood. They chip everything and sell it to power plants. I don't get it as the chips are "green" and won't throw off much energy ???
Here abouts a grapple of hardwood logs runs around $900 IF you can find someone who'll even do it.
Chainsaw sales around here are just about dead. Most of the cutting is done with mechanized harvesters.
I'm with you, there needs to be some regulations put in place. I've seen whole slopes washed away which could have been prevented if some common sense had been in place and left a few barriers to prevent it.
Yes it is sad to see a nice stretch of old growth forest one year and it's flattened the next year. In NB most of the wood is cut off of crown land and there's very little left, now they are pushing government to let them go into the riparian zones along rivers and cut. The forest industry has literally cut it'self out of house and home. It'll have to go the way of the Cod, I'd like to see concrete numbers as to how many jobs that the forrest industry is sustaining. So now most of the best wood left is on privately owned wood lots but big industry doesn't want to pay the price that private wood lot owners want. I've had three different people contact me about stumpaging/buying my little old 50 acre wood lot. Turned them all down, those trees on my property are growing every year and it's just like interest on a bank account. I prefer to cut on my lot myself and just do small cuttings and select the trees one by one for harvest leaving the youngers ones to grow. Last time a tree was cut on my lot was 2004. We hauled 16 cords of hardwood out in four foot sections with my four wheeler. Actually what I'd like to try is logging with a horse, that would be an experience.
Bill Gass