Len McDougall - Modern Lumberjacking: Felling Trees, Using the Right Tools, and Observing Vital Safety Techniques

Copyright 2016 by Len McDougall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo: iStockphoto

Print ISBN: 978-1-51070-269-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-51070-270-7

Printed in China

There are so very many people to thank for helping me to make this book into the life-saving instructional guide that I hope it will prove to be.

First, of course, are the victims of lumberjacking, whose lives were not lost in vain.

I must also thank Pete, from PM Small Engines, in Newberry, Michigan, for his expert assistance and advice.

Finally, let me render a most heartfelt and long-deserved thank you to the members of my publishing team at Skyhorse Publishing. Thank you, Tony, Jay, and Jason. Never have I felt that I belonged more, was more part of a family, than I have with Skyhorse. You guys are more than great.

Len McDougall

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

About a month ago, my brother-in-law caused his own death.

It was early in the morning and he was probably as happy as hed ever been. He and his wife had just moved to a new house in the country, and he was having the time of his life doing a pretty fair imitation of Farmer John. This lifestyle was a longtime fantasy of his, and he was living it to the utmost, even sometimes rising to start a new day at what farmers would call the middle of the night. He had a new tractor, riding mower, and power tools galore with which to exercise his most rural desires.

Among his gasoline-operated paraphernalia was a spanking-new chainsaw that he used to cut down any tree that he could figure out a reason to fell. He, in fact, knew very little about lumberjacking, and had even less experience. But like so many men, he suffered from a gender-based deficit that made him refuse to ask for, or even accept, advice from anyoneafter all, to request information would be to admit that he lacked knowledge in the first place.

It was probably not to his benefit in the long run that hed gotten away with making a truckload of mistakes with the first several trees he felled. He hung a couple of half-fallen trees in the branches of adjacent treesa classic example of what lumberjacks have always known as a widow-makerand succeeded in bringing them to Earth by simply tying a rope around their trunks and pulling them off their stumps with his tractor.

Those first successes maybe have caused him to believe that all those stories of danger were just invented by tree-cutters who were trying to make themselves look courageous and dashing. This lumberjacking stuff didnt appear to be as hard as it was made out to be! But, sooner or later, the mistakes he made were bound to catch up with him. The one that finally got him manifested itself in the form of a large live oak, about 50 feet tall and weighing as much as three cars, that bordered his driveway.

The sun hadnt fully risen over the hills of his Tennessee home when he fired up his chainsaw and did his best to notch his target tree for that day to fall in the direction hed desired. Aside from doing a novice-level job on the notch and failing to rope off the tree, his most serious mistake at that point was to regard the job as one that could be started and completed at his leisure. He failed to recognize, or to respect, the powers that he was unleashing in his toolsand in the tree itself.

He proved his lack of understanding by notching the tree early in the morning, then leaving it to sit on its stump while he went into his house for coffee. He came out with his wife an hour later and watched unperturbed as she drove under where the precariously balanced tree was notched to fall. When she returned, an hour later, the tree was down, and her husband was dead beneath it. A neighbor had come across the field that adjoined their houses for a casual visit and found him crushed to the ground with a multi-ton tree across one shoulder.

Forensic authorities figured that the tree had only partially fallen, when its branches caught in the branches of another tree, causing it to hang suspended over the driveway. There is no more classic example of a widowmaker than that. But my brother-in-law clearly didnt know that, or else he would have never considered walking under that giant wooden sword of Damocles to fetch his tractor.

No one knows why he didnt hear the tree suddenly let loose in a gust of wind. Or why, if he did, that he didnt get cleartrees do not fall silently, or with the velocity of a dodge ball. Maybe he didnt recognize the swooshing sound as leaves and branches brushed past one another. Maybe it was a deer-in-the-headlights moment of paralysis.

Whatever the reason, what caused him to remain immobile in the path of a falling tree is inconsequential. The arboreal hammer hit him in the back and bore him inexorably to the ground with the comparative force of a man stepping on a bug, breaking every bone and bursting every organ that was under it. The coroner said that he never knew what hit him. But that clich was for the familys sake; death wasnt instantaneous, and he had time to know precisely what had hit him. But when he did, there wasnt a power in heaven or on Earth that could have prevented the outcome.

Its human nature to regard deceased loved ones lives through rose-colored glasses and to overlook their shortcomings. But when this mans wife told me that what happened was an act of God, and that he knew what he was doing, I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood.

Without a single exception, every logger Ive related this story to has shared my supposition that not only did the deceased not know what he was doing, but his intelligence is suspect, as he couldnt acknowledge that fact. My brother-in-laws death wasnt an Act of God. It wasnt even an accidentnot in the sense that it was an unavoidable tragedy that no one could have anticipated beforehand. He died from a terminal case of ignorance and a fatal dose of pride.

Which brings us to the purpose of this book. In my own half-century of living in timber country and cutting wood for just about every reason there is to cut wood, Ive seen an awful lot of people get hurt awful quickly in an awful lot of different ways from lumberjacking. And, truth be told, Ive been one of them a couple of times myself. But the worst injuries didnt happen to me, and I was lucky enough to learn the most important lessons vicariously. It is the focus of this book to take those lessons from my life, from my own experiences and observations, as well as from the experiences and observations of people who are more expert in areas of the timber business than I am, and present them to you in a concise format that will be of real, usable value.