Selling Forestry

[PAFaller]

Heres one for you industry vets...How do you handle a client that talks one thing but apparently wants another?? Case in point, I meet with a gentleman in his 70's and his oldest son, guessing mid 40's. We proceed to walk around his 125+ acre woodlot and he is going on and on about wanting better deer and upland bird habitat and how he wants to do what's right for the woods. He also tells me that his sons will be inheriting the property and the camp that goes with it, and how he wants to leave them a healthy forest. This is all fine and I think this guy can really be sold on management. He wanted an area for a food plot, I suggested cutting out what was once an old pasture and is now filled with ugly weevil damaged white pine and tell him that pine is marketable for wood shavings. As we get into a mixed oak forest it becomes apparent it has already been cut pretty hard, and he admits that an area mill did a 14 inch and larger diameter cut 10-11 years ago. His tune then changes and he seems to think that the remaining oak, red maple, and hickory that exceed 14 inches should be cut again. I ask why, and he has the notion of cutting the old ones to let the little ones grow. I then explain the details of how larger doesn't mean older, and how those trees, especially the remaining white and red oaks, should be left if he wants habitat and game on the property. I then suggest a thinning from below and some crop tree release to nurture along whats left, and find a few areas that could be 1/2 acre or so patch cuts to really get the cover coming back. At this point the son is really thinking this is good stuff, but I can tell the dad is not on the same page.
 Our meeting ends well, and he tells me he thinks my ideas are good. He wants to discuss the events with his other 2 boys, and together him and the 3 sons will decide what avenue to take. I gather phone numbers from him and his son, wish them good luck hunting, and await a call back. Two weeks and nothing. I call the gentleman, no answer. Call his son, find out that dad feels much differently, wants to do a diameter cut again, fearing his woods will be ruined and he wont make any money cutting all the 'little' trees. Where did I go wrong, or does this sound like an underlying money issue that was never brought out into the open? Furthermore, do I try to win this client back or let it go and chalk it up as good experience?

[BARPINCHER]

I don't think you did anything wrong.  You just didn't tell him what he already decided he wanted to hear.  This is classic PA stuff.  WHen this happens to me (often) I just make sure they have all my contact info and if they have any ??'s at any time they should not hesitate to call me.  Check back after hunting season.  Often times they just need to corner dad around the supper table one night to bring him around and see he may be misjudging things a bit.  He may never admit it but that's o.k. too!!! Follow up again in 6 mos just so they don't forget you.

[Ron Scott]

There are times when the landowner will not practice good forestry and is just "fishing for information" to support their ideas. As the landowner, they will do what they want to do.

 All you can do is give them the best and scientific forest managment prescription to meet there objectives. Provide it to them in writing so that they have the record of it. If they want to implement it, they will call you, if not, they won't call you. Just go about your business with another client, and don't let them involve or encourage you to practice "bad forestry" if that is what they want to do for immediate financial benefit. If their mind is made up, they don't need a forester.

[Tom]

Looking at it from a Landowner's standpoint, I agree whole heartedly with Ron.  If it were my place, and I asked a Forester for an opinion, I would definitely try to get him to understand why I thought  certain goals were important.  But, you know what, a Forester knows more about Forestry Management than I do and I, within reason, would value his opinion.  If I had the "plan" in writing, so that I could study it at night and not get myself sidetracked, I would tend to want to follow it.

I had a situation where I didn't want to follow a young forester's suggestions and got a second opinion.  The young fellow was "boiler plating" a plan for my small acreage as if it were a 500 acre plantation.  The site prep alone would have killed me.

My second opinion was from an elder Forester who wrote an opinion that I put into my managemenet plan.  He discouraged a harvest and recommended herbaciding, by injection, to kill some of the unwanted hardwoods.  If he hadn't written it down, I wouldn't have remembered 1/3 of what he told me.

I didn't sell any wood, but I ended up with a better woodlot.

Selling (convincing the landowner), is a Forester's second most valuable tool.  Selling himself, being the first.

[chevytaHOE5674]

Some people just have it set in their mind how they want it done and want someone of "knowledge" to back them up. I've walked away from a few jobs where the landowner wanted me to do things that I didn't agree with or didn't feel was best for the land. Don't take it personally.

[Tom]

I don't think we are talking about two different things.  I know there are unreasonable landowners as well as unreasonable Foresters.  But, here, back when Foresters helped small landowners,  one of the first questions he would ask is what would you like to accomplish.  That was more general than specific and meant that the options were money, clearing, development, conservation, wildlife, recreation or taxes.  That's just to name a few of the options.  Usually the landowner doesn't even know he has those options and a good Forester can educate him.  It takes a special kind of apptitude, and a good Forester, to work with small landowners. 

[Ron Wenrich]

The number one method for cutting timber in PA is by diameter limit cutting.  Its done by foresters and loggers, so it has become a preferred method.  The idea behind it is that it is easy to set up (no timber marking), its easy to administer, and its good forestry since the old (big) trees will let the young (small) trees grow.  The last part has been the selling part since old Gifford Pinchot sold the idea of forestry.  Its just been twisted over the years.

An increment borer comes in real handy in these types of discussions.  I once showed a guy where his young 4" white oak was 40 years old.  Then I proceeded to tell him that it wasn't going to be in the next forest, since it won't release as well as any seedlings or stump sprouts.  In 15 years, we'll be back here talking about letting the young 5" white oak grow.  I also tell them that good farmers don't kill their best milkers.

Its hard to sell different forest techniques.  The landowner will stand there and agree.  He may even let you do your job.  But, I will guarantee that after you are done, someone will come in and convince him to do that diameter limit cut.  It happened to me several times.  Its an uphill battle. 

Although you want to do good forestry work, there are 10 guys out there that just don't get it.  They're selling the old style of highgrading techniques that have become an industry mainstay. 

I heard a forester once say that landowners deserve the kind of management that they get.  That's a harsh statement, but in many cases, they really do deserve it.

[Ron Scott]

We have the diameter limit cutting mentality here also. I've had to change a number of landowner's minds, especially when that was the way the stand was previously cut

Tree diameter is only one indicator of whether the tree should ber harvested. Cutting the larger trees removes the healthiest, best growing trees from the stand, leaving behind the weaker, less competitive trees. Health, vigor, age, stand density, and species are among the main factors needed for considertation.

Diameter limit cutting, or simply"cutting the best and leaving the rest" is not sound forestry. Unfortunately, it still is being conducted on some properties yet today.

[Texas Ranger]

There may be a third party buyer that has convinced the landowner, and PAFaller was a back check.  Have been in a few of these, and you can seldom tell if you are there for a real reason, or just there because a son, wife, father, etc, demanded another opinion.

Kind of a brother in law deal.

[Tom]

In my opinion, selling forestry doesn't happen with a one day walk in a 100 year-old woods with an owner who is a mechanic.

The one day trip is to get the job.  Selling forestry should be an ongoing effort by those who know, teaching those who don't and overcoming the resistance to learning. A landowner may not picture himself as a grower of trees until the day that he thinks he can make money by cutting them.  He's not going to go to college to be able to talk to a Forester on the same level, when he doesn't even know what a forester is.  To most, a forester is the guy on the skidder cutting down the trees. The problems communicationg with woodlot owners today is a result of not acknowledging them as woodlot owners 50 or 100 years ago.  Unless they are groomed, the same scenario will exist 100 years from now.

[SwampDonkey]

Diameter limit cutting, or simply"cutting the best and leaving the rest" is not sound forestry. Unfortunately, it still is being conducted on some properties yet today.

9/10 landowners still think this way even when you show them the result of what they did.....well it's too late. Oh well, their bank account just got bigger at least. 

Can't tell you how many woodlots I've prepared plans for where the cutting was already complete. Clearcut or high graded was the site I was presented with. They think silviculture will fix their woodlot because some logger, "my forestry guy", told them so. Yes, sometimes their logger was a forester or a forest technician, most aren't however. Their forestry guy knows more than so and so because he cut wood for 30 years, when most often it should read: "he knows a lot about cutting and selling wood and less in managing it". Managing $$ is somewhat different than managing timber, but surprisingly (or not) a very similar game.

[Ron Wenrich]

Okay Tom, you think that its all on the forester to educate the landowner.  I'm here to tell you that the majority of landowners don't give a squat about forest management until its time to cut timber.  It may be different down in your area, but up here, that's not the case.

In the past, I was involved in the education of landowners.  I helped several landowner organizations start up.  All failed due to lack of interest.  I donated my expertise to the local community college when they were offering informal courses on a variety of topics to the local population.  "Forest management for landowners" needed to have 8 people interested to have the course.  It never happened.  Population in the area at that time was well over 250,000 and I couldn't attract .003%.  The Pennsylvania Forestry Assn. has all but disappeared when they stopped having an insurance program for loggers.  I haven't heard from them in decades, and I was on the Board of Directors for a time.

The only way I've ever had the opportunity to discuss forest management with a landowner is by invitation, usually theirs.  I do get to hear a lot of war stories about how they got hosed after the fact.  But, most landowners think they got the best deal going.  You look at their woodlots and you know that they've been highgraded.  But, talk to them and they'll beam with pride about how good of job they got.  I never argue after the fact.

So, as a landowner, maybe you can give us pointers on how you think we should be going about educating the public.  The Internet has been one of the biggest helps, but there's still a lot of misinformation out there.  Look up forest management in a search engine and it quickly goes to sustainable forest management.  A good highgrade job can be sold as sustainable. 

[SwampDonkey]

At many of the courses we put on at the marketing board I would look around the room and see who was there. I knew most of them, but I was seeing who was sitting around the tables for one reason mostly. I was looking to see if there were people who were out there making a living at it and cutting a significant volume of wood to make it a business. What I was seeing were folks that barely cut enough wood to heat the house and some would never cut any amount to add up to beans. I never once saw a logging contractor or any of his men sitting on any course we offered. Fact was, the real loggers got their education out on the job and they weren't about to cut wood all day and sit all evening on a course wishing they were home in bed. The courses were free, but the lost wages of losing a good day in the woods under sunshine weren't reimbursed.

[pappy19]

When I had a landowner with the mindset of a diameter limit cut, always cutting the "larger" trees and allowing the runts to grow, I explained it to him in a genetics mentality. If he, the landowner, say had 100 cows that all had calves and at the end of the year he sold all of his best cows and best calves, what would he be left with? And further down the road if he continued to sell the best and feed more to the runts, what would be the result in say 50 years? They generally get the picture. It's the same way with our forests. If we continually harvest the best and most dominant trees thinking that the co-dom's and lesser trees will release, which they will to a degree, but over the years we will down grade the genetics of the stand. I always liked to take just enough dominants to make it worthwhile for the logger, but then take as many merch trees that were co-doms and below, always trying to upgrade the stand as much as possible. That being said, some landowners are just looking at a pay check and don't really care about stand genetics. When I got those landowner types, I would cut just like they wanted, but I documented our conversation or mentioned it in the contract that the cutting practice was what the landowner wanted. That's all you can do.

[Tom]

The flip side of the coin to educating landowners is to not have foresters who service that segment of the population.  I'm sure that there are enough big mills, with land holdings large enough to keep a few foresters aboard.  Their procurement foresters wouldn't even have to be Foresters, just someone to offer a price good enough to get onto the land.  Government Foresters have no reason whatsoever to delve into private lands of any size.  Even wildfire could be turned over to the local fire departments.  We wouldn't be happy with that, but it could be done.

The education of landowners has to happen on a personal level.  No, you're not going to reach everyone, and you're definitely not going to satisfy everyone.  But, until a citizen realizes that there is such a thing as a Forester and gets some semblance in mind about what a Forester does,  all the forestry in the world isn't going to change the mind of someone who is after just money.

I have awakened "Master Gardeners" who didn't know what a Forester was.   I had one, when I was getting ready to thin my pines, tell me that I should get an Arborist.  She was so far out of touch with Forestry that I don't think she recognized the difference, nor that a logger needed to be involved.

I'm not a Forester.  I have to get opinions and instructions from one, the same as most of the rest of the population.  But, I do see the need to promote Foresters.  Now, I'm not saying that, meaning that I tell people what trees to plant or how to dig up a road.  I honestly mean that I promote Foresters.  I've been doing it since I was awakened to the differences in Foresters, about 25 years ago.  My concern over my trees started with money, but I was lucky to have met two Foresters who were interested in telling me about the industry I had joined.  One is dead now, and the other probably retired.  I lost touch with him.  One took me by the hand after I was directed to The Division of Forestry and hand fed me.  He made owning the land fun and challenging.  He made me want to know more.  He visited my property and identified plants and told me why one tree grew while the one next to it didn't.  He made me aware of markets, loggers, felling, BMP's and presented me the names of organizations whose interest was the landowner.  He was a State Forester and never made a cent off of me, though I would have turned my plantation management over to him in a hear-beat.

The other was an old codger who used to be a State Forester.  He had one foot in the grave when I met him, but he was feared by Government officials because he stood up for the landowners in the county and would show up at city council meetings, Zoning board meetings or anywhere else where he heard that Farmers (especially tree farmers) were to be the subject.  

He began showing up on my road unannounced and shaking hands with people he had met at the meetings.  He got to where he would regularly show up at my place and I would get on the phone and call neighbors that he was here.  We drank coffee, talked trees, politics, markets, cattle, chickens and pretty women. He was always anxious to get to the woods. So, we would go to the woods of a neighbor, usually mine since it was out the back door, and he would ID under-story, trees, indicate good and bad growth, diseases, what trees were good for which markets, identifying ancient logging roads and telling us the story of them. He would research one and come back with the tales the next trip.  We followed him around like puppy's.  We didn't know, until after he died, that  he just liked trees and that he was a Consulting Forester who saw us as future customers.

He was grooming landowners, whom he might never service, the same as we were growing trees we may never saw and sell.  He took his job seriously, doing it personally and drawing as many into the fold as he could touch.  He did it here, at the Extension Office, shaking hands with people he didn't know, at church, at fairs, most anywhere.  He was a walking encyclopedia who had a truck full of instruments we'd never seen before.  Books, samples of limbs and leaves littered his entire cab.

He never made a dime on any of us either.  He didn't work 8 to 5, nor sun-up to dark.  He was working all of the time.

People talk about folks like Pinchot and how he was the Father of Forestry.  But there are Pinchots out there even today.  They might not get much credit, but they deserve all of the recognition that they can be awarded.  

Like I said, I'm no Forester. I do offer my time to promote the profession of Forester every chance I get. It's only right.

I may see the world differently than most.  I don't see my day as having a dollar bill at the end of it.  When I was sawing on the road, I spent spare time promoting sawing. It didn't have to be me they used.  Somebody had to wake up the public that the trees in their yard made lumber that was as good as the lumber in the store.  I didn't see a tree, knock on the door and tell the occupant that I could make 2x4's out of that tree in their front yard and then disappear.  That would have made me more obnoxious than I turned out.  I did take the time to interrupt a sawing job to talk about wood and sawing.  I did go back to a job, when I was in the neighborhood to brag on their lumber, straighten stacks, look at their projects, walk their woods, admire their cattle, ooh and ahh over their new tractor and tried not to miss an opportunity to teach them how to figure board footage, indicate what I knew of grading rules, pass on titles of books, identify trees and spend time with them even if it was getting into my personal time.  I took pictures of the operation, of their families and kept records of their names and their children's names so that I could shake the hand of a 10 year old and try to interest him in  the boards his daddy had sawed.

I don't know about landowners organizations. I don't have the backing of groups that might give meeting rooms.  I don't even have the knowledge that would make others gather around me to search for answers.  But, if I did, I wouldn't run it like a university classroom where you would study one thing and be done.  The education of the Public has to be an on-going process.  People come and people go, you have to take the opportunity provided to enlighten them with as much as you can, even if you never see them again.  The best scenario would be that they wanted to see you again.  You don't do like many college professors will do and say, "I told you that last week."  What you do is tell them again......  and again.... and again.

States and Universities will offer workshops and seminars to the public.  They aren't always the most convenient to attend.  They are usually provided with the auspices of having Mohammad there to teach the multitudes for the day.  Only a few people have the aptitude to 'got to school for the sake of going to school'.  When the seminar is over, you've reached as many people as you could convince to attend and hoped that you taught them something that they could use.  Then it is over. That works for people, like college students, who are going to a school to learn a profession, but it doesn't work as good for landowners who don't know they are tree farmers.

I don't have the answer.  I do know that if the public is to be educated in Forestry, it's going to have to be a Forester that does it.  If there is one thing I can do to help, it's to promote Foresters and make the world know that it is a profession.

We tell people that we have to think in generations of trees, not generations of people when managing a forest.  I think we should all look at our professions with much the same critique.

[Ron Wenrich]

I think the contact you had with those foresters are probably pretty typical of any good forester that's in it for the love of the profession.  And I would also add that your reaction isn't typical, at least from my experience.

I looked at the Sustainable Forest Initiative website for our state.  They offer the bells and whistles that are supposed to turn loggers into master loggers.  Forest management isn't the thing that stands out.  They offer a couple of courses in it, but they are heavy into the other aspects.  They do offer a course on cruising timber and how to buy standing timber.  I wonder which courses get the best attendance. 

State foresters have pretty well been kicked out of the landowner picture.  I was doing more active landowner work when that came about.  I think it was short sighted on the part of the consulting industry to get the government out of the picture.  They were our best window to the landowner, and they closed it.  Now they offer little in the way of advice, and the default is generally to go to the closest mill.

Good forest management is more about what you leave instead of what you harvest.  Too bad others don't see it that way.

[Phorester]

PAFALLER, one thing that might help is to put such advice in writing.  As others stated, a landowner rarely makes a decision in the woods on the spot.  Managing his woodland (actually most likely wanting to make money by selling some trees) might be the hot item on his agenda the day he meets with you, but it's probably #723 on his list of things to actually get done. Remember that you covered numerous topics with him, and....., most important....., introduced him to a way of thinking about his woods that he never knew before.  It's all foreign to him at this point.  He thinks about it, and in a few days, few weeks, a few months, he's forgotten most of what you told him.  Also, his son will have the backup of your written advice to refer back to when he talks with his Dad.  Written advice is the only way to go.  But your experience mirrors mine when working with private woodland owners.  A low rate of follow through with my advice & management plans.

Can't add much to what others have already said about promoting forestry and landowner opinions on forestry, except to say "YEP!"   Been talking that walk and walking that talk all my career.

All I can say is that preachers have been preaching for 1000's of years, they reach a lot more people than foresters do, and they haven't eliminated sin yet.  But they keep trying.  That's what us foresters have to do too.

[WDH]

All I can say is that preachers have been preaching for 1000's of years, they reach a lot more people than foresters do, and they haven't eliminated sin yet.  But they keep trying.  That's what us foresters have to do too.

Now that puts it into perspective.  Humans can be a difficult species to manage!

[PAFaller]

Well heres a second question, and I would like Rons opinion on this as he is from PA and knows the dynamics here. Do you think that  a guy can actually be a forester and a harvesting contractor, or can the two never mesh? In NH and Maine, if you have a foresters license you can be writing management plans one day and cutting timber the next. You are accountable for your actions, and your license can be revoked, but many of the guys who straddle the consultant-timber cutter line do real nice work and have never had problems. Here in PA the consulting field has made numerous stabs at loggers and sawmills, saying they are crooked and hose the landowner so forth and so on. Yet many of these same guys work on a commission, and are merely timber brokers, selling the gravy and taking a commission off the top. There are many that wont even mark pulpwood in a saw timber sale, because the mills will pay less if their loggers have to cut junk that doesnt make sawlogs. Now tell me how this is forestry!! I have also been told flat out that I cannot be a forester and a logger, so how do I sell myself? My background includes the same education, and 8 years of learning by doing with a chainsaw in hand. Most of what I have been cutting is pulpwood and salvage, either gypsy moth or hemlock whoolly adelgid, because it needs to be done but most 'foresters' dont get involved in marking low quality timber.
 My fear is that a landowner, if they have done any research, comes into any meeting with a pre-conceived notion of what they are going to get. When a guy shows up in a Toyota pickup loaded with saws and a diesel tank its pretty obvious that I dont just paint trees, so should I just sell myself as a logger, let them believe what they will and hope for the best, or is the goal to get them to come around in their way of thinking? I'm just as happy cutting black birch and beech pulpwood as I am sawlogs, but the pricing obviously has to reflect the product. My fear is that attempting to be both a consultant and the guy doing the work is too much of an uphill battle in a state where every player in the industry seems to prefer talking bad about someone else rather than working at selling themselves.

[hokie97]

Pafeller,
I think you have an advantage over the other guys!  I think as a cutter with the knowledge of a consultant you would be MORE in demand.  I know I would prefer to have someone with both on my property especially if you understood what the long range goals are.  Last I heard there was only one guy in our area with GOOD knowledge of trees cutting and consulting.  As an added bonous if the landowner is upset with anything on the job they can only blame you right?  If people are looking to you for advice can you not give them option one and option two to manage a woodlot?  I know when I seek out a professional I take the opportunity for a learning expierence of someone who has been there, but also educate myselfe before making a decision that will have ramifications long in the future.