Have prism, will travel (not an add)

[wmrussel]

Hey, any other contract timber cruisers on here?  I've been contracting for over 6 years now.  Good money, but living on the road gets old.  I contract with several companies in the southeastern US and travel from Texas to VA all the way down to FL.  I also carry two dogs with me everywhere. 

[leweee]

Welcome to the forum wmrussel ;D
Contract timber cruisen,sounds like a great job...tell us a bit about it & those 2 dogs. 8)

[DoubleD]

Welcome to the Forestry Forum this is the best place that you could find on the net
I don't know if there are contract timber cruisers but stay here and probably you will find someone

[DanG]

Welcome in, WMR!  Get in touch if you're gonna be down this way.  Might be an interesting visit watchin' how your two dogs and the eight four-legged ruffians around here get along. ;D :D :D :D

[wmrussel]

I appreciate the response from ya'll.  Makes me feel welcome

Contract cruising is great sometimes and horrible others.  Mostly it's good, I have to admit.  I say that since it's early spring and this is the best time to be a contract cruiser.  The weather is nice and you have the woods to yourself.  Hunting season is a bit nerve wracking, as you are sharing the woods with armed strangers.  99.9% of the time hunters are nice and helpfull.  I've even been fed and beered and tobaccoed by some hunters. 

The dogs go everywhere with me and it's always and adventure sneaking two 65 pound dogs into hotels.   I couldn't make it on the road without Charile & Skillet. 

I also dabble in GPS and GIS, though I've not had a lot of work in those areas.  I started making too much money cruising timber and let the original purpose of my business fall to the wayside.

If I'm down in Florida, I'll let ya know.  Did a lot of work near Panama City last March.  Looking to be in Georgia most of this March, though. 

[sprucebunny]

Welcome to the Forum, wmrussel .

That sounds like a great job except maybe in snake season .

What kind of dogs are they ???

What's the wildest or craziest thing you've seen out in the woods ? ;D

[isassi]

Welcome, WMR

[J.Hercules]

Welcome WMR were are you going to be in Georgia?

[dail_h]

   Ifyou're gonna be eastern in N. C. ,let me know .oh and welcome ,the dogs too

[SwampDonkey]

Welcome aboard the forum wmrussel. Are you cruising for a sawmill company, logger or is it for woodland owners themselves?

IS Osmose still contracting cruising? I think they are involved in other things to. But, I see they place adds for Canadian residents to come down and work for them. Everytime I enquire about those kinds of jobs I never get a response.  :  :D I do some cruising myself, but I don't contract out. The owner or logging company asks for a cruise and appraissal of land for stumpage. I work one on one. I also do some management plans that require cruises, but that has come pretty much to a halt because we found the plans were used as cheep cruises to liquidate woodlots, since they were traditionally subsidized by marketing boards and government. We decided we'de make the owner pay up front now if he is serious about a plan, then have him follow through with the recommendations to get any subsidies. Then there are the plans that just get shelfed with no intensions of implemeting anything.  :

Currently, I'm meeting with landowners to find land to thin for them (PCT) with a spacing saw. I need about 150 ha (360 acres) to keep a 5 man crew working for 6 months. I've found a fair amount of hardwood, but we like to have it taller than the minimum hieght set by government, so alot of my hardwood sites have to be put on hold for 3 or 4 years. We have too much poplar in my area taking over hardwood ground and we don't thin poplar. The poplar can thin itself and end up in better shape than a spacing saw can do. There is alot or poplar mortality in the early years. Poplar up here means aspen.


Ok, enough rambling. :D :D :D :D

[wmrussel]

Lot's of questions to answer, so I'll just do it order.

Snake season's not so bad.  I just don't step on 'em.  It's worked for 35 years and only Skillet's been bitten.  She came through fine, but I my wallet lost about $600.  Well worth it!

The dogs are a black lab (Skillethead) and a mutt/pitt (Charlie). 

Unfortunately I don't have many good stories from the woods, but had an unnerving experience in east Texas, when I was working out of the Days Inn in Cleveland.  I was returning for a second day to a tract of land owned by Lousiana Pacific.  The main entrance was locked and I couldn't quite cut the lock, so I'd found a way in through a local's yard the day before (there was a 'sorta' road there). 

As I'm driving into the yard, I see an old man (70 +/-) carrying what looks like a stick.  As he gets closer, I notice he has no nose.  As in, it looks like someone had cut it off last week and he didn't bother to use any ointment to help along the process.  Also, the 'stick' turned out to  be a shotgun. 

Normally I can talk my way into or out of just about anything, but it being early and the fellow looking like he stepped out of a B rate horror flick sorta threw me for loop.

I roll down my window and say, "I'm just cruising this LP tract behind your property".

Creepshow says, "Hell ya are!!".

I put the truck in reverse and leave.  I did manage to pound the lock on the main entrance until it gave way.  By the way, master locks are the equivalent of a "Please enter here" sign. 

I'll be in Waycross, GA the 13-17 and Savanah the 17-19.  Savanah will be for rugby, not forestry. 

If I get up NC way, I'll let ya know!  I try to avoid the Green Swamp, as I'm sure you understand!

Cheers to all & thanks for the interest!

Pete

[SwampDonkey]

Just be lucky you don't work on Fraser's limits. I was helping to do some thinning assessments one fall and I was blocked in by boulders on one road, good thing I had chains to toe the rocks. Another site I was locked out after travelling 50 miles to the turnoff.  : I asked them once why they can't tell a guy if the road is passable or if some road crew was going to block it off. The response was that they had so much land they couldn't assure me anything was accessible. That was the phrase that told me this outfit isn't anything I want to do with. If they are too lame they don't know their roads, I'm not going to find out for them at my cost. I was paid based on production and couldn't be bothered to content with their foolishness. The next year they laid off all their thinning crew and weren't going to be thinning anyway. It's not a wonder that place is loosing money. Too many people sitting with their sneakers up on the dash board, asleep under the newspaper.  :

[Woodwalker]

I don't live to far from Cleveland and you were probably in more peril at that Days Inn than you were from that old man with the gun!  Welcome.

[jrdwyer]

6 years on the road, thats pretty intense timber cruising. I bet you schedule some stretches off to recover.

I had just one year of full time cruising out west for a large timber company. It sure gets you in awesome shape and you see lots of territory. We were covering a line per forester per day. The sections of land flew by fast.

As a consultant, I now do a mix of cruises and 100% mark and measure timber sales. I just finished a big cruise where I wore my hip waders in the bottoms.  You must encounter that a lot in the south.

With all the forestland trading hands lately, there is a lot of timber cruising going on.

[SwampDonkey]

Big forest companies don't cruise their limits here until they want to do some harvesting on a new block. It's not cruised for sales, if anything they use timber typing from aerial photos. I think back in the 60's they cruised crown and some freehold land, but those days are gone now. What they do is a sample of the timber typing for forest development surveys, just a drop in the bucket (acreage-wise). They also monitor thinnings and plantings every 5- 10 years.  Alot of the timber typing has marginally productive forest land and it's starting to come to light. They're starting to chase smaller wood and as you know it's not very economical in the current market climate. Those big 250,000 bf per shift sawmills can't keep fed, they're importing 3 or 400,000 m^3 per year to make up the shortfall at each mill. Alot of our softwood ground in some regions are converting to aspen, those sawmills want softwood.  ;) One sawmill, also running an I-joist plant, has to import all it's black spruce from Quebec to make it.