The Death of a Southern Yellow Pine

[WDH]

Jeff,

I thought about your larch salvage when I came up on these trees.  You certainly had a lot more loss than I did.  It is the way of the forest, and has been for millenia, but it is still hard to accept. 

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

I know how you feel Danny I just hate seeing good timber go to waste and I dare say there will be alot left standing dead and left to go back to the earth where they came from   :( I take it no big companies have plans of going in and pulling out the drought affected trees ? I watched dad and my uncles for years do pine removals in state parks and the water commission where they had planted pine it was just an ongoing thinning operation the lill timberjack was good at that dad would just work his way through the block dropping and limbing the ones that were gone or on heir way out and one bloke mainly the truck driver did alill skidding and loaded his own logs and they got good production as they where working on the Big stuff mainly 2'+ dbh 2 to 6 good size trees here and there it dont take long to get 2 or 3 semi loads together a day and they where doing 13 to 15000 a day sawn and two blokes working like that could keep ahead off the mill  ;)

Texas whats the game plan over your way for for both the fire damaged and drought affected timber in the south east Mate  ??

Regards Chris

[DouginUtah]

...left to go back to the earth where they came from. 

If a tree weighs 6000 pounds where did that weight come from?  ;D  :D 

[Gary_C]

From the drought in the south, the disease's and bugs in the west, and the storms in the north, those softwoods are taking a beating. Here is a couple of pictures of my next job.



 



 

I've got about 2250 cords of mostly red pine to clean up on this job. Going to be moving into the job this coming week.

[woodtroll]

It stinks to let the trees rot. But for our situation you just can not utilize all the wood. The time spent getting 3-4 good logs is needed to treat more trees. With the drought stressed trees and the bugs hitting them can you get in front of the bugs and kill (reduce) them. Instead of salvaging the trees they helped kill?

[WDH]

These were natural pine growing in a hardwood stand.  There was a cluster of them of maybe 12 trees.  No way to effectively predict which trees will get attacked, if any.  Black turpentine beetles are pretty random, unlike the Southern Pine Beetles which kill in an advancing front.

[Meadows Miller]

Gday

Gary thats going to be an interesting block to work I have only done one blow down block and its a pita doing it motor manual up n down and crawling through rubbish to get to where you needed to cut but the fella in the next block was doing pretty well with a harvester he said just start at the top n keep pulling it out  ;)

Regards Chris

[WDH]

Gary,

That is an awesome mess.  Fooling with that would tear up everything that I have, including me, but at least you have the equipment to do the job.

[Magicman]

Beetle and stress related killed SYP contributes greatly to the success of my sawing business.  Farmers and landowners are trying to salvage some of the value of the trees.  Many times they have no idea what the lumber will be use for.  They just hate to see the trees go to waste.

This week I was given 3 trees which bucked into 10 logs.  I never refuse free trees and they will not go to waste.

[Gary_C]

Yes, it's relatively easy with a harvester when you can work from behind the direction of the wind. But it takes a lot of sharp chains every day. Plus it's good sized diameters so it adds up fast.

According to the estimates, it's 1/3 tipped, 1/3 bent, and 1/3 snapped. The snapped trees are difficult as the part still on the stump will not make a 100 inch stick.

Plus I get to work around that state forest road, a parking lot for the boat ramp on the lake, and numerous snowmobile and 4 wheel trails. There' going to be some conflicts for sure. Plus part of the sale is across a county blacktop that I am not supposed to forward across.

It's going to be fun.  :

[SwampDonkey]

Around here on crown lands and freehold lands the trucks and equipment have right of way. If you play by that rule you'll continue to stay alive. ;D I can tell ya for certain, that if a truck is coming down the forest road, he ain't stopping. So best be off to the side or someplace else.

[caveman]

Beetles of the SYP.  I saw a very large loblolly pine (about 36" dbh) that had about two dozen black turpentine pitch tubes on the lower 4' of the trunk.  I was walking along the trail with a forester and several students.  I assumed that would be a lethal infestation but the forester told me that if the number of pitch tubes is less than the diameter of the tree, then the tree would likely survive.  I will not see the tree again until July, but it will be intersting to see if it is still alive.
With Ips and SPB's I have not noticed individual trees surviving attacks.
Caveman

[pineywoods]

Beetle and stress related killed SYP contributes greatly to the success of my sawing business.  Farmers and landowners are trying to salvage some of the value of the trees.  Many times they have no idea what the lumber will be use for.  They just hate to see the trees go to waste.

This week I was given 3 trees which bucked into 10 logs.  I never refuse free trees and they will not go to waste.

Always good for "grumpy old men" projects eh Lynn...

[WDH]

The Southern Pine Beetle is the most deadly one, for sure. 

[OneWithWood]

Perhaps soon to be eclipsed by the Enerald Ash Beetle  :'(

[Woodwalker]

It don't matter too much around here which one, Southern Pine Beetle, Enerald Ash Beetle, IPS Beetle, Black turpentine beetles, drought,  the result is the same; A lot of  dead timber.

[WDH]

I guess that the title of this thread really applies to East Texas.

[Sixacresand]

I just cut three dead pines, which died, I'm  guessing, in 2011.  It still had brown pine needles on it, however some bark had dried and fell off.  It basically took a whole day to drag the logs out to a clearing and load onto a trailer.  Got some real nice boards out of it, so it was well worth the time and effort.

[WDH]

I cut these two beams for benches from two of these trees.  They are 4" thick, 19" wide, and 10' long.



 

[SwampDonkey]

Those will make sturdy benches alright.    Nice looking planks. What about pitch near the bark. Hate to gum up them Carharts. ;)

Now that I mention the Carharts. I had a good laugh when a fellow bush whacker bought a new pair of Carhart jeans for working in the bush with his brush saw. He was showing his new duds off one morning. He had them ripped out on the cuffs by the end of the day. :D ;) Me, I just wear a $24 dollar pair of Dickies and they last 3 years. Usually, the raspberry bushes wear the knees out. That's like walking in living sand paper.

[Cutting Edge]

I know its not SYP related, but saw others expressing concerns for their regions. 

Here, we are losing our Elm and Locust - Black is all but gone, honey locust is right on its heels.  You can spot a locust a mile away....only "brown" top in all the green.  Starting to see some issues in the oaks too.  Seemingly random deaths in what appears a quite healthy tree.  The wild vines are getting out of control to the point of killing the host tree.  Its quite depressing.   :'(

But as said before, been going on for many moons.

[WDH]

SD,

So what is a little pitch on the carharts?  Makes you look like that you have been working  ;D.

rwthom,

There are many enemies of trees, both bacteria, fungal, invasive insects, etc.  There is a war always going on.  Humans are probably the worst  .

[WDH]

Well, these five trees sawed out to 2500 BF., mostly 4/4 at 1 1/16" thick.  Maybe someone needs a fence or some horse stalls  .  Some of it will be used to finish the columns on the front porch of my nephew's new house.



  

[Meadows Miller]

Looking great there Danny  ;)  ;D ;D ;D ;D 8) 8)

[SwampDonkey]

Nice!! The sticker stacker did a mighty fine job of it to.