Sheesh, there is so much waste in modern logging. It drives me nuts to see how much! Well, it seems like waste, anyway. The dollar rules, and if there was a market for all wood, they would take it and I wish they could. But, scrounging is a possibility. Other than that, at least it fertilizes the forest floor a bit. I recently toured the edge of a large tract that was clear cut of everything. They got a LOT of loads of pine but also quite a bit of hardwoods. When they take a hardwood with a bushy top, like a white oak, all they take is the butt log, maybe 8ft to 12ft long. The top is left to rot. There is a lot of firewood there! I also saw several stacks of hardwood logs on this tract that were left, and they've been there for about eight months now. I doubt they will be coming back. Most of that is sweetgum and black gum, which is not good firewood, but I did see some red oak in those stacks. I am going to write the absentee landowner and ask if I can scrounge. She's a lawyer, so, odds are reduced that she will let me! I am also going to contact a local logger and ask him if I can follow him around, lol. There is another tract here that had a sickening amount of large white oak tops. Before I could get to the landowner to ask could I scrounge, the logger came back and stacked it all up in huge piles, making it not worth pursuing for me. Prior to the huge piles, there were a lot of tops easily accessible. Has anyone had any luck scrounging like this?
Lot of the logging that happens around me, at least as far as I would want to drive to cut wood on, is all on private woods. Then the owners will let you cut, but want X amount of $ per truck load you take or the other part of them won't let any one cut and just let it lay and rot. But there is some that will be happy to let you clean it up more, never know tell you ask!
Yep, done a lot of it over the years. Turned into a big pita even with equipment. I generally won't screw with tops any more unless there's a huge volume of prime stuff I can get to with my equipment, or I'm getting paid. I'm in good with several land owners that have large acreages that I can cut & skid as I please. At 75 to 100 cord per year I'll never even put a dent in them.
The clear cutting that does take place around here is typically associated with a chipper blowing the "leftovers" into the back of a tractor trailer for processing elsewhere. Leaves a relatively clean site.
Missed this thread. No clearcutting, but with a heavily wooded state for the most part, its common for them to cut back from highways, especially after snow/windstorms take down the power infrastructure. A lot of my scrounging is from this.
Yes, they do around here, BUT, in defense of some of the loggers, i have to say, some of them really do a fantastic job of clean up, above and beyond the call. Example, i was allowed to cut wood on one site owned by a private timber company here in town. About 2wks later i was allowed on the unit, grabbed my saw's, gas, oil, and maul headed up on the hill. There was a lot of nice wood laying about. Then at the end of the unit was a nice looking load put up on a couple of other logs all stacked and close to the road. After my 2nd or 3rd load i stopped at the company's office and asked about the logs. They said take them, that was put up by the logger for wood cutters!! I know the owner that logged the unit, talked to him about another unit he'd cut i saw earlier. Told him to tell his crew how much i appreciated the way they cleaned the unit up, it actually looked like a soccer field and was flat out beautiful!! Not only had they put the wood logs on dunnage, they had taken the time to really make some nice piles to burn later on in the fall.
Cutting on state land here. They did a nice job of stacking the logs for the firewood cutters. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
An adjacent landowner to me, (whom I help out whenever needed) recently removed all her Ash trees to prevent EAB issues and several other species. The logger also burns firewood and cleaned out (stole) all the dead elms and most anything large that was burnable. He left all the Ash, Elm, Walnut, Oak tops and so much good wood it's sad. Additionally, he did an absolute lousy job cleaning up anything. I don't burn much wood, but since I'm recently retired and have the time, I started cleaning up the tops. I cut out the good wood and strategically piled the tops for the wildlife. Now it's like a whitetail interstate highway system (with housing) . Food plots are going in this Spring. Previous to my efforts, the truly pathetic part is nobody wanted to take the time to harvest the free tops. I ran ads locally and on Facebook and had very little response. I offered free skid steer service to assist with loading, dragging and cleaning up afterward. Yet nobody wanted the free wood. Once my piles of logs started to accumulate, people were "offering" to cut them up for "free firewood." You can imagine my response to that load of B.S.! I get it, everyone's time is valuable. But geesh, how much more can I offer to get people interested? So now I have approximately 20 cords of Ash logs stacked and ready for sale next fall. I'm about 1/3 through the salvageable timber harvest and am hoping for 50+ cords. I sold off about 15 cords of my own elm logs last year for firewood with no effort. I guess people don't mind cutting it at home, but not in the timber. It's just so darn discouraging people are that fricking lazy.
Your a conscientious person and it shows, good for you doing as much as you did. I'm surprised they didn't call you and ask you if you'd split it and stack it for them as well. Your right, lots of freeloaders out there and they don't even feel guilty about it. Its a stinking shame for sure.
My neighbor had 30 acres logged and I'm the only one that scrounges on it. Its a pretty sweet deal to say the least. He even helps me sometimes.
We have permission to cut on a neighbor's property right across the road. We don't need the wood but he would like it cleaned up. We'll probably finish it next spring at our annual GTG.
