Put me in the club of letting it dry top covered and bringing it with a log carrier like gboutdoors doors. To me it's fine as is, with built in kindling, Nothing goes to waste as I'm only two years ahead and trying to reach three years.
This is why I really advocate stripping the bark from Red Oak where the sapwood has already turned punky. This piece of bark is off of a Red Oak that was a blow-over in a very wet spot last May. When things got good and frozen I went and grabbed it. I don't know what these grubs are, but I'm sure they aren't beneficial. With the bark off the punk wood will dry out. It won't have much value, but, there's no need to strip it off. With the bark on it's just going to continue to deteriorate and provide a home for these things. It does add time. But, as long at the bark is not frozen it comes off pretty easily with a bark spud. I couldn't find a great color to circle all of the grubs so I settled on this purple. I probably missed a few as well.
I took down an Oak last year that had a bunch of punk like that. Brought most of it home, and managed to css most of it too. There's a few rounds of it still out by the back shed that need to be split. There was at least 2" of punk just like that, so I used a hatchet on it, and got fairly close to solid wood. Not the first tree like that, and won't be the last. I figured that leaving it on would slow the drying process some. Definitely slowed things down, but I take my time with this stuff anyway.
Had an oak score yesterday. Craigslist. Got it home and went right at it with the splitter. I was splitting for speed so I was just slicing off what I could. When you try to slice off from the round edges you take a decent amount of heartwood with it. You can take your time and be a bit more accurate and leave less heartwood on the cut off pieces but I tried that once and ended up spending way too much time doing that. The pieces you take off look like slab wood cutoffs from a mill. I loaded up the trailer and took them to a coworkers house. She ran out of wood this year because her husband was hurt and a few other reasons. I told her that it will be too wet to burn until ideally 2 years from now but she may be able to burn them this upcoming winter since the pieces aren't all that big. I'd bet dollars to donuts she's trying to fire up the wood stove right now with it. You can just tell some people don't listen. I was tempted to take it to the dump instead because that's how positive I am that she's gonna try to burn it.
Interesting takes on punky wood. I've always avoided it and will split it off any time I can. I currently have quite a pile of punk-wood, and have put a lot of it on the burn pit already. My friend says he doesn't worry about it, he burns it as is. I've always figured there's not much BTU's left in the punk, so why keep it on the wood. My thinking was that it would absorb moisture easier and continue the progression into the good wood. Like most things, it seems there's no right or wrong answer, but since I do not have a covered storage area, I figure my best option for having good wood to burn is to continue to get rid of as much punk as possible.
It will burn fine. It can be messy. I am fortunate to be 4 years ahead which allows me to be a little more selective. There were times when I have cut/shaved punk off with chainsaw and hatchet, very time consuming. Nowadays if I get some oak with punk, I split it and give the punk side of the split a couple good whacks against the splitters rail which knocks off the majority. It is hard to leave a tree like that when you know there is good solid wood inside.
I trim most of it with the splitter...when that punk dries....it so messy. By the time I stacked a whole cord of red oak....I filled 2 descent size carts full of punk n junk to dump in the woods. Takes a while..toward the end of the day...I have a tendency to start leavin a little more on...
