UNION #60, Site Prepartation

The sign above is self explanitory and with the emphasis on not approaching this operation, or any active logging operation for that matter, until the operator is fully aware of the person visiting the site.

Here, two generations of the Gary Morse family and owner/operator of Moosehead Forestry Services, are explaining the operation to a visitor. The slash will be left until next spring when a work day will be planned to chip the slash. The chips will then be used as a trail tread for trails through out the site.

Here is a pretty "nifty" tractor twitching (hauling) the logs from the stump to the yard. High production cutting is not the intent of Moosehead Forestry Services (MFS)operation. The tractor is not designed for maximum logging production but rather, versatility.

It carries 200 feet of 7/16" cable, a much longer and lighter cable than skidders usually carry. This enables the operator to reach a long distance to get individual trees with a minimum of damage to the surrounding trees. MFS just finished a job where the tractor never left the road. This is, however, slower than taking a skidder closer to the trees.

The skidder is designed to push through the woods with little or no advance trail preparation. The tractor requires that MFS cut the trees and brush out of the trail so that hydraulic hoses and other vulnerable points under the machine are not damaged. This takes more time.

The third feature that makes the tractor slower than the skidder is after each tree is pulled to the tractor it must be disconnected from the cable and attached to the draw bar on the winch. There are ten slots so ten trees can be taken to the landing at once. Each chain must then be disconnected from the drawbar, sometimes with the aid of the winch. With a skidder, as many trees as there are chokers (from 10 to 20) on the cable can be hooked up at once, winched in to the tractor and locked in the fairlead. The skidder is then driven to the landing, the load dropped and the chokers released in turn with the flick of the wrist.

If MFS had been intending to run this business totally on production of pulp and logs, it would have bought a skidder. A skidder can do an excellent job in the woods in the hands of a skilled operator. That, however, is not the intent of this business. The intent is to be able to work around town, on camp lots and places where the end result is more important than the income. MFS generally pay a lower stumpage or no stumpage and there are places where the landowner pays us for our services. It is more a woodland landscaping operation than it is a logging operation.

The logs are not very large and the tractor has no problem hauling ten logs at a time.

The logs are piled up at the yard and located where a log truck can pick them up and transport them to the pulp mill.

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