Snagging Steelhead!: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

I had to deal once with a cedar butt cut that went 12 feet across the butt and around 8 or so feet at the 40 foot mark where the fallers bucked it.

I to this day believe the damn Bull told them to do that as he knew my tower was the one that was gonna have to get it out of the woods. We weren't too partial to each other.

We were on a flat swampy unit below Mctheney Ridge aka Mud Creek...Timber has probaly stomped around that ground some. Should have heard the radio chatter when I called the yard that morning before work for log trucks for the day.....3 lomgs and a mule in the morning that could go to another side on their next runs. The chatter was due to my request for a Low Boy truck. The owner of the company Mayr Bros. sure as heck wanted to know what I wanted with his Low Boy truck as we weren't scheduled to move any equipment. The Bull chimed in saying as usual I was a nut case.

I simply responded by telling them to have the gawd damn Low Boy backed into the landing at lunch time and walked off the landing to my rigging rat crew. 4 hours later we moved that damn log the 1,000 feet thru the mud to the landing...dropped the rigging off the mainline and shackled the mainline just a tad towards the the butt from the balance point and picked it up while having the loader grapple and maneuver it around...backed the Low Boy in under it and dropped it carefully in place. Low Boy driver is looking at me with this what the f**k look...I shrugged my typical f88k you you are just a truck driver shrug and
my crew of rigging rats chained and binder jacked that piece of wood in place and sent the load to Hoquaim. We finished the day yarding some nice cuts of spruce. The owner never said a word to me...never expected one as I was just doing what was expected of me. The Bull never did say a word also...we never did like each other and the owner knew he tried to screw me. No need for me to ever say anything either...some times silence is the deepest cutting knife.

I've worked some units with large cuts of timber in them but anything past 10 feet in butt diameter was an extreme rarity. Working cuts of spruce was the most challenging with typical logs being 6 to 8 feet. That was always on flat ground. The scariest was large old growth Doug Fir and Piss Fir which was always on steep slopes. One of them breaks a choker or comes loose uphill of the rigging rats everyone was living on ultrapure adrenaline.

Sorry for the digression from the subject of the post...just having nostalgic flashbacks of when I was young and the world belonged to me.

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