Do you needlessly chop living trees in your pseudo-survival play?

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Uh oh, leghog is feeling lonely again. It's ok, stirring the pot here is a lot less eventful than in General. Different crowd, and judging by the posts in this thread already, they saw you coming a mile away.

Sam :thumbup:
 
Sam Wilson said:
Uh oh, leghog is feeling lonely again. It's ok, stirring the pot here is a lot less eventful than in General. Different crowd, and judging by the posts in this thread already, they saw you coming a mile away.

Sam :thumbup:
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What king of crap is this? Grow up, man.

You're just reinforcing the question in the thread title. If you can't handle the question like a grown up, just ignore it.
 
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leghog said:
What king of crap is this? Grow up, man.

You're just reinforcing the question in the thread title. If you can't handle the question like a grown up, just ignore it.
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:thumbup:
 
So the question was --- Do you needlessly chop living trees in your pseudo-survival play?
 
leghog said:
So the question was --- Do you needlessly chop living trees in your pseudo-survival play?
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Which, unless the OP was expecting only YES/NO responses, he was asking people who chop trees to list their justification for doing so. I don't see a problem with that unless someone intentionally makes one.
 
Codger_64 said:
Which, unless the OP was expecting only YES/NO responses, he was asking people who chop trees to list their justification for doing so. I don't see a problem with that unless someone intentionally makes one.
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I think it's obvious now that no justification exists for the person who started this thread.
If you practice skills it's "pseudo-survival play", and you're not allowed to compare your activities to anyone else's.

It is a preaching rant thread rather than an honest request for discussion.
 
LMT66 said:
I volunteer to cut trees. We clear a few acres on a good day (depends on how many show up) and burn it. What good are the mighty oaks if the invasive species rob/starve them of life-giving nutrients?
Best not to pass judgement every time you see trees being cut.
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This^^^
 
Psuedo-Survival Play"..... hey, this it's important to lay the groundwork for when you're preparing for the SHTF. But, no I don't cut many trees down anymore unless they are "in the way". Cut an 8" white oak down in my back yard about a month ago. It shaded the grass..... :D Actually my whole back yard is shade (mostly hickories) and I just wanted to lighten it up a tad.

When I was a kid, we selectively cut down trees for the fun of it on my grandmother's farm. They were mostly black locusts and we often used them for fence posts. That's where I learned my dislike for hatchets versus an axe. Chain saws work a whole lot better since I grew up.
 
22-rimfire said:
When I was a kid, we selectively cut down trees for the fun of it on my grandmother's farm. They were mostly black locusts and we often used them for fence posts.
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How dare you cut down trees for pseudo-construction play! :D
We need air more than fences. ;)
 
I never took offence in regard to the thread title because I actually feel that I do engage in ''pseudo-survival play''. I take all of this stuff with a grain of salt. Yes there is a serious aspect to my learning new outdoor skills, or practicing them at times. But it is fun for me and I can see it as ''play''. And I never gave a hoot about hacking whatever tree was in front of me before I got into reading this forum, in the last few years. Yes the thread title can be viewed as belligerent or demeaning, or just poorly worded. But the underlying message resonates with me. In the last few years I have made an effort to be more responsible with my uses of the natural outdoor environment. I was complacent because I was previously surrounded with seemingly endless forest. This may be old hat to many of you folks on here, which is wonderful. But for myself it was an awakening of outdoor social responsibility. I'm trying to be less selfish out there regardless of the local\regional resource volume.
 
upnorth said:
I'm trying to be less selfish out there regardless of the local\regional resource volume.
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I can respect that perspective.

However, most people, the vast, vast majority are plopped down in front of televisions, computers and video games.
When most venture outside their house, it is to go to the mall, not the woods.

Hence there are not legions of folks hacking down trees; just look at the YouTube videos. :)
Almost all batonning videos, and even the chopping tests, are performed on neatly sawn pieces of wood in people's backyards.

People are so divorced from nature that when I entered the ESEE Knives Mega Contest one of my friends asked if I was going to be buying firewood to use for the fire...despite the fact that the forest ground is littered with handy chunks of wood to burn, he couldn't get past the consumerist mindset of the masses.

So fret not, for the woods are safe! Until the woods have free Wi-Fi and La-Z-Boy recliners, there will be no masses of people headed out there. ;)
 
I did some psudo-survival-play this weekend. I chopped down my TV set. It had been hideing/lurking in a dark closet for five years and I ended it's little games. It went to the dump afterwards for recycling. I feel better now knowing for sure that the re is no television in my home. The couch goes next week. I never sit on it and it just gathers hats and junk mail.
 
upnorth said:
I never took offence in regard to the thread title because I actually feel that I do engage in ''pseudo-survival play''. I take all of this stuff with a grain of salt. Yes there is a serious aspect to my learning new outdoor skills, or practicing them at times. But it is fun for me and I can see it as ''play''. And I never gave a hoot about hacking whatever tree was in front of me before I got into reading this forum, in the last few years. Yes the thread title can be viewed as belligerent or demeaning, or just poorly worded. But the underlying message resonates with me. In the last few years I have made an effort to be more responsible with my uses of the natural outdoor environment. I was complacent because I was previously surrounded with seemingly endless forest. This may be old hat to many of you folks on here, which is wonderful. But for myself it was an awakening of outdoor social responsibility. I'm trying to be less selfish out there regardless of the local\regional resource volume.
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Great answer.

With use of resources comes stewardship of resources. Our stewardship can be done well or done poorly. I lean more to the Izaak Walton League of America's position on use and stewardship. The IWLA is an organization founded 92 years ago to save outdoor America for future generations to responsibly use. Thankfully they did, or we (their future generations) would have much less healthy outdoors to use and to enjoy whether they be wetlands to fish and canoe or woods to camp, hike, and hunt.
 
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Trees. Hmm. My woods are way too thick because they are regrowing from being logged about 10 years ago. Most of what I cut is going ending up being shaded/choked out in the future, but I don't touch the big ones we told em not to log. That being said, trees are very tough. Maple, tulip poplar, ironwood and many more will continue living even when sawed all the way to the ground. If you want them dead you gotta pull the stump. The tree version of a double tap. lol.
 
Given OP placed this as a rhetorical device...

Wanna hack stuff, do it on your property. Be mindful of removing deadfall and debris from a forest floor and where you have your fire can permanently impact an ecosystem. Be respectful of our land. If it's on your property, have at it haas.
 
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B34NS said:
Given OP placed this as a rhetorical device...

Wanna hack stuff, do it on your property. Be mindful of removing deadfall and debris from a forest floor and where you have your fire can permanently impact an ecosystem. Be respectful of our land. If it's on your property, have at it haas.
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Or to be even more philosophical:
-No one owns property. We merely exist on it for a tiny speck of time, pretending we have possession in a meaningful way.

-You will not have a permanent impact...the human conception of permanency is flawed. We are here for such short periods of time that we lack perspective; more than 90% of all life has been destroyed at once before...yet it all bounced back given time.

:)
 
Yes I do but I always take advantage of very element of the tree. I don't cut down a tree for one of its branches, for that I 'll take a branch. I try to take dead/dying wood but sometimes If I need the green wood I'll take it. Keep in mind I spend most of my time in Oregonian secondary forest that is incredible dense, it actually helps the forest if you take some trees in moderation. Even with that I carefully choose each tree I cut and only if I REALLY need the wood
 
Not for my survival play but I tend to use the broken limbs or the trees I need to chop down to protect my house as survival chopping play. Heck around here the dang mesquite trees die and start dropping limbs all by themselves without any help from me.
 
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