As something of a luddite dweeb I read over the FAQ with suspicion but ended up marveling at all the info gathered there. My personal thanks to Bladite for that and all the mods for everything they do and have done to make this forum fun and useful (no small feat). One thing the faq asks is to let it be known what we do with our BKTs. Well I fancy myself an amateur forester. I own a large tract of forest in the Cumberlands which I am managing one little chunk at a time for oak regeneration. Anyone familiar with the history of this region knows its had a hard time. My land is no exception, but in the 20 or so years Ive had its been doing ok.
We start out with this
With the object being to end up more like this
I try to blend sound forestry with wildlife management, and of course aesthetics.
My main tool is the chainsaw, followed by the axe. I have found the 9 very useful however for hack and squirt, which is used to take undesirable trees from the stand.
You put this
In this
Hack around the base of the tree (its ok to leave a couple of inches between the hacks) and give it the Pathway
I did this one too high. This gets hard on the back
Pathway is also used on cut stumps, so you dont get this.
The 9 works great for this. My knuckles are safe, it puts a nice long hack in the bigger trees, and I feel more in control of it than I did the hatchets and tomahawks I used to use. With ten toes I can count higher. Ive also used machetes and that aint fun.
Also every few years its good to blaze the boundary trees. Property lines here are marked by blazes and paint, at least in the woods. Heres a blaze thats about 15 years old
Ive used both hatchet/hawk and machetes to do these, and I am past due to walk the lines this winter. I really want a machax because I like to do these in draw knife fashion so I dont cause unnecessary wounding of the tree or me. I hope they arrive soon and at a price point I can handle, or swing, or hack, or that will cut it I mean I hope they're affordable...
Anyway thats my little intro to forestry. Ill remove the guard dogs from the door now.
We start out with this
With the object being to end up more like this
I try to blend sound forestry with wildlife management, and of course aesthetics.
My main tool is the chainsaw, followed by the axe. I have found the 9 very useful however for hack and squirt, which is used to take undesirable trees from the stand.
You put this
In this
Hack around the base of the tree (its ok to leave a couple of inches between the hacks) and give it the Pathway
I did this one too high. This gets hard on the back
Pathway is also used on cut stumps, so you dont get this.
The 9 works great for this. My knuckles are safe, it puts a nice long hack in the bigger trees, and I feel more in control of it than I did the hatchets and tomahawks I used to use. With ten toes I can count higher. Ive also used machetes and that aint fun.
Also every few years its good to blaze the boundary trees. Property lines here are marked by blazes and paint, at least in the woods. Heres a blaze thats about 15 years old
Ive used both hatchet/hawk and machetes to do these, and I am past due to walk the lines this winter. I really want a machax because I like to do these in draw knife fashion so I dont cause unnecessary wounding of the tree or me. I hope they arrive soon and at a price point I can handle, or swing, or hack, or that will cut it I mean I hope they're affordable...
Anyway thats my little intro to forestry. Ill remove the guard dogs from the door now.
