TSI in unreachable areas

After sitting in the stand a weekend, I ventured through the woods a bit since nothing was moving.

I have several stands of timber deep in my woods that need to be thinned. Unfortunately, the only real things you can get to them is a chainsaw. No heavy equipment or anything to haul out logs with.

In these instances, do you guys just drop enough trees to open up the canopy and leave the whole trees on the ground or how do you improve this area if you cannot get anything back there to haul out the dropped logs?

Thanks

Here the loggers work in the worst parts of winter to access wet areas with their skidders. Where I wanted poplars clear cut (no saw timber value in NY) the loggers ran them thru chippers and sold the wood chips to a Re-energy plant. Otherwise the no saw timber trees sold for firewood in log lengths by the truck load. $ amounts to us were low for non-saw timber logs but it got our woods cut as we wanted them without us doing the work.

If there were only a couple of hundred trees to cut I would consider doing it myself and just leaving the trees lay there or just girdled the trees. Most people don't choose that because it takes the girdled trees many years to fall and decompose. It worked for us though where we did it. My dad and I had used girdling regularly when thinning for wild apple trees for many years before we got a logger on the property. Through a combination of girdling and cutting to drop we released over 2,000 apple trees at an average of about ten stems cut per apple tree released. That was a lot of saw time.

In a closed canopy forest it would be extremely dangerous and time consuming to drop a large amount of trees down to the ground in a closed canopy forest with no equipment.

I’d drill and fill (roundup) as opposed to dropping that many trees. Quite a bit less effort and infinitely safer, even if you’re experienced with a chainsaw. It does work even in dead of winter, eventually. My chainsawing is now almost always limited to clearing downed trees (I’m not a fan of hinging).

My property is years (maybe >10) away from a logger having any interest, so I’m doing small pockets here and there when I can get to it. If you want deers, you need food and THICKETS.


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I'm in the process of having a TSI done on a section of woods. The loggers hardly ever get out of their heated aircondition cans anymore, the crew has a big cutter on tracks that fells and stacks the trees, 2 skidders with big grabbers on the back, a chipper that shreds entire trees for pulpwood, and a grapple log loader for the saw logs. No logger wants to run a chainsaw anymore, it's too hard work and too dangerous. I'd try hard to get a thinning crew in, even if you have to give them the logs for free. If that's not possible, downing some junk trees with a chainsaw is a better option than doing nothing. If you resort to that, try to throw them on piles with open areas in between, much better than the entire area impassable for 5-10 years.

If you have Amish in your area a lot of them do Timber Work with horse teams. They can get in where machines can’t.

Mom had some timber cut on her and they left it in a mess. An Amish man offered to come in and take out the salvageable logs. Using his team they took quite a lot that the Cut n Go guys left.

The more I look at it, the more I think I may just bite the bullet and pay a professional to cut trails through the entire property that give us access to the deeper areas.

If we cut the trails right, it shouldn't impact deer current movements and a lot of those trails would actually make the grouse hunting better as well.

Now to convince my wife this is good money to spend...