Back in Northwest California in the 1970's I saw plenty of it. This was pretty much during the height of the "Save The Redwoods" frenzy, and the Friends of the Earth were very active in and around Humboldt county with their "monkeywrenching". Trees and logs were getting spiked regularly, and they were making the most of bragging about it. One of their spiked logs managed to make it past the metal detectors in the Pacific Lumber mill at Scotia-and pretty well messed up the head rig offbearer when the band saw hit it.
Here's a little side note related to the incident. A good friend of mine was logging and portable sawmilling in Garberville in Southern Humboldt (the hippie and marajuna growing capitol of the world at that time) , and was staying in a rundown old motel while away from home during the week. As fate would have it, the guy in the next room was the head of the local Friends of the Earth chapter who he knew quite well, having once rented a house to him. Anyway, my friend would come in after a day's work, tired, dirty, well- you know what it's like after a day of logging and milling, and would set on the bench outside of his room and have a beer and relax before making dinner. The neighbor would come out and preach tree-hugging and tree-saving, and generally do his best to start an arguement. My friend would try not to humor him- which ticked the guy off. He finally told my friend: "did you hear about the offbearer at PL a few weeks ago when the spiked log went through the saw? We did that". My friend told him: "you know.. for every spiked log that turns up, we're going to drive copper spikes into ten trees". The guy answers: "so? What will that accomplish". My friend explained that the copper would kill the tree without harming the merchantability of the wood, and is soft enough to not hurt the saw". Supprisingly enough, the tree spiking dwindled off to almost nothing for a long time after that.
The late 70s were interesting times in Northern California. Most of the logging companies were working themselves out of existance by then- having their "sustained-yield" programs disrupted by loosing property to the new national park, and the rising cost of fuel was making it difficult to get lumber to market. About this time, a mysterious fire occured in the Island Mountain railroad tunnel North of Latonville, which shut down the only rail line for good, leaving 100+ miles of mostly two lane, tourist clogged highway as the only way to move stuff out. That was pretty much the end of large scale timber operations.
One more side note- In the filer's room at the sawmill I worked at for a while there was a Model T Ford connecting rod hanging on the wall. They found it with the headrig saw about a foot into a second growth redwood log- hanging from a nail. Second growth redwood can grow *a lot* in fifty years or so....
Porosonik.