Share your close calls!

[1953greg]

a close call of mine

had a 6" x ~8' top of a poplar snag broken out, 30-40' away, and flipped back toward me by the tree i was felling. it landed bout 5 feet from me. i stood there dumbfounded and thanked my lucky stars!!

my cousin felled a 24" poplar and it rode a ~12" hickory to the ground. he went to top the poplar and as he approached the poplar the hickory rolled the poplar over him. jabbed a broken limb onto his forearm for stiches. the poplar had to be cut out around him as he was trapped. close call as it cudda been much worse!

 

[Sprig]

Mill pond pictures.

Welp this was certainly a trip down memory lane as my photos are rather unorganised (as in stacked in two large boxes, iyiyiyiyi), my scanner is a pita and I had to re-learn the procedures lol. I think you should be able to figure whats what from my previous couple of posts.

My buddy Tim Ward showing off, not the best pic of what these side-winders can do but it'll have ta do



Serge

 

[Adkpk]

Sprig you did a good job of explaining it. The pics looks just as I imagined. Looks like an amusement park ride with death defying written all over it.

 

[wood rat]

Most the time when I'm cutting wood I'm alone in the woods.

I don't have any close calls to talk about. I will take a smoke break and think it out if it is a spooky tree to cut.

If it is too tricky of a cut I'll wait till I have some company in case things go bad . I'm cutting trees 20-30 inch in diameter make a mistake and it could be your last one.

 

[hawtsawz]

I have one to share that scared the bijeezis out of me and it didn't even involve trees. I was doing carb and other work on an old Homelite XL-2 with a magnesium case. I had put it back together(so I thought) pulled it over and proceeded to get it running smoothly. I was testing the rpm's and it was getting just about to where I wanted it to be, and upon on acceleration SNAP CRACKLE POP!! went the case, and numb went my hand. I looked in total suprise that my hand was still attached let alone with all of it's digits. I was picking up pieces of that case ten feet to the side of where I was standing.
I learned the hard way thru my haste to make sure all liable parts are where their supposed to be and not to leave a clutch fully exposed to increased rpm's without its proper attire. Mental note to self: Install clutch before takeoff!:monkey:

 

[sILlogger]

was cutting a 4' soft maple today that went up about 30' and doubled off, each limg was about 18" when it fell it bent one of the doubled limbs around two trees, 1 in the middle and one at the tip--thus causing it to be spring loaded, or have "heat" on it as i always say. cut the limb off and had a piece holding about 3/4" pulled the saw out of the tree and turned to walk the piece broke the limb sprung out, him me pushed me about 10 feet and pinned my left foot against the ground and my leg again a tree, didn't hurt but couldn't move, had to come over with the skidder and move the limb(which was roughly 35 ' long from where i cut it to the tip)before i could get my leg out. after dinner i cut a tree that hit another and had 2 limbs ouf of the top (prolly 6-8" and 25 feet long) break off and roll back at me, had to do a bit of a dance to get out of there way

 

[J.Walker]

End over

I was doing a lot clearning job with my Farmall H tractor years ago. I would cut the tree and limb it then drag the log out to the road for the firewood guys to take.
I had 5 or 6 small Ash trees chained in one load and was dragging them with the tractor. I happened to look over my right shoulder behind me and saw this log coming end over at me. I moved my body over to the left and jammed in the clutch. The log hits my right arm above the elbow (could have been my head tho). I knew that it did some damage to my arm but did not want to look right-a-way because I could still bend it. Had a look later in the day and had a knot about the size of apple on the side of my arm.

 

[Sprig]

I was doing a lot clearning job with my Farmall H tractor years ago. I would cut the tree and limb it then drag the log out to the road for the firewood guys to take.
I had 5 or 6 small Ash trees chained in one load and was dragging them with the tractor. I happened to look over my right shoulder behind me and saw this log coming end over at me. I moved my body over to the left and jammed in the clutch. The log hits my right arm above the elbow (could have been my head tho). I knew that it did some damage to my arm but did not want to look right-a-way because I could still bend it. Had a look later in the day and had a knot about the size of apple on the side of my arm.

Glad ya made out okay J., just wondering what caused this, I am imagining that you caught the front end of one of the logs and it pivoted on the chain and 'jill-poked' over? Iyiyiyiyii! Farm machinery sure does a lot of people in, certainly nothing to be taken forgranted, just before I left the big Island for here we lost one of the local characters on a tractor, he was pulling a big high load of hay bales and the trailer flipped (they were driving length-wise on about a 10-13% slope), which flipped the tractor and crushed the driver, not a good baling day. I never quite understood what happened till a few years later when I put a little JD up on two wheels making a gradual turn on a low slope, I was only going dead-slow too with no trailer, scary stuff.
Work safe and stay happy gents!!



Serge

 

[J.Walker]

Glad ya made out okay J., just wondering what caused this, I am imagining that you caught the front end of one of the logs and it pivoted on the chain and 'jill-poked' over? Iyiyiyiyii! Farm machinery sure does a lot of people in, certainly nothing to be taken forgranted

You got it Sprig
Could have been one big headache.
Now when I skid logs, one at a time with a tractor I pickup the end off of the ground.

Be care full out there.

 

[TREEWACKA]

Hey Good Buddies, I've sawed for 30+ years off and on for myself, & my sawmill and logging family, my DAD, the Big Kahuna died when I was 18, but he, thank the Lord was very safety minded. I want you young entrepreneurs to listen; the bank knew our safety record, the insurance company new our safety record, the dead beats around town that thought they wanted an above average job knew our routine, sometimes we were short handed, but we were insured, well financed, never audited and respected at church on Sunday by all the members. Stay safe, keep your word, work very hard, and send all the love ones you can to TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY.

Close Calls: In the fall of 1967 I was full back for our little country football team, a straight A student, headed toward state finals, I was like Shack, a white guy not on steroids, but raised on Guernsey whole milk, fresh garden vegetables, a razor strap, and very hard work running chainsaws in the woods, cutting, felling, bucking, limbing, loading out pulpwood, logs (pine & hardwood) , peelers, firewood and any and everything else that might make a dollar. Thanksgiving Day, the week after our playoffs my Grandmother had ran out of and wanted some more firewood. O yes, thank goodness! I could now gather up some some friends, in my Dad's truck and go run my Grandfather's big brand new McCullough saw on a tract of timber we had been cutting that had some very large Ash trees. Some of the guys wanted to bring some beer to heighten our Zen of wood cutting and help send our kindred spirits off on a mystical trip to AggieLand. The short story is the only crazy accident I've ever had, I was excited, unfocused while felling the biggest Ash tree you've ever seen and cut a hunk out of the calf of my leg. I had on a brand new pair of Levi jeans and the material bunched up and choked the saw down. I finished sawing up the tree, my friends loaded the wood on the trailer, I had set the saw down behind the tailgate of truck while tending my profusley bleeding leg. We all loaded up and drove off to my Grandmother's house where there was plenty of left over food. The local veterinary (an Aggie grad) put 17 stitches in my leg, the only doctor we could find on Thanksgiving Day. I was already feeling weak from the loss of blood when my Father asked if I had been drinking, I was proud to tell him no, but at that moment, for some reason, I remembered feeling a small bumpy-de-bump from the trailer. My Grand Father's new saw, well it was smashed and plowed into the ground when I ran over it with the trailer load of ash wood, my good buddies in all their Zen & exuberance had not put the saw in the truck. My Grandmother kept him from whipping the hell out of me, because I had brought her some firewood and had been responsible for the touchdown that won the state title. That old saw is still burried in the mud of the Big Thicket of East Texas. I eventually graduated from Texas A&M. Not a single accident since.

 

[turnkey4099]

One of those "should I say something" moments. Ya gotta understand that my old man did not appreciate any back talk or advice from the kids. He grabbed me, the crawler and a chain and we went out to clear brush from a fence row. Me hooking up, him driving the crawler. First bunch he backed up, I hooked up and told myself "this ain't a gonna work". It didn't. Length of chain did not equal height of brush. I expected some rather spicy language as his hat appeared up through the brush but never a word was said.

Harry K

 

[Vibes]

I had a close call with a deer on my motorcycle last nite. It bounced out in front of me about 10 feet away. All I saw was horns. As it was jumping out of the way, its rear hoof missed my head by inches. I was probably going 45 mph. It happened so fast I didn't have time to react or get scared.

As far as chainsaws, several already mentioned.

 

[John Ellison]

I think that I have had more close calls while working in the rigging on a hi-lead side than I have falling timber.
When you hook a turn of logs and go to get in the clear there are places that you can go quite a ways and still might not be completly safe. If the ground is so steep that you have a sore neck from watching the turns go in you had better be on your toes.
Loose root wads are always fun. About the size of your living room and no tap root to speak of, just a huge round disk.A turn of logs knocks one loose and it starts rolling down hill, gaining speed quickly and making wild jumps over stumps that it hits. Then it starts going side hill (toward you, cowering behind another stump) and acting more crazy. When it passes you there is always the chance that it can still get you because they can go uphill for a good ways if they lay over at the right angle. Root wads are probably the worst because they are so unpredictable.
But a big log is no fun either. If one gets loose from the landing or up above you a ways they can pick up a lot of momentum if nothing stops them. When someting is coming down at you the thing to do is get behind a stump. You dont want to hug it (billiard ball effect) even tho it seems like the thing to do. What is pants filling is when you are behind a stump that might be a two footer and watch a log with several thousand feet in it smear a stump that is bigger than the one you are behind, about twenty feet away.
The first year I logged in Washington we had a big one go down over four switchbacks and then took out the road when it hit right in the middle. It took awhile before we could get the crummy thru there on the way home.

 

[billyjoejr]

Sprigs boom boats

Hey Sprig,
I found some vids of the booms boats.
They look like a lot of fun.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P6GqBL5uJIU&mode=user&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lJ0aLGwoVQs

Welp this was certainly a trip down memory lane as my photos are rather unorganised (as in stacked in two large boxes, iyiyiyiyi), my scanner is a pita and I had to re-learn the procedures lol. I think you should be able to figure whats what from my previous couple of posts.

My buddy Tim Ward showing off, not the best pic of what these side-winders can do but it'll have ta do



Serge

 

[Al Smith]

Well,I slide a dozer down a river bank ,sideways.I also rolled a big oak right over top of a D4 Cat,scaired about ten year off of me.

I had an 80 foot shagbark do a 180 turn,legs don't fail me now.

I've had one "barber chair",that was enough for a life time as far as I'm concerned.

Hmm,turned a Feurgeson TO 20 completely upside down.Smacked a Dodge dart right in the door doing 30 miles per hour on a Harley 74.

Aside from these and several dozen other little inconvinences of life,it's been rather mundane.

 

[Timberhauler]

I was dropping some big hardwoods for a guy back in the summer of 99'.I had just aquired one of the first 046's my dealer ever got.All this guy wanted was for me to fall these trees and cut everything into firewood sized peices that he could carry by hand..Which meant that I was going to have to quarter most of the trunk wood with my saw.All was going well,I just had dropped another tree,and that 046 was proving to be much smoother and faster than it felt.This was the biggest tree of the lot at +-44 inches..It was just big enough to where my 20 inch bar wasn't reaching all the way through.I was walking down the log limbing it and I went to cut this limb off that had an odd weight ????f.I figured the best way to do it was use the top side of the bar and cut towards me.I started my cut and as the limb started to let go the log shifted causing me to stumble.That 046 went right into my pants leg and cut my pants from the ankle to above my knee..I just knew I was torn wide open,but I had not one single scratch on me.I've been wearing chaps on big sawing jobs like that ever since.

 

[slowp]

Let me see, the recent close calls? I work with some loggers that are experienced in ground skidding but are now branching out into skyline logging.
Last winter, the hooktender dropped a tree on the skyline. I hit the ground, as did the crew and found myself wishing it was old growth, while lines whipped around. Stumps in a thinning just aren't big enough to hide behind, and the frozen ground was hard to dive on. Then, later, was just about to head over to the yarder to see what needed to be done when a guyline tree, that wasn't cut, pulled out and hit the yarder. The chaser, for some reason, just happened to be up on the yarder talking to the yarder engineer. He was able to hug the engineer and step into the cab, which saved him. I found myself counting heads of the landing crew and everybody was ok. There was a conversation about "I hugged ya man,"
Then there was my stupidity that got me hurt. Was standing on a road thinking that there's no way the fallers would be dropping trees on it as there was a log truck in there that would need to come out. WRONG. I caught a glimpse of a tree heading right for me, took off running. We have very soft, pumice (pummy) ground so on my second stride, something popped and major pain in a leg. I tore my calf muscles. The tree hit right where I had been. And, to make matters worse, I had to hobble on down the road because nobody could drive me out to my rig. The log truck was stuck in the pummy and the crew rig was behind that. I had the weekend to try to get a little better then spent the next couple months icing the leg before work, and after work, wrapping it, and hobbling about in the woods cussing a lot. But, it could have been worse. And, earlier in the day, I had poked my eye and it was hurting. But when I did the leg thing, the eye quit bothering. Not a good day.

 

[Gologit]

These are "learn from stupidity" stories, aren't they? With that thought in mind I'll share one with you. It wasn't entirely my stupidity that brought this about. More of a collective stupidity among all present and accountable. But I helped.
We were logging in the Sierras in February. We weren't very high up and below the snowline was nothing but mud...lots of mud. We were trying to finish a piece without having to leave it 'til Spring and all the attendant moving in and out of equipment.
The mud was so bad that we had to tow the trucks in with a 'Cat, skid them around on the landing, drag them into place with the shovel,take the trailer off, pull the truck ahead with the 'Cat again, and then load . We're talking about mud up to the running boards here.
I was driving truck that day and I was the first to load. We got it all done,figuring things out as we went along and it seemed doable. Miserable but doable.

To get out of the landing we figured one 'Cat pulling and one 'Cat pushing should do the job and we'd just go all the way to the road like that. This is where things started to go awry.
The two 'Catskinners had no means of communication and didn't like each other very much anyway so they didn't really formulate any kind of plan. I hooked up the pull 'Cat, jumped back into the truck, and watched as the shovel moved off and the push 'Cat started to get into position.
That's when things really went to Hell in a handbasket. The pull 'Cat just took off, and I mean took off fast, with about twenty feet of slack bull line laying on the ground and the push 'Cat hadn't even snugged up yet! I just fell over in the seat and figured I'd stay there until the noise stopped and the accident,whatever it was going to be, was over.
The bull line broke just behind the winch. Why it broke and didn't just pull the front end of the truck off I'll never know. The end of the line whipped back and took everything off above the windshield...marker lites, horns,stacks, headache rack and then whipped over and caught one of the mirrors. If the line had been a couple of inches lower I wouldn't be here now. Big noise, lots of flying chrome pieces. One extremely pissed off truck driver. One superbly pissed off siderod.
We put a new bull line on the pull 'Cat...and a new skinner, too. Got the truck out to the road, surveyed the damage, and finished the day with two more loads out of the same place. This time the 'Cat skinners worked together. I went back to falling the next Spring...figured it was safer.

 

[RiverRat2]

Was out cutting some trees down while I had a bulldozer on site last month. In a hurry to get ahead of the bulldozer so I can send him to the next tree. Didnt put my chaps on, just jumped out with the 372 to cut stuff up real quick.

went to cut off the top of a downed tree and had the saw running. Bar pointed to my left, as i stepped forward into the tree top. the saw went down and I lightly touched my left knee cap. giving myself a light cut on my knee and filling my shorts at the same time:censored: :jawdrop:

reminder to self always wear chaps. slow down

Not trying to be a smart AZZ but will admit I pulled the bonehead award of the year!!!! get in the habit of using the chain brake as tthe saw is coasting down, before you start moving to the next set of limbs,,,,especially when you are in a downed top,,,,, it is a proven fact,,,,more injuries occur when limbing and busting tops than any other time!!!! yes always wear the chaps,,,especially in a downed top,,, the limbs in there are usually loaded from the fall and can spring back and cause unexpected problems!!!! JMHO and experience,,, now here is where I admit my dunce award,,,, when I get time I will post a pic of my Chaps that saved my left thigh,,,,, just a couple of weeks ago,,, guess where,,,,, in a downed Pine tree top!!! Im here to tell ya they work,,, completey stopped the Saw,,, only went through about three layers,,,, glad I had the 9 ply Stihl Pro-Marks On,,,, they saved my leg!!!!

 

[weimedog]

When my family and I still lived in Colorado, my favorite place to ride was in the Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming. Up around 9,000ft. Hundreds of miles of trails. A fellow who called him self Brad Bradley and owned a motorcycle shop in Longmont Colorado introduced me to this place. He was extreemly active in all forms of off road riding and competition in the front range & rockies. He also was well connected..and was a perenial Colorado 500 participant. AFTER the Colorado 500 of 2001, there were several "well heeled" dealer types that were looking to show off their neet stuff. Brad had JUST the plan. Have us ride up in Wyoming, show off the then new concept of GPS and our new VOR's....So off we all went. Up 287 to Laramie Wyoming...west to Wycolo and to the big snowmobile parking lot there.....suited up and "zero'ed" the GPS.

What Brad and I would do is just go hell bent for leather making lefts and rights having the different riders take turns on point trying to just GO with no real plan ...after a helter skelter 45 minutes or so...check the GPS and use that tool to find our way back to the truck!

Pretty early on the first loop I found myself on point....midlife crissis hit and It was a RACE! Pretty soon I was gone(yea I could ride pretty well then)...so I waited..and they came around a bend about 1/4 mile back so I took the next right on a logging trail. I noticed a downed tree on the left, looked back over my shoulder to see if the guys saw my turn..BANG!! Something caught my leg on the inside of my right thigh (How???) and damn near poll valted me off the bike.

Best I can figure I must have hit a dead branch and kicked it up allowing it to spear my leg.

HURT like hell. So I stopped shortly after, and Brad who was a Paramedic for years; wanted to take peek at the damage....Off go the Malcom Smiths (which were stuck to my leg...later for explanation) and all I could see was a little chuck of meat about the size of the end of your little finger hanging out the hole that branch left. THAT couldn't be so bad right? It hurt but no flags yet. Just pissed. So we took off again. Did our 45 minutes. I wasn't feeling better so I pushed a little harder than usual to get back to the truck....here I started feeling sick& light headed. AND then Brad was peering into my helmut...

Brad looks at me and askes "How you feeling????" Like crap....I answered...Brad says "we better take a look at that hole again"...so off goes the Malcom Smiths again. Not a pretty sight. A blood sack from my crotch to my knee. And the red arch look like something out of the horror movies when Brad applied pressure. Lost a LOT of blood in a real hurry. Of course he tryed to lighten up the moment by telling me where the turniqet would be applied if the bleeding didn't slow down. I didn't laugh.

Off to the hospital! My wife was on duty....Good thing. I had knicked the femoral artery and was bleeding to death.

The wound looked like a gun shot once cleaned up. The thing that saved my life were those tough Malcom Smith Pants that didn't let the stick thru the fabric and then ejected the stick from my leg when I pulled off those pants right after the event. Having the fabric encase the stick made it a CLEAN puncture vs. a ragged tear. OTHER wise you wouldn't be reading this.

The aftermath of the bleeding caused way more damage that the initial puncture. Wasted my thigh, knee and hip. Don't know why, just did. Took months to get back on my feet! Never totally recovered.

Moral of the story? None. ###### Happens.

One of MANY close calls in this old mans life....(I had posted this just after it happened a few years back at dirtrider. net and last year at thequadbuilder.com)