What Was Your First Job In The Woods

[slowp]

Maybe it's time to brush the cobwebs off and let folks know how we started out.

My community college forestry teachers got us weekend work in the spring planting trees in the 1970 fire area that was nearby. We all became good hoedad swingers and those few checks really helped with school expenses. That was my first job in the woods. The following summer I went to work on a timber marking/cruising crew.

 

[Marshy]

My very first job in the woods was following Dad around and riding in the equipment. My job was to stay safe and out of the way. Eventually that turned into a real job with pay and started running equipment to bring the logs an tops out of the woods and a lot of firewood processing.

 

[Greenthorn]

1976-7, clearing areas in the forest for my marijuana patches. Didn't pay well or pan out well....

 

[2dogs]

My first paid job was in January 1974. I was hired by PG&E, our local electrical/gas utility, to open roads and clear lines after a snow storm. Prior to that I worked on a cattle ranch (mostly fencing) and when I turned 18 I went to work (legally) for the family business. Most of my life I have been involved in fire fighting and still am.

 

[Gologit]

My first job in the woods was as a second faller for my uncle. That was in 1960 and I was 14 years old. Second faller sounds glamorous but it mostly consisted of being a human pack mule.
My uncle was a faller who'd been hurt in the woods..both legs and hips crushed when a log rolled on him... and though he could still cut he had trouble walking and packing on rough ground. That's where I came in.
I got paid 10% of the scale and breakfast and lunch. We were cutting old growth Redwood and in those days the saws and tools were a lot heavier than they are now. We used steel wedges and a gunny sack full of those was a load.
The first summer all I did was carry gear, gas up the saws, drive wedges, and hold the dumb end of the bar when uncle was getting the cuts started. The main saw was a handle bar Mac...I don't remember the model... and a six foot bar with a stinger handle. I'm pretty sure the saw and bar weighed more than I did.
The next season I started bucking and at the end of the season I was doing some falling under close supervision. And packing.
The third season I went to being on the saw full time. And packing.
After the third season uncle retired and I went out on my own. I'd still have him come out once in awhile for some council, especially when I had some tricky ones to fall. The man knew his business.

 

[BeatCJ]

Working for a private land surveyor posting the borders of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Like slowp, one of the professors at the community college gave me a reference. After that, I almost went to work setting chokers, but my cousin called me from the hospital and counselled me to just wait. He was a faller, well thought of around Springfield OR from what I was told, he had a bad moment. He survived to retire with only 3 major hospital stays. Eventually, I got another job surveying for a large public agency. Right now, my family has some land in trust that is managed as timberland, and I spend the summers on call for fires for a public agency.

 

[chucker]

73/74 worked at the columbia city forest sevice building doing what ever needed done(gopher, cleaning fire fighting tools an such like washing the trucks and doing a lot of listening to the ole man hayes/hanes ) by a newbie wanna be forest ranger someday. cleared a lot of fire trails around the clear cut's, even got to set in the fire tower/vernonia area a few times to learn a few of the watchers locating triangular directions. was fun with tons to learn!

 

[wood4heat]

My first paid job was as a firefighter on the Hwy 141 complex in White Salmon WA. I think my second was the Barker Canyon complex in Grand Coulee and later the Liberty Mtn complex out of Ellensburg. Great work when you can get it!

 

[treeslayer2003]

hmm, lets see.......around 84 or 85, go with dad on saturday and pick up sticks. i still hate to pick up sticks, you'd be surprised how good i can clean a landing with a skidder lol. by 88 i was on skidder every day, by 90 i was doing most of what can done in the woods. by 95 i was the woods crew, dad had put down the saw forever.

 

[1270d]

I started riding with my dad in the slasher and dozer. At 13 or 14 I was allowed into the grapple skidder, pre bunching a little and pulling to the delimber. Not a whole lot, but some. Sawing was pretty much limited to firewood. After high school, I started piece cutting for another local contractor falling and bucking ahead of a forwarder. Came back to work with my dad after a season, and started limbing and topping behind a buncher.
Took a break and tried out construction for a couple of years, before coming back to the saw.
We went away from tree length operations some years back, now I run a harvester full time, only getting out a saw for oversize.

 

[MountainHigh]

1974 setting chokers behind skidder at max speed - stump jumping in rough terrain pulling cable 8 hour days - dropped 20 pounds over few weeks, and I wasn't overweight to begin with.

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger

 

[madhatte]

1995 internship with Weyerhaeuser. I'd been the woods recreationally most of my life, of course, but that was the first time I'd been paid. Instantly hooked.

 

[northmanlogging]

88-90 somewhere's in there, uncle was cutting some more of his property, he couldn't get rid of me so I started dragging cable behind his Cat. Sometime that year or the year after the whole fam damily went to Deming... and there where kids younger than me climbing the spar trees. So I conned my uncle out of his climbing gear and tricked him into topping a nice spar with Det cord... I would have been 11 or so...

Some time in 94? the Spotted Owl thing happened all the mills nearly shut down (most of em did shut down) all the big logging outfits in town evaporated over night, even now there are only a few hangers on... So my dream of logging kind of went out the window with every ones unenjoyment checks.

Kept at it for awhile though, there was a big export boom in the mid to late 90's seemed to keep helping here and there, when I could...

15 years later... or so... I was offered some free firewood. Land owner noticed I wasn't dumb with a saw, that lead to falling some snags the previous loggers had left, which lead to go ahead and thin that whole side... then to take everything that's marketable... eventually I'm where I am now.

 

[bnmc98]

My first job was actually a volunteer position on the Payette NF near McCall ID. I cut out pack trails with a double bit and a crosscut.

 

[Humptulips]

I was in 4-H and my leader worked for the FS. He put me on to a job planting trees for a contractor. I was 13. I worked that winter and spring on weekends. After that I worked around the shake mills loading trucks after school and in my senior year my dad went to the school board and got me an early dismissal from school so I could go out in the afternoon everyday and load blocks.
My friends Dad owned a mill and we would take their old cornbinder up in the woods and come back with 5 cord. Funny how times have changed. Once we got stopped by the FS to check our paperwork. We had nothing, no load slip, CC permit, truck registration or even our drivers licenses. He made a call on the radio and let us go on our way. That old truck was something else. It took two guys to drive it coming down hills. One guy to steer and the other to hold the transmissions in gear. The brakes were such that there was no stopping once you started down the hill. I think we burned about 70 gallons of gas a day.
That summer after graduating I got my first job on the chokers.

 

[Chainsaw_Maniac]

I worked the lever of a wood splitter at the age of 6. Slashed 1/2 inch to 2 inch trees with a stihl 028 av (my first saw) at the age of about 13 which would be my first non-family paid work.

I can probably say I was cutting wood independently at the age of 16. My father laid off his hired hand when I dropped out of high school at that age. I sold maybe 50 cord or so in a summer.

In my early 20s I worked for a logging company just cutting the limbs off trees another guy, Charlie, had falled. (fallen?) We put out a truck and pup a day (~13-15 bush cord) along with his brain damaged uncle who had had a tree fall on him.

15 years later, I worked with Charlie again but he's all crippled from repetitive injuries and strain. I worked his last day with him before he went for double knee replacement. He will never log again after that.

I remember a 500 acre bush that I'd walk into at 7:00 am and not come out of until 6:00 pm. It was filled with tops that needed to be limbed and I would often not see a single person during the day. Keeping the flies and misquotes off of me required that I put of a bit of dirty oil in my gas and keep my saw idling during my breaks. I carried a pail for my gas oil and lunch, because once I walked in for 20 to 30 minutes, I wasn't walking out again until the day was done!

 

[Gypo Logger]

My first tree I ever felled was in 81. I was living in a very remote area of B.C on a small island. The closest neighbours were a small tribe of Indians at the other end of the lake.
Anyway, the chief told me to take the river boat and this 480 husky and scour the shore for some dead standing firewood.
I found this nice dead Doug Fir, I chewed at that 20"er like a beaver, my knees were knocking, man was I scared!
Miraculously the tree fell in the right direction, what a relief!
I bucked it up and loaded the boat with the whole tree.
I had no formal traing.
Nothing has changed! Lol.

 

[Ponzi]

Smoke Jumper in Colorado. Before that was running out to pick up the game we'd shoot before I was old enough to hunt.

 

[BeatCJ]

My first tree I ever felled was in 81.

'81! I figured you had started way before then.

And I have to say, a post on here made me remember my first job. One of my buddy's dad owned a shake mill, and the buddy got the bright idea we could make a killing cutting shake bolts. That was in '78. By the time we paid for the permit, saw, froe, gas and oil, we were so far in the red by the time we quit I had to take two other jobs to dig my way out of the hole. We were out there in a swamp, slogging through mud and ice, two dumb high school football players.

 

[Gypo Logger]

Then shortly after I ended up at an Indian camp drunk and was threatened to be hung, but by then I'd forgot what fear was.
I woke up the next morning with a native women poking me in the ribs with a stick demanding that I split firewood.
"That axe is at the front door and the wood is out the back door!"
It was a curse they put upon me which I cant shake after some 33 years.