It's a Pacific Northwest thing... you wouldn't understand!

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Just thought I would post a "small" doug fir that is on our plot!
If the tree makes me look small It's becasue I'm Only 6'3" 275lbs.
:hmm3grin2orange:

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Yeah' but the tree is much older.
Give it a few years, you'll catch up. :hmm3grin2orange:

:cheers:
 
Spotted owls and salmon roasts

Talked to a BLM guy that was walking the creek here a few months ago, calling out for spotted owls taking a census. Our neighbor shot a few warning rounds off toward him up the creek a few miles from here, not knowing who he was the week before (read, RUN!). Not many spotted owls around here it seems, even though this is the heart of spotted owl country and the 'save the owl' campaign back whenever. Several large tracts of timber near here are reserved for habitat. It seems that the spotted owl is being replaced "au naturale" by the barred owl. They are moving in from the east at a fast pace and taking over the spotted owl's areas.

Coho/silver salmon are also on the endangered species lists, more to the south of the Chinook runs. We get money from the Fed for leasing 5 acres along our creek here for Coho habitat (a few $hundred a year). They also paid us to fence it off to keep our sheep away from the creeksides, and paid for 2,000 trees to be planted in what was pasture there. It is called the CREP program. You cannot make a living at it, but they will pay for land improvements. BTW: Tow of our dogs recently ate a salmon out of the creek and we had to put them on antibiotics to keep them from croaking. The story around here goes that they used to fish for salmon with a pitchfork in that same creek. I have yet to see a salmon in there.

I also see beaver in the creek now and then. Beavers are not good... For that matter elk are not good either. We have a lot of them here, and they destroy fencing, rip up baby trees, and eat our forest. Elk is good eating though, and under OR law, I get to (legally) shoot two a year here. And another 2 in 'emergency' situations. A few people come here to hunt with our permission. One lady bagged a deer without our permission. Tresspassed and was dragging it out of our pasture when I confronted her. She shot 5 rounds with ME in her backdrop. ME, not happy... blew the thing's head clean off with an SKS.

The wild wild long bar and rifle west...
 
Huge Doug firs of BC and WA???? What????? You missed a state in there...
*THE* tallest Doug fir now standing is in Oregon. About 35 miles southwest of where we live, actually. Bull of the Woods, Valley of the Giants, and many other places in Oregon have many groves and even square miles of giant massive sized old growth Doug firs that are many hundreds of years old. ;)

Here is one that I made into my avatar...

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You guys got it all wrong. Spotted Owls are best made into soup. A little small for roasting whole and a tad greasy for frying. But best of all you haven't lived until you have used them feathers to wipe the the nasteies out of that bearded backend of yours. Soft, smooth and the don't smear at all.


I also think that Oregon has a few big firs still around, We live not far from valley of the giants out Willamina way and there a couple bigguns in there. The biggest fir I was part of removing was 13'9". Used two 084s ona 16' two head bar. Used spring boards abt 25' up on one side for the face and standing on the ground while we were chaceing the hinge.

The PNW is the best place on Earth. Big wood, good weather and the best fishing and hunting on the planet if you know where to go and how to do it.

Owl
 
And BTW, N. Cal is known for more than just Redwoods. Some of the biggest doug fir in the world sits in the draws in and around Salmon River, Happy Camp, Ti-Bar, Hoopa and Orleans. Then you have the Sugar Pine up against the Northern Sierras that will match nearly any doug fir. The reason they are still there is because it is Forrest Service and untouchable.

I do adore the PNW - big trees, big history and really beautiful.
 
I have a doug fir stump in the back of my woods - 11 feet (a guess - today) DBH, and it was cut off with spring boards about 10 feet off the ground... but that was in 1896... How big was that sucker back then!

We got logged in 1896, then 1945-47... Now the trees are again 150-175 tall...
 
Sugar pines...

Yah, we have big sugar pines here too. The tallest one in the world is about an hour southeast of here ;) Northern California certainly has big trees, and the tallest of all the trees on earth (Coast Redwoods). I lived there for about 20 years before moving back here. I kayak out of Happy Camp on the Klamath, and one of the best views that there is on earth is just north of Happy Camp on Greyback Road (AKA: Jefferson Highway). It overlooks the glacier scoured Klamath Valley and the Trinity Alps beyond.

BTW: Do not belive the crap that they say about that Australian eucaliptus being 500 ft tall. They never verified the actual height. They also did a botony-physics study on tree cells and found that the physical limitation for any tree is about 450 ft tall. Beyond that and the capillary action that draws water up in plant cells breaks down. The newly measured Redwood trees that they found this summer in CA are below that height, and they found several new trees that are taller than the Stratosphere tree (it used to be considered the world's tallest, but no more).
 
Giant stumps

I have a doug fir stump in the back of my woods - 11 feet (a guess - today) DBH, and it was cut off with spring boards about 10 feet off the ground... but that was in 1896... How big was that sucker back then!

We got logged in 1896, then 1945-47... Now the trees are again 150-175 tall...

Yah, we have Doug fir stumps here that are 8-12 ft across about a foot off the ground. They were true giants. We also have a lot of bucked cedar and fir logs over 6 ft in diameter that they left here for whatever reasons. We have one Doug fir spar that is about 20 ft high (8 ft DBH) and you can still see the springboard cuts into it. This place was cut originally in 1880, again around 1920, horse logged in 1960 and high-graded in 1986 (worst possible logging method; clear cut would have been better). I have a neighbor that was raised here, and he said as a kid in the 60's this place was all moon-scape. Now it is regrown and he was blown away at some of the tree sizes around here.

We also have a lot of logging relics here. This area was a booming logging town before 1900. Then it declined. There was a log floom that went from here to a saw mill 5 miles away in 1900. There are still 20 ft soil berms here that are perpendicular to the hillside that were made to divert water from the back of the house here into the floom. There was also a small rail train that ran from another town to here in about 1910 and we still have some of the track rails on our property. I find yarding equipment buried here all the time. Old rusty single piston engines, bathtubs, engine blocks, snapped cables, and stuff like that. Also a lot of metal from what looked like a mill in one of our creeks here. They say that before 1960 about every draw around here had a mill in it. And a lot of old saws and stuff percolate up out of the ground here. The dogs dug up an old saw with square bolts about a month ago. I also found a pile of old relic saws rusted out in a mound of dirt in one of the pastures plowing it last year.

We do not have anything as tall as 175 ft here. Maybe 125 ft at most. Some grand and Doug firs along the floom burm that were planted after the 1960 cut. We do have some really old maples and black oaks here though. We are restoring an oak meadow that was obviously burn-cleared by the Indians for hundreds of years. The oaks are mamoth sized in there. I figure they are at least 300 years old, maybe a lot older.
 
Yah, we have big sugar pines here too. The tallest one in the world is about an hour southeast of here ;) Northern California certainly has big trees, and the tallest of all the trees on earth (Coast Redwoods). I lived there for about 20 years before moving back here. I kayak out of Happy Camp on the Klamath, and one of the best views that there is on earth is just north of Happy Camp on Greyback Road (AKA: Jefferson Highway). It overlooks the glacier scoured Klamath Valley and the Trinity Alps beyond.

BTW: Do not belive the crap that they say about that Australian eucaliptus being 500 ft tall. They never verified the actual height. They also did a botony-physics study on tree cells and found that the physical limitation for any tree is about 450 ft tall. Beyond that and the capillary action that draws water up in plant cells breaks down. The newly measured Redwood trees that they found this summer in CA are below that height, and they found several new trees that are taller than the Stratosphere tree (it used to be considered the world's tallest, but no more).


I go over Greyback all the time on my to the Oregon Coast, (with a stop by Jedidiah Smith State Park). Greyback is the head of Indian Creek, up by Kelly Lake.
The wood I am speaking of is further south off 96, down towards Clear Creek. All those drainages are loaded with what I like to call "Hooters". The further south down the Klamath the more impressive the wood.
 
Not huge by any means, but a treat to just "find" out grouse hunting one day. The kinda tree you just like to sit and stare at. This was in a smaller stand or equally gorgeous fir and WRC down in a creek bed back on state ground.

It'd be a blast to fall, but I'd not feel worthy to fall a beaut' like that.

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Ahhh... as I put my corks up next to the pot bellied stove and grab me some beef jerkey, and a ladle full of beans from the pot on the stove. Wash it down with rot-gut coffee (with a little nip in it)... and let my tired bones finally relax.

Great posts and great pics you guys. Keep them comin'. I apologize for forgetting my Oregon friends to the south of me. Big trees in that thar state as well.

Here is a big Doug Fir that I found while grouse huntin' in Skagit County one day too Jeff. My buddy Roger is standin' next to the base of the stump. The top is blown out and it is prolly still 8 feet across where it is broke off.

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Gary
 
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Here is a couplea shots of the landing on the shovel side operation. Pictures taken from inside the cab of my Uncle's Log Truck. The guy that runs that shovel, could pick up a toothpick and dig the spinach out of your teeth with that grapple. Amazing what those guys can do with machinery that big.

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Gary
 
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Here is a few of my Uncle Hal's Kenworth Log Truck. Haulin' a load of peckerpoles to Commencement Bay in Tacoma.

LOGGERS RULE!:rock: :rock: :rock:

Gary


Nice lookin' log truck! Hopefully in the near future I can land a job workin' on those rigs. Going to school right now and studing diesel/heavy equipment. What does that particular rig have for a powerplant? Cummins, Caterpillar, etc? Keep up the great posts!
 
Nice lookin' log truck! Hopefully in the near future I can land a job workin' on those rigs. Going to school right now and studing diesel/heavy equipment. What does that particular rig have for a powerplant? Cummins, Caterpillar, etc? Keep up the great posts!

It's a Cummins. I'm not sure of what dispacement or HP rating. Hal just "retired" begining of last year. However he still gets calls to drive... and still does. Once it's in yer blood... it's hard to let it go.

Gary
 
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