Hurling stick

[SawyerBrown]

During our recent visit to Ireland, we learned a lot about hurling -- no, not what you do after a night of heavy drinking -- it's a game kind of like soccer, except there are a lot more people on the field, they carry these wooden "hurls", which they use to carry a small ball, as well as beat each other about the head and shoulders without pads.  The objective is to either get it in the goal (3 points) or through the uprights above the goal (kind of like an extra point in football) (1 point).  And that's about all I know about hurling!

But ... one of our innkeepers (female) was on a hurling team at one time, and still had her hurling stick, which looks like this:


 
How does this have anything to do with the Forestry Forum, you ask?  Well, notice the grain at the wide end of the stick.  They're actually looking for ... and now growing intentionally ... trees that are coming out of a hillside and then curving up toward the sky. 

Not earth-shattering, but something to occupy a few minutes of time ...   ;D

[snowstorm]

there was a story about that in the northern logger mag several yrs ago. they were shipping in containers short ash butt logs over there to make the sticks in your pic. seems like they were coming from new York?

[yukon cornelius]

looks like I don't want to get hit with that. on the other hand I have 30 acres of trees growing out of a hillside. maybe I can go into the hurling stick business  :D