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Marking(Destroying) Line Trees

Started by Woodhog, May 04, 2008, 10:37:00 PM

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Woodhog

My neighbor on one of my wood lots recently had the lines re done.

The lines were previously very well marked about 20 years ago. Blazes about every 30 feet or so and the line all chopped out clean.

This time the survey crew went thru and in addition to repainting a lot of the older blazes I noticed they had indiscriminately hacked a lot of good trees that were not blazed on these lines before, it is mostly a Red Spruce stand and many of the line trees that they hacked on were excellent specimens, about 16 inches at the butt and about 75 or more years old, nice and straight, choice stuff.

The trees with 4 blazes about 6 to8 inches in height almost look half girdled...

This would seem to be an old way of doing things with all this  fancy laser survey gear that they use..

Do you think these prime trees are damaged?

When in the lot I take great pains not to bark any good trees with the extraction process and then these cowboys come thru and do more damage (or it looks like damage) in a day than I do in 5 years.

Is this good surveying practice or are these boys locked in the stone age.

I have cut line trees that were over zealously blazed on which I had to cut off a lot of the butt log due to rot.

Even some nice maples that were not previously blazed were all hacked up.

Engineer

Being in the land surveying business, I can tell you that we do not blaze trees unless specifically asked to by our clients.  If there are old blazes on a line, we will repaint the old blazes but are not likely to mark new trees except by paint or flagging only.   Blazing a line is not stone age, as you say; it is a good way of marking a line somewhat permanently.  A blazed tree (depending on jurisdiction) is generally considered a monument and may not be cut unless agreed to by both landowners.  Normally, though, we will just tie flagging and leave it up to the property owner to decide how to further mark the line, if at all.

Around here, the forest service contracts out resurveys of their tracts, and depending on the survey crew, they will either repaint the existing blazes or hack three or four large blazes, one above the other, on every tree within three feet of the line.  After ten or fifteen years, you can easily tell a forest service line because of the nice neat line of rotten stumps going up through the woods, and the rest of the trees are still trying to heal and stay alive.

THPtech

Where I live(Northern California) we tin and blaze property lines. In these conifer stands the small blazes scar over quickly and can last for an extremely long time. It is a grat indicator and I haven't seen any real wood damage.

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