Can't read Walnut

[CCC4]

Cut an entire strip of short squatty field grown wide topped Walnut today and left feeling like today was my first day cutting timber! Couldn't read this strip for anything...very upsetting! Didn't blow any up but I was VERY dissatisfied with my performance. I dnt know if it was the way it was growing or I just had a severely "off" day.

[missouriboy]

It happens to the best. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometime the bear eats you :D

[Ed_K]

 I'd bet the wide tops had a lot to do with it  .

[treeslayer2003]

I'd bet the wide tops had a lot to do with it  .

yup, unpredictible

[KyLogger]

I had an off day like that the other day. Big topped large diameter rotten a$$ black oaks. I actually chaired one!!! Had the strip looking like match sticks, looked and felt like I had never felled a tree before in my life.I just wasn't feeling it.....so I quit falling for the day and came back the next and BINGO!

[dyates]

Gotta love a good lollipop tree now and then.  They will come and get you though.  I have been known to climb up and top a good walnut before felling.  Pretty dissappointing to turn a high dollar walnut into two big pieces of firewood.

[RayMO]

I cut a lot of those and I bore cut and clip the spurs and let them go . They often end up with the butt 3 or more feet off ground because of all the limbs . seldom ever damage one because of so many limbs . Cut $40,000.00 worth of them off 80 acres of pasture last month and piled all the tops. The land owner and I were both quite happy  8)

On a side note my late father and other old timers would shoot through a limb several times with a high powered rifle so as to weaken/fracture it so that it would snap off rather than cause a split from top down on impact . This was back in the 60's . Now it might get you arrested .......

[mills]

I'm cutting a small job now with several large white oaks with massive canopies and rotten at the bottom. Oh, and the landowner just built a brand new shop close enough to be hit. So far I've kept them off the building, but busted up a lot of the leave trees that normally wouldn't have been a problem. My nerves, along with my confidence, are about shot. Landowner has some experience with dropping trees, so he understands, but it doesn't make me feel any better.

[Ianab]

Sounds a lot like an old windbreak of Macrocarpa Cypress like we get to play with  :D

Just getting them on the ground is a successful day.

[CCC4]

Well it's re-assuring to see that other guys have had similar troubles! ! I am glad to have finished with the Walnut for a few years! !

Yeh, I would walk up to sight my tree and have to guess withing 3 leans...it was a mess but no smashed saws or busted timber. Never thought I would say I am ready to go back up the hill on 40 to 50* slopes! !

Thanks guys! Stay safe!

[Southside]

Maybe it was just a bad week all around, I felt pretty stupid after managing to split not one but two pines this week.  Needed to get real low stumps for the trail and did not leave enough clearance for the hinge to break clean.  Should have just felled them normal and cut the stump off flush, but I figured I would save myself the extra step.... At least it was just pine, around here #1 pine pays just a wee bit more than the worst of anything else.