Wolf trees

[SwampDonkey]

My birch should have a nice stick of veneer on the but, but I'll never cut it. I like big trees, as long as some of them are nice ones. I think wolf trees are fine, but on a landscape level, one or two per hundred acres is lots for the raptors. They aren't that thick and would not likely get along too good to close to one another. ;D And them ones that get rot and hollow are just porcupine dens around these parts and are not so welcome. The wood peckers can have the fir and popple poles for home. ;D

[Ron Wenrich]

Some of the wolf trees in my area can be trees that were left over from the last harvests.  Quite often you would walk up to the largest tree in an area and it would be black gum.  Those get hollow when they get big, but are prolific seed trees.  Those are the ones that I would mark to girdle as you want to get rid of the seed source.  We'd also mark beech to remove or girdle due to marketability. 

[SwampDonkey]

100 % of them are left overs on woodlots around here. Most of the time knarly old pine or a hemlock. And sometimes left because the machinery can't cut and handle them. A 40" hard maple is heavy and I doubt any processor these days could even cut it, so they get left on crown. Not because they are critter trees. In fact a 40 incher is tallied as a 18"er in NB, as that is as high as their volume tables go. Quite a difference in volume I would say. Heck, ya gotta laugh when they say you need to be certified to cruise on crown, with shotty volume estimates like that. And you can't tell'm nothing either, they know more than anyone else.  ;D

[Magicman]

My Champion tree that I have documented here is slowly dying.


 
It certainly is a wolf tree by all descriptions.  I have no intention of sawing off and using any part of that old tree that was standing when my Great Grandfather bought the property.

[SwampDonkey]

What kind of vines are growing on that old bruiser? ;D

[Magicman]

Just the normal poison ivy and water vines.