Being a little kid at heart, I saw something pretty neat on our Northern Blastoff this winter. Since our day's ride out of Hearst was going to be short, we did a 50 mile loop north of town, then came back for *breaky.

Just east of the outskirts of town, a tree fell down beside the trail ahead of me. I stopped to take a look. There was a feller buncher working. They look like a big backhoe with a saw & grapples instead of a bucket. Go to www.timberjack.com for a picture. I watched it for a few minutes. I'd seen them in my travels up north, but never one in operation.

One guy working one of those can log a 100 acres in 5 days, what it would take a crew of guys and skidders 3-4 months to do. *It will put the small logger out of buisness eventually. *They had a logging expo in bancroft a couple weeks ago. They had one of those there with 2 monter chainsaws on the front and a grappler that fed the log through the middle delimbed it and spit it out the back.

while in B.C. treeplanting back in 1990-91, I was picking pinecones between contracts. *pay was a buck a liter!

we were working all around the fellow buncher as it had the freshesh cones not picked over yet. *the operator did not seem to mind us scurrying around in his fresh tracks, i guess he figured it was our noggins that would be crushed by the felled trees http://www.snowmobileworld-s2.com/forums/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/nervous.gif

and man, did he clear the forest http://www.snowmobileworld-s2.com/forums/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/exclamation.gif must be relativly flat land.

While I was a Junior Ranger the summer of '79, 2 weeks were spent planting trees east of Matachewan. What a mess! Slash everywhere! I'd like to see how well the trees are doing http://www.snowmobileworld-s2.com/forums/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (revrnd @ June 05, 2002, 1:36pm)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">While I was a Junior Ranger the summer of &#39;79[/b][/quote]
revnd,
that statement can pretty much date you! *i was never a junior ranger but my pal had a blast up in Wawa. *he spent a couple of weeks cleaning and clearing the Chapleau Loop canoe route, a portagers nightmare!

"treeplanting, *my back still herts when i hear that word"
http://www.snowmobileworld-s2.com/forums/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/nervous.gif

It was the best summer I&#39;ve ever had. It saddens me the way downtown Kirkland Lake looks now. The population was around 14,000 & 14 bars * http://www.snowmobileworld-s2.com/forums/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif *http://www.snowmobileworld-s2.com/forums/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/thumbs-up.gif . Now I think it&#39;s down to 9000.