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in parks they leave all deadfall with nothing removed
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Yeah, and I've seen the Forest Circus come in and make a terrible mess of a timber sale just a few days after we were required to get it "just so" according to contract. They
always find something wrong to make you go back, even if they have to take a branch and move it so it is poking up in the air. Then a few days later a FS crew came in and just dropped all the small pines that we had so carefully left and protected from damage according to contract, leaving branches sticking up six to eight feet in the air. And it was right by the road so the whole world driving by could see it, and of course it was all the "logger's fault" for leaving such a mess.
With government agencies it is always "do as I say and not as I do."
I don't know what the standard practices are back there. For a little while I worked with an old guy from northern NY or someplace, but he said that he used a farm tractor and chain chokers. The timber is generally higher value so one log might be worth more than an entire semi-load of logs out west.
Skidding is always going to cause some damage, even with a horse. We actually considered a draft horse or oxen years ago, but the season was just too short and 40 below and five feet of snow was a little much to winter over draft animals. Machines can just be parked and left to be buried in snow.
Whole tree logging usually causes the greatest amount of damage, but the woods are left pretty clean when you are done. I've run Cat 518 and Clark 666 and 667 skidders, but on my own account we just used a small cat, farm tractors, and a small high lead setup (58 Chevy boom truck).