This is just a few of the people, and machines that make up the logging portion of my family. There are a couple of different groups working in and around the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Hey...this is pretty cool. I logged for Jorge back in 1985...ish. Ceasar and Jesus. Jeesh those guys worked hard. Whenever my saw ran out of gas...I had to take a fifteen minute break and sit down...those guys saws would start up again in 3 minutes. I doubt they even took a knee to fill up the tank before firing up again. Jorge just got his first Rotne's then. I love the mechanization of the woods...heated cabs, no swingin a chainsaw, no freezin butt wading through snow, no pullin chokers off the skidder. Back then, there were a couple deaths a year in the BH's from timber falling with saws...now, I haven't heard of a death in ages. I love "whole tree harvesting"...no slash left in the woods and thus no fire hazard. It literally looks like a park when you guys are done. Beautiful work. Uh...not seein the waste here guys!! I like seeing the old gray "high stump" in the foreground at the beginning...the "crosscut" stump from a hundred years ago. All that fine timber the feller buncher was cutting were seedlings then...if even sprouted yet. the Black HIlls NF harvests more timber than ANY national forest in the country! Not cause we over cut...but because the BH's are the last vestige of forest management left. And yes, now California is begging to bring back the logging industry...just like the hippees in the ski counties of Colorado begged them to come back after the pine beetle "whacked" their lodegpole forests. The Forest Service is salvage clearcutting 5,000 acres around Breckinridge Colorado for fire hazard...and this is a town that gave Obama 80% of their vote LOL. And not a peep of protest.
My father and I fell timber for Jorge in 1985. Loved working there. We were shut down for the winter in Colorado. Cesar and Jesus were working then. A great bunch of guys.
Well, too bad the Black Elk Wilderness is a total PoS and all of the trees will either be destroyed by fire or insects, since the 1964 Wilderness Act was all emotion and no logic.
This is actually very healthy for the black hills. If this wasn't being done, any wildfires in the area would grow to look like those currently going on in the western states.
