Art & Words by
HOWARD B. TAYLOR

This method of falling was used after power saws did the bucking as it saved breakage. We had the boys bulldoze beds for the trees, hired fallers by the clock instead of by the bushel and cut low stumps to reduce breakage.

The Native Americans used fire to fall their canoe cedars. The first pioneers chopped them down without sawing. Later the undercut was sawed at the bottom, then the wedge was chopped out.

The head faller took more time to choose the ‘lay’ of the tree than the power saw faller took to flop one down and bust it up into chunks. They used wedges to put the tree into a good lay. Most of the remaining remnant of timber now belongs to Uncle Sam and is bought by scale, so who cares about breakage?