Paul73

Thanks very much, that is really useful information. I will contact my woodland officer -who turns out to be someone no one has ever mentioned to me before.

Thanks for your reply. I haven't felled anything yet. I would like to get the extraction track sorted first but I am thinking I may only do it if I can put a profitable second crop there to extract as otherwise it is quite possible that the track will cost more than the value of the timber in the partly failed compartment. I have found it very hard to actually get to speak to my woodland officer. Calling the FC seems to get put through to people who sound like they are abroad and they then they leave messages that are not replied to. To get a grant for my loading area that connects the track to the road, calls got me no advice and no site meeting but by submitting a planning application that I hoped looked sensible, followed by a grant application, months later, I got to meet on site with a nice young man from the FC. More than a year after that meeting I got my grant approved but it felt like a struggle and simple advice about typical dimensions and specifications for the area would not have gone amiss. A site meeting before submitting the planning application would have been awesome. The young chap I saw was I think still in training. I asked him about the variations mentioned here and how to get them approved and he said "Oh no always stick to the woodland management plan". I thought about it for a year or so and thought "Surely there must be some mechanism where I am allowed to have a better idea and improve the plan?" So after calling an Indian gentleman twice who may have misunderstood me because he hung up on me first, then felt I should email "woodland creation" and a nice antipodean lady who left a message for my woodland officer to call me that was not replied to I am wondering whether to apply straight for another felling license as a way to stimulate a response. I find that submitting an application is often the only way to get some arb consultancy issues addressed by councils and maybe it works with the FC? Generally my experiences with the FC have not been stellar. Nothing negative but it seems a struggle to get anything positive. Maybe they are just overrun with work and I am a small fry in their ocean? The big question is will I lose my existing license for the woodland as a whole or for that compartment if I apply for a second one for that compartment? if not there is nothing to lose. Thanks, Paul

That's the OP's figure from 6 farms. Assuming he goes out once almost every week, he will visit each farm 8 times a year. With that much land we could assume he is probably out all Saturday or Sunday morning when he goes This is enough to upset most wives, so as an unpaid hobby that is pretty good going. Does he average one deer an outing? Most stalkers don't manage an average of one from 2. Are the landowners going to be happy with that few deer coming off the land? The woodland owner needs to look at an offer and decide if that stalker can really make a difference to them or if its a bit of fun for the stalker who likes to collect places to have fun. I seem to recall reading somewhere that one breeding doe per 5 hectares was average for Roe. On good habitat it is certainly more. That means you have more than one new Roe per year coming off 5 hectares, never mind the Muntjac. They will pour in from land to the sides unless that is well shot too. Take out the big bucks and you just get a lot of youngsters who all like to have a good fray. A good stalker really can make a difference but it needs dedication to the ground. The owner needs to appreciate this.

25000 Acres and you want more land? I am saying no to people asking me to shoot their deer because I usually shoot a couple of dozen a year off about 50 acres (more than half of that off 10 of those). That's quite enough to be doing for me as an unpaid hobby. In fact I hardly get out on my own land because there is just too much else to do. Granted I am creating sink holes in an area of over population that just pull in fresh deer but can you really cover any more ground efficiently in a way that will benefit the landowner or will he have to run another stalker in parallel?

Yes this will work in principle. I have been cold called by people wanting to do it on my land, so there is demand. If its low key you may be able to get away without a felling license. It always used to surprise me how little timber actually needed to be felled to get people through training when I did some instructing. If they are only going in felling once a quarter, they are unlikely to fell more than 5 cubic metres of actual timber (the threshold for needing a license). They can then run several cross cutting courses on the cut material. Depending on the tree size, they may be able to run climbing and aerial chainsaw courses too, which can cut amazingly little. The problem comes with your controlling it. You have to make sure they are not misbehaving and cutting too much and you have to make sure they cut the tree you want and clear them up how you want before they are allowed to come again. It will need your boots on the ground a few times at first and then once in a while to check in with them later. You will need to explain "I want this and not that". Course providers differ from small one man bands to local colleges. Anyone sent to instruct is probably going to be only half keen on tidy up as its not his site and its only borrowed by his employer who has really paid him to instruct not to tidy. Meeting with the instructor pre course and spraying marks on what he can fell is a good idea. But yes it will work, if you can give them favourable enough terms. If you basically want free tree surgery to your spec and want to meet them lots on site when they are not getting paid to instruct, its unlikely to be productive for them. There will have to be some meeting in the middle, so try to put together an attractive offer for them with clear mutual benefit. You need to know what your plan is and how they can achieve it. They would generally like lots of easy work in one place. The instructor has a group of about 4. He neds to watch them all and can't spread them out too far, equally he can't have them felling at the same time too close. What tends to get hammered is young trees as they are small and easy to fell -8 to 12 inches diameter sort of thing. If you have lots of these that are scruffy its great. However, beware the hobby woodland owner's common error of taking out all you good young growth "to make more space" simply because these are the easy trees to fell. Would you kill off all the school age population in a community? Yes you will benefit from taking out the ones with bad form and you can thin a young thicket but its all too easy for an instructor to take everything small and a hobby owner to be delighted with the open space, while having killed off the next generation. Really you need to take out the some "bed blockers" to make space for the next generation while leaving the best potential veterans for the saproxylic bugs as well is hitting the ill formed and misplaced youth. Felling to thin needs some skill sometimes not to ruin what you want to leave and it may not be ideal as training. I think those are the main caveats. It will go ok if you learn your subject and keep your boots on the ground but if you hand over responsibility it may go awry.

I would like to vary my woodland management plan for a single compartment. I have a felling license to clear fell this compartment and allow natural regen. On reflection would prefer to clear fell and re-stock with Cricket bat Willow. Can anyone advise the simplest way to get this change approved? The compartment is low lying land, designated as broadleaved but not ancient on the magic map. The land frequently floods which has meant that the plantation of Thuja and Norway spruce in this compartment has at least 50% failed. Is this just a case of sending in an application for a new felling license for this compartment and with re-stocking at 100 stems per hectare (which is what the .gov site suggests for cricket bat willow)? or do I need to get the management plan varied too? Another side issue is that I would rather like to move a track to an existing central ride through another compartment that is to be clear felled. I have no metalled track but I got it approved in my management plan to surface the existing unmade track and I got the council to approve it for planning permission as it joined to a classified road. I have now got more than 25 metres from the classified road with surfaced track as per the planning permission. I can see that the old track is not as ideally placed as it could be for efficiency and cuts through the RPAs of the nicest trees in the whole wood (which are to be retained). Its a bit of a no brainer to move the track but how many hoops would it involve I wonder to get it rubber stamped? I am tempted to just do it as I am past 25 metes and I need a surfaced track for good management. It sounds like permitted development to me but I would be glad of people's views. Thanks, Paul

Thanks guys. It looks like they would be very well advised to get a clear position on this. One wishes things were black and white. Found this on the HSE site. It looks like there might be a place for experience giving competence but one would have to clearly justify it and sending the man to get a ticket is likely to be the simplest safest option. While the ACOPs are not law, they were made under section 16 of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW Act) and so have a special status, as outlined in the introduction to the PUWER ACOP: 'Following the guidance is not compulsory and you are free to take other action. But if you do follow the guidance you will normally be doing enough to comply with the law. Health and safety inspectors seek to secure compliance with the law and may refer to this guidance as illustrating good practice.'

I have just been asked by someone for whom I have worked many times as an Arb consultant whether his golf club is at risk of falling foul of the law for letting the greenkeepers fell trees without chainsaw qualifications. I told him I that I didn't actually know if there was a hard and fast legal position but that his club could be on very shaky ground with their insurance company if anything went wrong as "do you have qualifications?" seems to be a regular question when buying arb insurance. I can see that this could well fall foul of heath and safety at work, risk assessment and PUWER but is there actually a black and white rule in law that any use of a chainsaw in employment needs qualifications or qualified supervision? Or is the idea that people must be qualified derived from other regulations that say "Reasonable steps must have been taken to make the workplace safe, control obvious risks and make sure machinery is operated by people who know how to use it" Thanks, Paul

I have been engaged to get involved in a no doubt heated debate over a development site on which there are a large number of self sown Ash trees. I feel like I would do well to know what has been said by any government funded bodies about Ash dieback, its projected speed, and how that might impact on the concept of a tree needing 10 years of useful remaining contribution to be worthy of retention on a development site. The trees in question are on derelict pasture, mostly 25 years old or younger. Some road-side trees were recently felled under section 211 notification because of Ash dieback. Every tree on site shows some signs of Ash dieback but most are in stage 1 with only one very large old one being in stage 3. Can anyone suggest a reading list to me? Any planning policy documents I should be looking at? Any sources for the thinking behind the 10 years in BS5837 what reasons did they give for saying it? I always assumed it was not to saddle new home owners with problem trees. Cheers, Paul

£340 each, though the packaging was a bit sub standard.

Thanks gents. I still haven't taken the plunge with battery, so I ordered two Makita petrol cutters from FR Jones, where they are on for less than half price presumably because they are being discontinued. Got two because then I will have a spare. They do look good and the balance and weight is a lot better than the big Stihl.

I may just be weak but I have always liked a hedge cutter that is light and balanced. With that I can reach as far as with a heavy one and if I want to reach further I use a long reach anyway. I have usually had small Tanaka ones with 26 inch blades they seem to balance perfectly, which is just what I like. My latest Tanaka broke down yesterday and when I went on line to re-order, it appears discontinued. Today I got a big 30 inch stihl HS82 out of the garage and me and after a few hours of cutting smart yew hedges and some horrible topiary my assistant soon agreed it needed to go back in the garage again as soon as possible because the balance is very poor and its heavy. Any recommendations please for what I should buy to have a light balanced hedge cutter, ideally no shorter than 26 inches? Thanks Paul

Thanks guys. I will buy some wipes and take a wire brush a chisel too.

I am thinking of learning how to make some shingles, posts and rails because I have a few acres of overstood sweet chestnut coppice. I have had a bash and it seems not too hard to make rails and shingles quite fast but I will do a lot better if I start with some basic guidelines. I would like to learn the ideal range of diameters to start with for these products, so I can work out what to thin and what to grow on. Can anyone give me some ideas of ideal diameters and fairly standard lengths please? Also can anyone point me to a good text book on making these products? Thanks, Paul

So I finally got through all the hoops with the FC and the LPA and got permission for a new loading area and track. I went out and crashed about in the undergrowth with some tape measures, some pegs and a tin of marker spray. It turns out I was a bit hasty with the marker spray. Now we have cleared most of the trees and undergrowth, I can see that there is a slightly better line for a small bend that is needed in the track. I have marked the wrong trees here. Its no big deal but if I ever decide to have paying clients in for something like say Forest School, it looks a bit messy. I did it in bright pink because it was too horrible a colour to miss. Any tips for getting the spray off? Clearly not thinners but olive oil/ fairy liquid? and a stiff brush? Thanks Paul