rarefish383

Looking off "Her" front porch.

My daughter looking out off here front porch at lunch. The deer having lunch in her neighbors yard. Mt Airy, Maryland, USA

I think I got it. Eastern North American Wild Turkey! I have 30 acres in Wes Virginia. We have lots of Deer and Turkey. This past year my friend saw a Fisher, or Fisher Cat. It's in the Weasel family, but bigger. Kind of like a Weasel with an attitude. They are known to decimate Turkey flocks. I'm assuming though we have only seen one, there is at least a pair. I hope they don't wipe out our Turkey's.

Sorry, I got a new computer and lost almost all of my files. So, I can't drag and drop. Most of my pics got saved on my Imgur account. I'm trying to see if I can copy and paste them, Joe. <a href="https://imgur.com/8qPLWpk"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/8qPLWpk.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>

Not a very good picture. They took me off guard. We were running loud tools and my friend said, "look over your shoulder!" This is the Eastern subspecies of the American Wild Turkey. [img]https://i.imgur.com/8qPLWpk.jpg[/img]

Thanks for the old memories. When I was 16 I started driving my Dad's brand new Chevy C30, 12' stake body, no tipper either. When we stacked brush we would put 2 long poles down the middle, with just enough room for one guy to stand between them, and did not fill that hole in. Toward the end of the job we would stack a lot of weight toward the back of the pile, then strap it down good. When I got home I could back up to our burn pit, stand between the poles and lift and the whole load would slide off into the pit. About once a month Dad would call the fire Dept and tell them we were starting a brush fire. No problem. In 74-75 he bought an Asplundh 16" chipper, big for back then, but still no tipper. So, I had to pitch fork the chips off. Finally in 1978 he bought a Ford F600 with a 12' chipper box and TIPPER. Don't tell anyone I was driving the commercial trucks under 21 years old, I didn't know I wasn't supossed to.

I was fourth generation in the family. When I was a kid my Dad, his Ex FIL,1 BIL, my Uncle and his SIL were all Licensed Arborists that owned their own business. I never knew anything else. When Dad retired in 1986 I gave up the family business. I was almost 30 years old and had worked 3 years without taking 1 day off. Even weekends were spent giving estimates. I went to work for UPS where I eventually got 8 weeks a year off. But, I still loved climbing and continued to climb as a "Contract Climber" for other companies. Finally gave up climbing at age 60 when I had both knees replaced. My wife says I can't be lived with if I don't run a saw for an hour aday. I have about 70 chainsaws, most over 70CC's, a dozen over 100CC's, couple years ago I bought a Brush Bandit 65 chipper to keep the invasive species under control on my 30 acres. My wife is correct, I'm happiest if I can step out the front door and smell fresh split Oak firewood, milled Poplar, or chipped Pine. At 66 I can't think of what I'll do if I cant use a chainsaw, even if it's an ikle MS170.

Thanks, they are pretty mythical over her too. I went over my friends house to take down a couple dead Ash trees. I showed his land lord pics of my collection. Frank is turning 91 this year. He said he had a saw in his shop with no piston. My first thought was he blew up a cheap Wild Thing and needed a piston. Then he asked if I ever heard of a Sachs Dolmar, I instantly wet my pants. That was two years ago. I had lunch with my friend last week and Frank was sitting on the porch reading. I asked what he wanted for the Sachs and he said take, it was too heavy to use. So, I gave him $100. He’s an eccentric old guy. He has all kinds of cool stuff laying around his property. My friend asked if I saw the old car in the woods? No, so I went and looked. Frank bought the car new in the 60’s, drove it for years, put about 300,000 miles on it. One day he parked it and never drove it again. Turned out it was an ISO Revolta with a 427 Chevy engine in it. He has stuff like that all over his property.

I saw these right after I bought my 2018 F150, 2.7 twin turbo. I put a deposit down the last day of 2019, and signed the papers on the first day of 2020. Essentially it was two model years old. The window sticker was $51,000+, and it was on clearance for $35,000 so I grabbed it. Had 6 miles on it. The power port charges batteries well, and fast. I plugged my small air compressor in and as soon as I hit the on button it tripped the breaker. It shows the “lightning” running a whole house during a power outage. The add says starting at $39,000, but casually looking, I didn’t see any under $50,000.

Might be apples to oranges, but my Ford F150 has a standard house plug in the dash. I often have a half hour drive between lawns and plug my DeWalt 20V charger in the dash and it does a good job keeping the batteries up to snuff. I think that plug is rated at 6 amps. Don't know how it would do with the saw batteries?

I do have the air box cover. It's missing the hand guard, but a guy over here has one.

I just picked up a nice running KMS-4. I've only seen 4-5 of these state side. How often do you see them over there? I'm going to try and post a pic and youtube video. I think I tried to do a video before and it didn't work?

Best answer I've got so far is, "You left it on the grill to long!"

Hope you don't mind, I borrowed the pic and posted it on "Arboristsite" in the US, see if any of our guys have an idea?

Looking at the first picture again I think I might be wrong? At the bottom of the cut you can see 3-4 strokes that are more in line of what I was thinking? Again, very interesting.

I think it's from using the bowsaw. If you run your hand over the cut I bet there are high and low spots that correspond with the beginning and end of each stroke. I've seen something similar on a small 3-4" branch where the blade was not taught. Each stripe was roughly the same width as the blade. Nothing as pronounced as that though. That is a very interesting picture.

I called the West Virginia Forestry Dept today and chatted with the Forester in charge of my County. He said while not common, trees like mine are not overly rare either. He said it does meet all of the criteria for "Old Growth" trees. I asked if the big 24-36 inch, 110 feet tall White Oaks were the same age as this little one. He said all of the mature trees in my forest are within 20 years of each other. What happens is so many trees start growing and have spread out canopies. Then they drop acorns and the new ones, just a few years younger, get shaded out. They are very resilient, and keep growing in a stunted state. Sometimes a big tree will blow over, get logged, whatever, opening up a big patch of sunlight. The small stunted tree will take off growing and catch up with the other mature trees. Then when they are logged they get a surprise of very tight rings in the middle and overly large rings on the out side. I'll be on the watch for any more smallish trees that die or blow over. I'd like to have some quarter sawn boards out of an Old Growth tree.

I have seen where people have taken a straight pin and made a flag of what happened on that date, on that year?

I don't know what I'm going to do with the solid part. The first 8 or 9 blocks have a small hollow in them. Since they are already cut to 18" length, I might just make them firewood. The solid ones, I don't know. I could just cut them into cookies/discs, and sand them. I have a 32" wide drum sander. If I had of known before I cut it to firewood length, I would have cut some small saw logs and tried quarter sawing it. As they are, they make very interesting disks, just showing the close growth rings. I might put some on ebay and see what happens?

Haven't stopped by in a while. Mowing season had me busy. When things let up, my wife and I went on holiday from where we live in Maryland, to her friends house, in Oklahoma. Three days driving, 8-10 hours per day. In Oklahoma we went to Keystone Ancient Forest. I was expecting giant trees 2-300 feet tall. Nothing was over about 75-80 feet. There were smallish trees that looked similar to White Oaks, maybe 10-12 inches across, that had been bent in right angles about a foot off the ground. The info center said these trees were bent like that by Native Americans, 150+ years ago, as direction markers. I was skeptical and when we got back to the info center I called them out on it. I said there was no way a tree that small was 150 years old. Then they took me over to a display that had a slice of Oak and a slice of Cedar about a foot across. The Cedar had 167 growth rings on it. When I got home I did a bit of searching and found a lot of scientific documentation on the forest. I learned something interesting and awe inspiring. Something that old and that small. I have a piece of vacation property in West Virginia, about 2 1/2 hours from home. I was there this past weekend. When I was getting ready to leave, I decided to cut down a dead Oak and bring it home for firewood. The tree has been dead for 4-5 years and all the bark and most of the branches had fallen off. My Brother in Law was loading it up on my trailer, when he said, "look at these growth rings"? They were every bit as tight as the ones at Keystone Ancient Forest, on my own property, 1000 miles apart. This morning I took an orbital sander and sanded the chainsaw marks off so the annual rings would be easier to see. The piece I had was about 7-8 inches across, and I got 120+ rings. I hope I remember how to post pics. This little dead tree brought a lot of joy to my house this weekend, Joe.

I hope this gets right soon. Something like this can put a small guy out of business. It can hurt a big guy too, crews laid off, bills not paid. Good luck.

That's my last name, not a town. We do have several streets named after the family.

The Euro version of Google Maps must not get the state side version?

It's only 3,805 miles? My Dad's family is originally from France, Bonifant's.

I juggle chainsaws and work for beer. You pay the transport and give me the day?