We stopped using horse logging in New Mexico. Too effective. Turned the place into a desert.
Posted on 11/06/2022 8:14:51 AM PST by george76
Having logged with horses.
What a PITA.
I have known a few to try to make a living logging with horses.
They don’t make much money most have given up after a few years.
A so called wonderful feel good idea but it doesn’t stand up over time.
Just not enough production to make any money now days.
Power equipment works so much better.
Memories ...
My grandad whom I never met, raised draft horses to sell. I can’t remember what kind, but Dad told me they were like Clydesdales only stronger and cheaper.
In the 90’s my neighbor was a retired horse logger. Logging was my first job, I started at 16 as a saw filer because minors were not allowed to work the site. After I turned 18, was moved up to a chaser on the landing. Then a shovel and skidder operator. Went into the Navy, when I got out, went back to logging as a tree feller, falling large coastal cedar, redwood, sequoia and fur’s in southern Oregon. Then the government started shutting down the industry, both federal contracts and private lands.
It killed the industry, I would still be logging today had the government not put so many restrictions on the industry. Logging was one of my most enjoyable jobs and experiances.
On our farm we have loggers cut every twenty years or so. The last time mule teams were used I was a kid and the mules were stored in our stables. Smart animals.
The last two times we cut were with log skidders and they made a mess of the woods.
Sigh!🤢
My mind makes straaaange connections:
You’re sick and twisted, like me.
Notice my comment about small parcels. Small parcels whose owners require that the ground not be torn up and whose trees cannot be economically harvested by equipment worth more than the value of the timber being harvested.
There used to be an older man in my area who logged using mules, and I mean he had some fine mules! He worked them both in the woods and pulling equipment and wagons, for parades and such. When spielberg made the color purple in Marshville, they contacted this man about being in the movie driving a wagon thru town pulled by his mules, he told them he’d get back to them.
He studied the movie and found that there was a rape scene in it at which point he called back and told them, NO, neither he nor his mules would be involved in a porn movie!
Unless it high end veneer or specially saw logs like walnut. ect.
Not enough money in it to make a living.
Even than a smaller skidder or tractor well not tear up the ground any more then a team.
Keeping horses is a PITA compared to a fuel powered equipment.
Been there done that.
Jerry and Mae. Jerry was a champion puller and pop never could break him of starting out with a jerk.
BTW..do you know what a Ponsse harvestor is now days? Right at around 1 million dollars. The whole harvest system-processor and forwarder are at about 1.5 million fro the cheap system.
John Deere's 803 tracked harvestor is supposed to be at about 800 thousand.
BTW...we used to ride them.
Just like riding a Cadillac. Most gentle animals on earth.Pop loved those two and never got rid of them. He turned them loose and let them retire in pasture.
Just got back from the woods up around Williams setting up landings and running cut lines.
Must have walked 5 miles today up and down those mountain sides. STIFF AND SORE.
 
 Finished the garage roof last week, and got a load of slash from an old cut. I creak a little.
Worked on a farm growing up. We used the draft horses to pull the tractors out of the mud when they got stuck.
We used them in early spring for gathering maple sap. We had a huge barrel fashioned into a sleigh for that. When there wasn’t enough snow left to traverse the sugar trails the season was over for us.
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