“Just west of you in SE Tennessee it’s rocks, not logs that are being stolen. Mountain stone has become big business in my neck of the woods.”
....is that the flat grey stone you’re talking about?....the kind they use in fireplaces?...it’s a very desirable building material in our county; especially the second home market....they all want a log home with a stacked stone fireplace...
.....the biggest poaching that I know of is ginseng(sp?).....you get guys slipping into the national forests to steal it....the worst rural crime is meth labs....people involved there are crazy....they’ll flat out kill you.
And in Oregon it was either western red & Port Orford cedars for lumber; or madrone & myrtle burls.
Yes, flat, grey stone usually used for fireplace facades and such. There's also what is known as "Crab Orchard" stone. This is flat sandstone, too, but it's more orange-yellow-golden in color and is usually sawed into bricks, but is sometimes used flat like mountain stone.
it’s a very desirable building material in our county; especially the second home market...
Yep, leaving here by the truckloads every day. I built the house I'm living in now, down to the last nail. I gathered all the stone I set in my 28' fireplace in the living room (vaulted ceiling), chimney, and exterior foundation facing from right here on the mountain, but that was several years before it became popular with the Mexicans.
.....the biggest poaching that I know of is ginseng(sp?).....you get guys slipping into the national forests to steal it
Yep, ginseng was a big deal around here about 20-30 years ago, but most of it has been harvested now. The places where it still grows are tightly guarded. I know a lady who lives nearby who still picks it for sale and the price is still high. She ain't talkin' about where she picks, either....
....the worst rural crime is meth labs....people involved there are crazy....they’ll flat out kill you.
Yep, got those, too. The Meth thing has really backed off quite a bit in the past couple of years since they moved the over the counter cold medicines with psuedo-effedrine back behind the counter. There for a while, the cops were busting about one meth lab a week around here. Now, it's pretty rare. It's a good thing, too. Besides the meth-heads being crazy, they scrape match heads to obtain the red phosporus they need as a key ingredient to make their brew. As a volunteer fireman, I've helped put out the local community trash compactor about a dozen times when the meth-heads would throw full garbage bags of scraped matches into the compactor. They leave just enough of the red phosphorus to make it catch fire when it's compacted. We had one that was a real roaring blaze. It took 8, 3000 gallon tanks of water to put out......and it ruined the compactor.