How does a forester market timber?

Marketing timber is probably one of the most difficult and potentially the most rewarding jobs that a forester can get. The job entails meeting with the landowner to determine his objectives and preferences; determining which trees to harvest and marking them clearly with paint; recording each tree on a tally sheet with species, diameter, number of logs, and veneer volume if any; calculating the volumes and number of trees by species; advertising the sale; conducting a sealed bid sale; preparing a sale contract and ensuring both parties understand the terms; and being the liason between the buyer, logging crew, and the landowner during the harvest.

This is a typical rubber tired skidder used to haul logs from the woods.

When marking timber I carry a forestry paint gun, spare cans of paint, a tally book, a diameter tape for measuring tree diameters, and a hatchet for "sounding" trees. Trees are sounded by hitting the trunk of the tree with the back of the hatchet to see if they are hollow or developing heart rot. Sounding a tree is another task that requires a little experience to recognize what "sounds" hollow or rotten depending on the species. A cottonwood or a basswood can sound hollow to the layman when it is actually a good tree. Estimating the number of logs in a tree comes from experience and remember that not all trees have one straight bole. Often the trees I mark may divide into several stems above chest height where the diameter is measured. Marks are made at breast height on the bole and at the base of the stump. This enables the forester to return after a harvest and check that only the trees he marked were cut. Determining veneer volumes also takes experience.

Note the tree in the center of the photo may have appeared healthy before it was cut but it was losing value.

I cannot stress how important it is to hire a forester to do this type of work. A forester considers many factors when marking a tree for harvest. Most of my marking jobs have been improvement harvests where I marked the worse trees in the woods, leaving the best for the future. A forester has to determine if a tree is going to appreciate in value at a reasonable rate before the next harvest and if that is the case he will leave it. Mature trees which have practically stopped growing, trees that have such poor form that they will never be worth much, and trees that historically are low value need to be removed to allow regeneration and growth of better species and crop trees already present.

Good harvesting techniques minimize damage to the rest of the woods. Note that the younger trees in the vicinity of the stumps will have more sunlight now that the larger trees have been removed.

I must add for all the tree huggers out there, trees are living organisms and as such they mature and die the same as any other living being. Trees are a renewable resource and a crop the same as corn, wheat, or any other crop. One of the jobs of a forester is to accelerate the process of nature by creating optimum conditions for growth and regeneration of forest stands. Nature can produce fine forests but, in a society with demands for wood products, we cannot wait the amount of time nature takes to produce timber. Those who say there are alternatives to wood products should remember that those alternatives require the use of resources that are not renewable such as petroleum.

Hopefully this answers a few questions and I will be adding to this page in the future.

Last update on Tuesday, February 10, 1998