Marking the Pole Sale

During the last week in July, pole buyers from Pacific Wood Preserving came to pre-mark the poles for the Cameron Pole sale which will be logged later this summer. The map in the post below shows the location of the pole sale which spans about 20 acres adjacent the Firehouse Trail (or south road) in the interior of the tract. Those 20 acres contain some of the tallest, straightest, most perfect Douglas Fir trees I have ever seen! It was thought several years ago by my advisor John Bliss that the stand would be an ideal utility pole harvest. Luckily it seems he was right!

Douglas Fir trees in the Cameron Pole sale

Boundary tag for the pole sale

Steve Pilkerton, an engineer from the College Forests, Brad Withrow-Robinson and myself had the pleasure of tagging along and learning a little about the process. Marking poles is surprisingly intuitive. A pole tree should be relatively uniform in diameter from DBH (diameter at breast height) until about 60 to 90 feet up the tree. The tree also has to be as strait as possible with little sweep and free from defect such as rot, funny branches, wiggles, crooks and sweep. Below are some examples of what the markers tried to avoid:

This tree had a broken top when it was younger

Tree with a defective arm

Tree with a swollen butt and wood sweep

The sap on this tree is indicative of a scar or heart rot

 

The trees selected for cutting by the pole buyers were marked with a red band

We have a winner!

Currently, timber prices are the highest they've been for several years, with the utility pole market being even more lucrative. Some places of the unit will be a little clumpy, but over all the trees will be cut uniformly over the entire stand to mitigate erosion and wind damage. This pole sale is an ideal demonstration of what a small, private woodland owner could do with a similar stand of timber. The goal of this particular pole sale is to remove only 8-10 trees per acre. Even a such a small volume of timber will generate a substantial revenue for the Cameron Tract that will help contribute to future education, recreation and demonstration projects!

It was a beautiful morning on the Cameron Tract!