Wooden Rain

A very important part of every tree falling plan is your escape from the stump area. As I have told before on this blog, nearly all injuries and deaths related to tree falling occur within a 12 foot radius of the stump. You need to move out of this zone on a pre-established escape route as soon as you set the tree in motion. You should move 20-25 feet, and use other trees for shields if that can be done easily. The escape route should be 45 degrees off of the fall line of the tree, and the opposite direction from which the tree is falling. After the tree is on the ground you need to stay back for a few seconds until you are sure that no more woody debris is going to rain in on the stump area.

The United States Forest Service still teaches the old falling methods which finalize your hinge while the tree is beginning to fall. The reason I have heard from Forest Service chainsaw instructors is that boring a tree to make a hinge is a difficult skill to learn. One of the safety problems with the Forest Service method of falling trees is that your escape from the stump area is delayed or prevented because you are still cutting with your saw deep in the tree.

The picture below is the site of a snag I cut in my woods. Note that the chainsaw is on the stump, and the wood in front of me is part of the treetop which fell backwards as the tree went down. It landed 10 feet from the stump. One of my landowners was nearly killed in 2006 by the same type of incident. He was knocked down 12 feet from the stump, and spent several months in a hospital and rehab facility.


 Dropping dead trees is always a bit more risky than working with live trees, so use the open face and bore cut method when you are working on snags; it will allow you to escape from the bullseye more quickly, and may save your life.