Trees Do The Darndest Things

I ran across this oddball red maple last week, and I thought about it for a bit, trying to figure out what happened here. It looks to me as if someone topped some saplings around this tree, cut openings in the bark of the big tree, and plugged the topped off saplings ito the wounds. Anyway, that is my best guess, which I support because of the large calluses at the junctions. Opinions?