144 FOREST UTILIZATION INDUSTRIAL FORESTRY 



A portable gasoline-driven chain saw has been in successful operation 

 in Laurel, Mississippi, for several years. These chain saws have also 

 been used in the redwoods, ponderosa pine, and other sections of the 

 country. 



Care should be exercised in felling not to destroy young or imma- 

 ture growth or to shatter the tops by lodging the tree against other 

 trees or on rocks, stumps, windfalls, etc. Logs are being taken in the 

 tops to small sizes when market conditions are favorable. In northern 

 white pine and Idaho white pine, logs are often taken down to 6 inches 

 in top diameter. On the West Coast, Douglas fir is cut down to 

 10 to 16 inches in top diameter, ponderosa pine to 7 to 10 inches, and 

 southern pine to 6 to 8 inches. Hardwoods are generally cut to 8 to 

 12 inches or larger, depending upon local conditions and market 

 requirements. 



Skidding, formerly practiced with animal power, chiefly horses, 

 mules, and oxen, is largely done now with the tractor and horse, and 

 in the largest virgin timber, such as Douglas fir and other West Coast 

 woods, southern cypress, and longleaf pine, by power skidders. The 

 tractor is a multiple-purpose woods instrument. It is used not only 

 for skidding out logs but also for hauling in supplies and building 

 road and railroad grades, felling trees and snags, making fire lines, 

 plowing for reforestation, and many other phases of woods work. 

 Tractor skidding has replaced horses in nearly every section of the 

 country. It is also displacing power skidding in the Northwest and 

 in the South. On many National Forest timber sales, notably in Cali- 

 fornia and the Southwest, power skidding is not permitted because 

 of the great damage done to reproduction and young growth. It is 

 generally conceded that animals are least destructive to reproduction 

 and immature growth in skidding, tractors do relatively little harm, 

 but power skidding does an enormous amount of damage, practically 

 destroying all the remaining growth on a logged area. These are very 

 important considerations in making plans for reproducing the forest. 

 Many million dollars are invested in providing methods of major 

 log transportation, also known as main log haul. Logging is primarily 

 a problem of transportation that of moving a bulky and heavy com- 

 modity, saw logs, from the woods to the sawmill. Major log trans- 

 portation may readily be divided into land and water transportation. 

 The latter has largely been superseded because the more accessible 

 stands of timber have been cut, also hardwoods which do not gener- 

 ally float have been logged more extensively since about 1900. 



For the past several decades, railroads have furnished the princi- 

 pal means of transporting logs from the woods to the sawmills. They 



