144 



SEEDING AND PLANTING 



men who gather and sack the cones and later carry them to the 

 nearest accessible road or trail, from where they are transported 

 to the site selected for curing and cleaning the seed. Collecting 

 from squirrel hoards can be continued long after the cones on 



Photograph by U. S. Forest Service 



FIG. 25. Gathering cones from a squirrel cache at the base of a tree. 

 Wasatch National Forest. 



the trees have opened and scattered their seed. When a large 

 quantity of seed is desired, this is often advantageous as it pro- 

 longs the time over which the seed can be profitably collected. 

 When squirrel hoards are abundant, the cost of collecting is usu- 

 ally less than collecting from trees. Furthermore, squirrels hoard 

 only the best cones; hence the seed is usually better than that 

 picked from the tree. The size of individual caches varies 

 greatly, some containing but a few cones while others may hold 

 10 or even 15 bushels. Under exceptionally favorable conditions 

 a man can gather and sack from 10 to 20 bushels in a single 

 day, although the average is usually less than half this amount. 

 Not infrequently with such species as lodgepole pine, western 

 yellow pine, and Douglas fir the average cost per bushel for an 

 entire season's collecting from squirrel hoards may be less than 

 25 cents. This average is considerably less than half the cost 

 of collecting the same species directly from the tree. 



