Mike Duffy's Timber Roots

by Mike Duffy

My logging DNA started with my grandfather who became a horse logger after he got home from WW1.  He lost an arm when the chains on the harness got wrapped around it.  I remember as a boy looking at the stub and thought it was cool. I do not know what made him so angry all the time:  was it WW1, or the horses?  Maybe he knew I did not want to go through life with just one arm and was trying to drill that into me.

My brothers and I grew up working on dairy farms and trapping.  In 1974 I was making $300/month pulling tits on Holstein cows and I had my fill of it.  In December, I headed for an abandoned tar paper shack in North Washburn County.  It was in a roadless wilderness block called Frog Creek that I knew from hunting.  Beaver was bringing good money so I called my hunting buddy Buckbrush (The Big One) and asked him to join me and get rich trapping beaver.  He said “every time you come up with a money scheme, its all work and no pay! NO!”  I loaded up my 1969 1/2-ton truck and headed to the shack alone.

That winter was hell; 20-30 below, then warm up and snow, then repeat.  The only heat in that shack was a Monarch wood stove burning green aspen. It wasn’t hot enough to cook an egg but I was loving life.  I heard a loud noise one day so I hiked up to the fireline and here was a Pettibone grader; 4-53 Detroit with no muffler and two dogs following him.  He stopped and motioned me over.  He never smiled and his hands on the steering wheel were HUGE! 

He introduced himself as Jim Wozny and said he knew I was up here and was worried I was freezing to death or starving with the winter we were having.  He said I could come to work for him cutting and skidding pulp logs.  My only experience was with a crosscut and a David Bradley chainsaw (a real gem) cutting firewood for a maple syrup evaporator. It burned a pickup load of wood every 3 hours.  Jim knew I was green but by March I was piece cutting Jack pine.  You shovel 3’ of snow, fall the tree, cut it into 100” lengths then every 40’ make a pile along a skid trail.  Try that with a dull David Bradley saw for $ 0.13 per stick.  I called my friend Buckbrush and said we could hit 1000 pieces a day and be rich!  More like 200; no wonder he did not trust me!

At 17, Buckbrush was 6’4” all heart and laughter; thankfully not mean!  We went into a credit union in Spooner, WI dressed in our finest attire...torn pin-stripe wool pants, Mackinaw shirts full of saw chips and reeking with gas.  I thought with Buckbrush co-signing for a $300 note on a new 045 Stihl would be no problem…not so. I had to go to Jim for financing.  Guess I should have cleaned up before visiting with the plastic suited banker!   This new saw bumped us up to 400 sticks a day…52 bucks a day to split!  Springtime hit and then a log truck driver named Punk Smith would start hauling.

He had a self-loader and could haul about 8 cords or 65000 lbs.  Punk was a jewel of a man. He went right up the skid trails over stumps and got up and down the loader 10 times to get a load. He wore his hat with the bill straight up and cocked off to one side.  He got picked up for drunk driving and lost his license and had to borrow a friend’s car with an automatic to take the test …not used to this he hit a parking meter and flunked the test.  He looked the examiner in the eye and said “In 1944 I crawled across France on my hands and knees to save your ass; now you save mine!”  They passed him.

Next, Jim got Buckbrush and I into cutting and skidding.  Started learning how to file a chain and directional falling; it was so much easier!  My falling improved to the point where I started getting cocky.  Our woods vehicle was a 1963 Belair.  One day Buckbrush was sitting on the trunk with the lid open eating a can of beans while I was falling a 70’ big tooth aspen.  It broke off the stump and I hollered “RUN!”  Buckbrush was big but he could run like a cat as he ran out of the way.  That tree destroyed the back third of the car… glass and all.  We had to wire up the gas tank to get home. 

I told Buckbrush I would pay for the damages to his car but lucked out two weeks later after we spent too much time in the bar and were going back to logging camp.  He forgot about a T intersection and we hit this big jackpine about 8’ up. It destroyed the car so there was no evidence of my sin!  We walked back to camp 6 miles laughing the whole way.  When we got into the shack, Buckbrush turned his bedroom light on and there were 2 black sewer rats making love on his bed.  He looked at me and said he is done lumberjacking.  He said “take me home in the morning, and don’t call me anymore on how to get rich!”

I worked alone until my brother Tommy got out of the 82nd Airborne and joined me in the woods.  I was worried he would run me into the ground, but on the 4th morning in camp I was cooking breakfast when Tommy got up.  He looks at me and says “I’m quitting.  There's gotta be an easier way to make a living than doing this!”  I think the mosquitos and deer flies got the best of him. 

Things really started to change in the late 70s; log trucks got diesel engines and more axles.  Hard hats started showing up.  Saw manufacturers separated the crankcase from the gas tank. Sprocket nose bars were in.  LP built the first wafer board plant in Hayward, WI.  Punk retired with all the old-time log haulers. Old Jim got sick and passed away.  I called Joe Hendricks, who was another local contractor who had 5 brothers and none weighed over 150 pounds.  Those guys could really cut and skid timber with C5 tree farmer skidders and John Deere crawlers.  I got a job for myself and Jimmie, my younger brother.  These guys put all their energy into work.  They hardly said a word.  No one spoke with 7 of us packed in the crew cab.  We would burn 7 gallons of saw gas a day with 4 saws running and get 70-80 cords a day.  Our best week was 610 cords.  A cord of big tooth aspen is 4400 pounds cut in 100” lengths and hauled crossways.

Working for Joe I read that you could get 2% more HP out of a screaming 3-53 Detroit if you took the exhaust off, so I did.  After a month the crew got together and told me if I did not put that muffler back on, I would never see another sunrise, so I did! In ‘88 Joe got sick and passed.  I got a hold of Jasper, Joe, and Randy Larson in Missoula, MT.  I had never been on line ground but the work was great!  Less bugs and heat and a great Christian family to work for but being one who wanted to see what was over the next hill I moved on to Horizon Helicopters.

We were all over in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana wherever there were trees to cut.  Montana has the best hunting seasons so I came back.  In 1996 I went to work for Willard Hahn who talked Lee Wilhelm and I into going to Colorado.  It was another adventure on the Grand Mesa. 

By 1999 I decided to be my own boss and bought a 1550 Case track skidder.  I kept working and buying better equipment.  When I got my first enclosed, heated cab I thought I died and went to heaven!  The last 25 years have been spent logging and upgrading equipment.   Like the Book of James 4:14 “Life is but a vapor.”  A special thanks to Gary Peck, Joe Wagner and Rick Tatarka for keeping me in wood and clean landings.  Without these guys there is no money rolling in!  The Lord has always blessed me with the greatest people to work with and I have truly enjoyed 50 years as a logger.  From the shores of Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean I have seen a lot of great country. 

My brothers and Buckbrush and I never did get all the trees cut in Frog creek like we thought.  My wife and I visited Frog Creek last fall and the only remains of the old cabin was a coil spring from the mattress.  The Monarch cook stove was gone.  The trees are ready to be harvested again.  The wolves have decimated the deer herd.  There is no more ground skidding allowed, only Ponsees and forwarders.   Maybe one of these days I will slip Buckbrush a couple hundred dollars for his Belair car.  I leave you all with some advice:  Don’t ever go logging with a David Bradley Chainsaw and don’t waste your time with a credit union and a $300 dollar loan.  I sold my Timber Pro a couple of weeks ago so now I have an excuse to spend more time with my beloved wife Allison and our Drahthaar dog hunting ducks and ringnecks.  Til next time, in Christ.

Mike Duffy