A Look Back

[Customweld]

As I read some of the posts with folks that have never hunted in the west, I have to sit back and reflect on how fortunate I was growing up. This is not a dig or slam on these folks, just a reflection of my own and how lucky I feel.
I grew up in a small, sawmill town. The mill was the largest employer in town. My dad worked there , along with the majority of the kids that I went to school with. It was an extremely tight knit community that looked after it’s own. We played 8 man football and there were times that we played on another towns basketball team if too many of them fouled out.
Hunting and fishing was just a way of life. We hunted almost every night after football practice. It didn’t matter if it was elk, deer or upland birds . If someone in town killed a bull and needed help packing, all they needed to do was show up at the high school and you’d have a team of kids to help out.
We most definitely didn’t have the financial advantages that some folks have, but we made it up in memories.

 

[Pony Soldier]

You must have grown up in my town. The coach told me i would have to choose between hunting and basketball. I never bounced another ball.

 

[Billy Goat]

Well, we just did things that I still mostly can't tell the stories of.


Small town, we got away with a lot. Had work ethic, but lot of excess energy too.

The one time I got in trouble with the law was doing donuts in the school parking lot. Then also had firearms from rabbit hunting that day, and alcohol....

Funny thing is the school never found out.


Just farm boys out being reforking stupid.

 

[Customweld]

You must have grown up in my town. The coach told me i would have to choose between hunting and basketball. I never bounced another ball.

Maybe so. Usually our coach was in the shenanigans right beside us.

 

[Customweld]

Well, we just did things that I still mostly can't tell the stories of.


Small town, we got away with a lot. Had work ethic, but lot of excess energy too.

The one time I got in trouble with the law was doing donuts in the school parking lot. Then also had firearms from rabbit hunting that day, and alcohol....

Funny thing is the school never found out.


Just farm boys out being reforking stupid.

Definitely got away with a lot of stuff that wouldn’t fly today. One of the kids that we ran with wax the Sheriff’s nephew, so I feel that we probably got away with more than we needed to.

 

[Pony Soldier]

To get through school I worked on the green chain, was a tail sawyer and when I refused to work weekends during hunting season - I found myself as a sticker poker on the stacker prepping boards for the dry kilns. It convinced me a college education was a better investment. Hell of a wakeup job.

 

[Customweld]

To get through school I worked on the green chain, was a tail sawyer and when I refused to work weekends during hunting season - I found myself as a sticker poker on the stacker prepping boards for the dry kilns. It convinced me a college education was a better investment. Hell of a wakeup job.

My dad pulled green chain for a lot of years. I remember those guys out on the line when it was 10 below. Ice hanging from their beards, they were tough men. He was disappointed in me when I turned down a good scholarship to go cut logs.

 

[280Ackley]

Sounds like Elk city!!!!

 

[Pony Soldier]

You always knew when the neighbors got elk. They would hang them on the healboom so the roving dogs couldn't get to them.

Everyone got up at 5:30 am because it took that long to warm up the Peterbuilt log trucks and there were a lot of them.

There wasn't any tv until after 10 because of all the guys welding their cats back together for the next day. I thought caterpillar yellow was the national colors.

 

[Ross]

Green chain, will never forget the smell of timber and 14 hr days….the summer of 1983 Riley creek mill Laclede Idaho…made me want to finish college and met my wife cruising the Sandpoint beachgood memories….also never forget the safety sign the number of days without injury and the day a guy went through the chipper

 

[Customweld]

Green chain, will never forget the smell of timber and 14 hr days….the summer of 1983 Riley creek mill Laclede Idaho…made me want to finish college and met my wife cruising the Sandpoint beachgood memories

I never wanted to follow the old man’s footsteps into the sawmill, but by golly all I ever wanted to do was cut timber. Tough way to make living. I did it for as long as my wife was willing to let me. Cutting under a helicopter is not for the family man.

 

[Jethro6x6]

Thats way cool you guys,, the fabric of this nation,,,, an its pretty much a vanishing trait,,,,,so few today will work as such,,,,

 

[summs]

Neat perspective, growing up 20 miles from New York City, you'd be surprised how much outdoor opportunity there is, but no culture of hunting, hunting friends are few and far between. I remember leaving the house around 6:30am with the beagles to chase rabbits, the 80 year old neighbor ask what I was doing. "rabbit hunting", her response 'People still hunt?'.

I hate seeing the never been west any tips post. But what was an after school activity for you, is an all of our PTO for some on the east coast. It's easy to take a week and hunt Maine, Adirondacks, Vermont, costs $1000 for a week with lodging, tags, gas. But to go out west, even CO is $1000 just in fuel.

People out west bust their ass for a deer, if they get a tag, mean while I'm sitting on unlimited does from September to February, and 6 buck tags. Some 70% of NJ has an early bow season, where you MUST shoot a doe to earn your buck tag.

Yet, all me and my buddies want to do is shoot a mule deer and an elk. Grass is always greener

 

[Pony Soldier]

A new feeling of reality was when the mill was into the big timber and you got to pull 20 ft , 2 x 12s on the chain. Talk about pucker factor.

I also remember one of my classmates held the record for rolling a d-7. He lived through 3 end over end rolls followed by 5 side roll overs. Remember in those days there weren't any seat belts and the inside of the cab resembled a porcupine turned inside out with steering clutches, throttle, winch brake and clutch. The closest I have come to that is a sideways slide on snow on a steep hill. The pucker factor on that experience is right up there with a bad day in the back of a helicopter.

 

[Customweld]

Neat perspective, growing up 20 miles from New York City, you'd be surprised how much outdoor opportunity there is, but no culture of hunting, hunting friends are few and far between. I remember leaving the house around 6:30am with the beagles to chase rabbits, the 80 year old neighbor ask what I was doing. "rabbit hunting", her response 'People still hunt?'.

I hate seeing the never been west any tips post. But what was an after school activity for you, is an all of our PTO for some on the east coast. It's easy to take a week and hunt Maine, Adirondacks, Vermont, costs $1000 for a week with lodging, tags, gas. But to go out west, even CO is $1000 just in fuel.

People out west bust their ass for a deer, if they get a tag, mean while I'm sitting on unlimited does from September to February, and 6 buck tags. Some 70% of NJ has an early bow season, where you MUST shoot a doe to earn your buck tag.

Yet, all me and my buddies want to do is shoot a mule deer and an elk. Grass is always greener

True about the grass being greener. When it comes to hunting elk and deer hunting, I do fine. On the other hand, If I had to go back east, I would be completely lost and would be asking the same type of questions. As a dumb country kid, I grew up thinking anything east of Nebraska was like NYC. If I had to guess, small town folks are mostly the same. Just a few different variations in culture.

 

[Customweld]

A new feeling of reality was when the mill was into the big timber and you got to pull 20 ft , 2 x 12s on the chain. Talk about pucker factor.

I also remember one of my classmates held the record for rolling a d-7. He lived through 3 end over end rolls followed by 5 side roll overs. Remember in those days there weren't any seat belts and the inside of the cab resembled a porcupine turned inside out with steering clutches, throttle, winch brake and clutch. The closest I have come to that is a sideways slide on snow on a steep hill. The pucker factor on that experience is right up there with a bad day in the back of a helicopter.

The mill that my dad worked at was one BCC’s large log mills. We lived across the street from it. Everyone in town used to hate when they were running white fir. It stunk the whole town up. I've got 2 roll overs under my belt. One complete 360 in an old 225 CAT excavator and a roll and a half in a D6D. The D6 was an icy, outsloped road and no ice grousers. The 225 was a slip off a ridge between 2 log landings. I was buckled in both times.

 

[Pony Soldier]

When I was a tail sawyer, the mill was one of last with a big head rig. They brought in some big white pine out of the cedars to run through the mill. The logs were so big that the dogs on the carriage couldn't get a bite so they fastened them down with railroad spikes and cables until they could cut a flat side. One of them came loose and rolled over the hole I stood in. I went down like gopher until they got it back on the carriage.

I have a 3-t and a 7-m. A D6D was a real step up. Until you have pulled levers all day, you don't know what exercise is. A trip like yours makes you a real believer in seat belts.

 

[CorbLand]

Kind of the same for the early part of my childhood. I was 19 before I knew you bought potatoes in the store or whatever those little things they sell you are...I dont really classify them as potatoes.

 

[sneaky]

Since y'all like Cats lol

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[Pony Soldier]

Corbland: I was in my 20s before I saw a house with a basement with a cement floor. All the ones I saw were root cellers under the house with stairs.