If you enjoy being physically active in the outdoors, felling trees might
be a good career choice.
Francois Allard has been logging in his family's business for most of his
life. "I started driving tractors at seven," he says.
Allard started out as a delimber, cutting the limbs and tops off trees.
Later, he began hand falling. "Faller is not an entry-level job," he says.
Hand fallers average 300 to 400 trees a day. Allard's family bought a
mechanical feller, called a feller-buncher, several years ago. With the machine,
Allard can cut 3,000 or 4,000 trees in a 12-hour day.
A feller-buncher resembles a mechanical hoe, Allard says. Its head has
a saw that is 54 inches in diameter. It cuts a 20-inch tree in a second. At
the same time, the machine's blade grabs the tree and lays the tree down in
the direction you want it to go.
The operator sits in a heated cab. "It's a good thing because we log in
cold winter weather," says Allard.
Allard and his crew often set up camp and stay in the woods for two weeks
at a time. "Being away from the family so long is hard," he says.
Allard's work depends on the number of contracts his company gets. "If
we're short of work, there's no income," he points out. "And that can be stressful."
Anyone interested in working as a faller is advised to complete high school.
"Then come and talk to loggers. Ask if you can spend a few days at a camp
and see how you like the lifestyle."
Ted Simmons is a hand faller. He is an independent contractor who finds
his own felling contracts.
Simmons learned felling from his father. He says the occupation is unusual,
since there is no school you can attend. "Usually, your dad starts you out,"
he explains. "Then you start learning tricks from the older fallers."
Simmons has worked in many different locations. The different species
-- spruce, cedar, poplar -- all require different felling techniques. "The
only way to learn is by doing. People can explain what a certain type of tree
is like, but until you put your saw into it yourself, you're not sure what
it will do."
Safety is important. Simmons believes fallers should take safety courses,
watch safety videos, learn to use the safety equipment and always remember
to look after themselves. It is dangerous to get overconfident. "A faller
that thinks he knows everything is a faller that is going to get hurt."
He likes the fact that he can earn good money as an independent contractor,
and that he can work for at least 10 months of the year.
In Simmons' area, most logging is done in the winter. They must wait for
swamps and bogs to freeze over. The loggers need two or three feet of snow
so they can build trails and roads without disturbing the undergrowth. "I
wear out a couple of pairs of snowshoes every winter," he says with a laugh.
Monique King is one of the few women fallers. King was looking for work
that would pay enough to cover the cost of a babysitter for her four kids.
Her husband, a faller, taught her to use a saw and she went to work helping
her husband with his spacing contract. (Spacing means thinning out small
trees so there is room for some to grow big.) In time, King started getting
her own spacing contracts.
Three years later, King took a bucking and falling course that her husband
was teaching. She began bucking on her husband's crew. (Bucking means cutting
the branches off a felled tree and tidying it up.) Later, King got her own
snag felling contract. (A snag is a dead tree that is still standing.)
In time, King began doing hand falling for her husband. The work is physically
demanding. The hardest part is the hike uphill to the cutting area while toting
a lot of equipment. "In the beginning, my muscles screamed at the end of each
day," she says.
King does both bucking and falling. "I prefer falling because buckers make
less money," she says.
She's careful to use her safety equipment. She has had a couple of incidents
resulting in five small chainsaw cuts on her leg. "It's a good reminder!"
Robert Bottorff runs his own timber company in Oregon. He started because
he was raised in a timber community and enjoyed working outdoors. He learned
his trade from older, more experienced fallers.
Now, Bottorff does both machine felling and hand felling. Days start early,
around 4 a.m. The crew has to be in the work area and ready to start by daylight.
Hand fallers work six hours a day because the work is so physically taxing.
Machine fellers work longer hours because the work is not as tiresome. "But
it is mental strain, because working a feller-buncher is similar to sitting
at a computer all day," Bottorff says.
Bottorff likens a feller-buncher to a big skill saw that cuts down trees,
then grabs them and swings them around in the direction you want. "If this
interests you, learn to play computer games with a joystick," he advises.
"The technique is almost the same as using the joystick in a machine feller."