Looked like soon to be wreck to me ??

[gus]

I took my granddaughter out for a short metal detecting run, her first. We had a good time but just before we left a truck pulled in a little ways down from where I was parked. When I parked, I noted someone had cut some black locust for firewood there and had built a trail down into the creek bottom.

As we were leaving there's a truck parked in the road, driver's door wide open and I just barely had room to get by. Seems this guy was cutting wood as I thought and he'd dropped a big locust about 150-200' from us and it fell over the creek (creek is generous, more like a dribble). He said he'd broken his tractor trying to get that log out.

Here's where I could see the wreck about to happen. The log looked to be near 24" in diam and probably near 40' long. We were on the road and about 25-30' higher than the log. He had a snatch block rigged, but he rigged it up to a small locust, 12-14" diam, nearly 10' up on the tree (ladder was still leaning on the tree). The tree was growing out of the edge of the bank and even leaning into the pull.

All I could see was much of any pull and the small tree was also going to be in the creek bottom. I think he was planning on pulling it with his truck and this was from the road at a 90 degree angle to the pull ???.

[Paul Buhler]

Inexperience can be a harsh teacher. It sounds like this person was about to learn something. Hopefully without injury.