Forest Giants

I'd just like to add a note of caution to this thread- tree appreciation can really muck up the hunt, so please be careful when you practice it. Went for quite a long excursion one day a few years ago with an arborist, we spent all day sneaking through the bush, then almost at the end of the day popped out into a Horopito covered slope, with several very large Rimu interspersed at 15 metre intervals and the low afternoon sunshine beaming through the understory. Transfixed, we both let our attention be drawn to the age old bark and gnarly branches, whereupon the 5 deer scattered throughout our immediate foreground noisily disappeared in 4 different directions. Tree hugging is for after the deer hunting.

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Originally Posted by BRADS

We've got various blocks of bush on the farm, some doc some queen Elizabeth trust in one of them is the only totara tree in hawkes bay to survive the land burns, it's pretty impressive, not huge buy other trees standards but huge in the totara world.

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I remember a stand of very old kahikatea on Fernlea Farm, not far from the Makaretu on that block. Some nice old trees in your area.

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This brings back some memories, while a forest foreman with the NZFS at Pureora, I got called into the office by the OiC. The aerial spraying company who did the Radiata pine dothi spraying said that their pilots were getting worried about flying amongst the dead native spars ( dead standing trees)in the pine plantations. As they flew lower than the dead natives, bits could fall off the spars as a plane was going past. The result would not be good. So my job was to go out into the pines and fall all the standing dead spars.
Armed with a stihl 096 with a 5 foot bar, taller than I was, away I went. Every tree was an ugly malformed monster. Left behind by the native loggers 10 years eariIer because it had no or little commercial value, or rotten. Weeks later the job was almost complete.
There was one Totara that I drove past every day. This one is going to give me trouble. Left for last.
The tree was complete except no foliage. A standing Pureora Forest Giant. Out in the middle of a Pumice quarry flat.
Leaning back on the trusty B1600 mazda ute having a smoke, as you did in those days. Eyeing the tree to see where it may fall. I decided that it was too dangerous to fall. Although standing straight as a die, it was hollow. In fact the local pig hunters used the tree to singe pork. A good three metres across you could live in it. Problem was, at the bottom of the trunk there was only about 100mm of wood holding a 50-60m high tree up. No wood for a scarf. Tree with no lean. Leave it alone and bring in the gelignite.
As I was contemplating this, one of the mechanical stall who shall remain nameless drove in. When I explained what I was doing he grabbed the saw and muttered something about how a man would do it. Oblivious to my words of warning, he started the saw and just barely touched the tree.
I’m sure you have all seen the 911 twin towers imploding. Well this is what the tree did. It was waiting, the trap was set. Then sprung
It collapsed in record time. When the dust settled, no mechanic. He was buried under tonnes of wood.
Do I radio for help first or confirm theres a body ? I start looking then hear a pathetic call for help. Pulling branches away I find a man crouched down and surrounded by a massive branch over a metre in diameter. It had grown almost in 270 degrees to form a circle and fallen around the fool protecting him completely. Helping him out of the debris, he walked to his vehicle without a word. Enough said.
The saw was not so lucky. I had to fill out the accident and write off forms.

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Originally Posted by Huntertoo

This brings back some memories, while a forest foreman with the NZFS at Pureora, I got called into the office by the OiC. The aerial spraying company who did the Radiata pine dothi spraying said that their pilots were getting worried about flying amongst the dead native spars ( dead standing trees)in the pine plantations. As they flew lower than the dead natives, bits could fall off the spars as a plane was going past. The result would not be good. So my job was to go out into the pines and fall all the standing dead spars.
Armed with a stihl 096 with a 5 foot bar, taller than I was, away I went. Every tree was an ugly malformed monster. Left behind by the native loggers 10 years eariIer because it had no or little commercial value, or rotten. Weeks later the job was almost complete.
There was one Totara that I drove past every day. This one is going to give me trouble. Left for last.
The tree was complete except no foliage. A standing Pureora Forest Giant. Out in the middle of a Pumice quarry flat.
Leaning back on the trusty B1600 mazda ute having a smoke, as you did in those days. Eyeing the tree to see where it may fall. I decided that it was too dangerous to fall. Although standing straight as a die, it was hollow. In fact the local pig hunters used the tree to singe pork. A good three metres across you could live in it. Problem was, at the bottom of the trunk there was only about 100mm of wood holding a 50-60m high tree up. No wood for a scarf. Tree with no lean. Leave it alone and bring in the gelignite.
As I was contemplating this, one of the mechanical stall who shall remain nameless drove in. When I explained what I was doing he grabbed the saw and muttered something about how a man would do it. Oblivious to my words of warning, he started the saw and just barely touched the tree.
I’m sure you have all seen the 911 twin towers imploding. Well this is what the tree did. It was waiting, the trap was set. Then sprung
It collapsed in record time. When the dust settled, no mechanic. He was buried under tonnes of wood.
Do I radio for help first or confirm theres a body ? I start looking then hear a pathetic call for help. Pulling branches away I find a man crouched down and surrounded by a massive branch over a metre in diameter. It had grown almost in 270 degrees to form a circle and fallen around the fool protecting him completely. Helping him out of the debris, he walked to his vehicle without a word. Enough said.
The saw was not so lucky. I had to fill out the accident and write off forms.

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Bloody good story, love hearing tales from people who had interesting jobs, especially before health and saftey got involved. When people knew how to do thier jobs safely without having to be nannyed .
Also what's that saying about experience being learnt just after you need it. Bet that guy never had a crack at another tree

you cannot teach some stupid bastards - we had at a big Urewera fire a huge rata that would spark up and start the tawa around going so we decided to blow it over -this was huge 150 feet high and 6 feet around the base - soo mate from Murupara turned up with a heaps of jelly and 10milk bottles full of urea with jelly inside and we loaded the trunk - the trunk was about 6 foot thru so we bored some holes in and packed it in - following best practice we loaded a scarf and we had a delayed detonator and in theory we would blow a scarf and the 1,5 seconds later we would blow the main trunk - we were using electric detonators so we loaded all the milk bottles in and wired it up - bloody mate bundled cord together and when I objected saying he will cut the charge cords from the scarf to our main charges states na all good - so we wind out all the electric cord we had about 200 metres - hook it up and press the charger - big boom but not two - muppet has to go back in to a rata with a couple of feet of remaining trunk and hook up the front charges -gets back we wire it up again and thru the trees over it goes - shit himself doing it literally



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Not so much a giant in size, but certainly in age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortingall_Yew
Visited it he’s of times in my younger days and always felt their was something quite spiritual about it.

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Originally Posted by gonetropo

as a wee fella i got dragged into forest to see a square trunked kauri, cant remember where but it was a tourist thing. should still be there.

but honestly till you have seen a giant redwood you cannot believe a plant can be so big. its like a building covered in bark

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Would that have been the square Kauri just off the tapu - coroglen road on the coromandle just north of thames.
Z

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Originally Posted by XR500

The Northern Ruahines has some of the oldest trees in NZ. The Kaikawaka and Halls totara up there, some are aged at 1200 years old. Stumpy little buggers in comparison but impressive nonetheless. But yeah, I see that those old Kauris are somewhere between 1200 and 3000 years old:o

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If you're in Wgtn and want to show your kids an old-ish tree there is an 800 year old Rimu in Wilton's Bush
The viewing platform has gone in since I was last there
It's about a 40 min round trip from the carpark IIRC
Track is a bit shit in the wet for very small kids unless they've upgraded it

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/...ee-new-zealand

when I was culling down the Tehoe they were still native logging Mangataniwha saw some big rimu go out one short log and that's a load

Am I the only one that saw this thread and thought it was about me ? :D

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Originally Posted by Barry the hunter

you cannot teach some stupid bastards - we had at a big Urewera fire a huge rata that would spark up and start the tawa around going so we decided to blow it over -this was huge 150 feet high and 6 feet around the base - soo mate from Murupara turned up with a heaps of jelly and 10milk bottles full of urea with jelly inside and we loaded the trunk - the trunk was about 6 foot thru so we bored some holes in and packed it in - following best practice we loaded a scarf and we had a delayed detonator and in theory we would blow a scarf and the 1,5 seconds later we would blow the main trunk - we were using electric detonators so we loaded all the milk bottles in and wired it up - bloody mate bundled cord together and when I objected saying he will cut the charge cords from the scarf to our main charges states na all good - so we wind out all the electric cord we had about 200 metres - hook it up and press the charger - big boom but not two - muppet has to go back in to a rata with a couple of feet of remaining trunk and hook up the front charges -gets back we wire it up again and thru the trees over it goes - shit himself doing it literally



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Had a few stories like that popping piles in the water to get rid of them. Easier than trying to cut them off when they've been impregnated by coarse sand and small stones due to water action - rather stuffs the chain...

Drill a few holes in the right locations to form a shear plane and back right off to somewhere safe and pop the thing off. Usually with a strop on it, tied off to something so you can find the thing again and lift it out. Of course, the one that didn't want to play and for whatever reason was last seen heading straight up trailing a strop, a piece of rope and the lump of timber lying on the bank that the rope was tied to. Never did find that one, went straight up and as far as we know it never came back down. I know the laws of physics state that 'what goes up must come down' but also some laws seem to be made to be broken!

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Originally Posted by No.3

Had a few stories like that popping piles in the water to get rid of them. Easier than trying to cut them off when they've been impregnated by coarse sand and small stones due to water action - rather stuffs the chain...

Drill a few holes in the right locations to form a shear plane and back right off to somewhere safe and pop the thing off. Usually with a strop on it, tied off to something so you can find the thing again and lift it out. Of course, the one that didn't want to play and for whatever reason was last seen heading straight up trailing a strop, a piece of rope and the lump of timber lying on the bank that the rope was tied to. Never did find that one, went straight up and as far as we know it never came back down. I know the laws of physics state that 'what goes up must come down' but also some laws seem to be made to be broken!

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During the Pascal-B nuclear test of August 1957,[8][9] a 900-kilogram (2,000 lb) iron lid was welded over the borehole to contain the nuclear blast, despite Brownlee predicting that it would not work.[8] When Pascal-B was detonated, the blast went straight up the test shaft, launching the cap into the atmosphere. The plate was never found.[10] Scientists believe compression heating caused the cap to vaporize as it sped through the atmosphere.[8] A high-speed camera, which took one frame per millisecond, was focused on the borehole because studying the velocity of the plate was deemed scientifically interesting.[8] After the detonation, the plate appeared in only one frame. Regarding its speed Brownlee reckoned that "a lower limit could be calculated by considering the time between frames (and I don't remember what that was)", and joked that the best estimate was it was "going like a bat!".[10] Brownlee estimated that the explosion, combined with the specific design of the shaft, could accelerate the plate to approximately six times Earth's escape velocity.[10]

From

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob


Search term

manhole cover in space

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Originally Posted by No.3

Had a few stories like that popping piles in the water to get rid of them. Easier than trying to cut them off when they've been impregnated by coarse sand and small stones due to water action - rather stuffs the chain...

Drill a few holes in the right locations to form a shear plane and back right off to somewhere safe and pop the thing off. Usually with a strop on it, tied off to something so you can find the thing again and lift it out. Of course, the one that didn't want to play and for whatever reason was last seen heading straight up trailing a strop, a piece of rope and the lump of timber lying on the bank that the rope was tied to. Never did find that one, went straight up and as far as we know it never came back down. I know the laws of physics state that 'what goes up must come down' but also some laws seem to be made to be broken!

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I removed the remains of an entire stage used to support construction around one of the piles on the Ashurst river bridge. The stage piles were all railway irons. About 30 of them. They had been gas axed off at riverbed height back in the early 60's, but 25 years of gravel extraction at Ashurst had lowered the riverbed so that many of them were now just under the water level. Ripped open a few jetboats, so I got to play with a couple of boxes of plastergel. One stick each side, offset an inch and they all were snapped clean off. None went into orbit. But there was the remains of an old pile. About 750 dia. It took a dozen sticks to dislodge, and had a fair bit of spalling come off the 'new' pile a couple of metres away. 40 years on, I see the bridge is still standing.:ORLY:

Hard case how this thread has gone from beautiful big living trees to beautiful big dead trees ...hahaha , be good to get some more pics on here of both though