by
Arthur G. Randall
(Courtesy of Downeast Magazine, July 1956)
Forestry Camp students with the tools of their trade and training:
axes, saws, peavies, and logging tractor.
Forestry Camp students with the tools of their trade and training:
axes, saws, peavies, and logging tractor.
| Fifty years ago the University of Maine's
first forestry class of four men spent a summer of field work in Indian
Township, way Down East between Topsfield and Princeton. Out of this
pioneer course in practical forestry training, the University's Forestry
School, one of twenty-six accredited in the United States, has developed
an eight-weeks summer training school for forestry and wildlife students.
Today, between thirty and fifty men spend the summer of their junior year
in the woods, absorbing on-the-spot principles of forestry practice and
management.
The greater part of the students' training is devoted to timber cruise and growth study, with square mile areas being assigned to two-man parties for survey. Besides the measuring of forest growth on these sample plots, projects include topographic mapping, clearing and painting boundary lines, practicing forest fire fighting methods, selective marking of pulpwood cutting, and visits to pulp and paper mills. Some students even spend part of their free time with axe and bow saw, felling marked trees in an experimental area near the school's permanent camp. Training is climaxed by the completion of a large, colored map showing the various forest stands worked on during the summer. Data from all the compartments cruised are pooled, and each man prepares a forestry management plan for the township. This plan is designed to show the present volume of timber, anticipated growth, and the amount that may be cut during the next decade. |
(above) Measuring the height of a tree
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| (above) An instructor explains how to figure the curves on a forest road before the start of a day's surveying practice. Lectures are kept to a minimum throughout the 8-weeks' course. Emphasis is on practical work. | (above) "Bucking up" with a chain saw. Long lengths of timber are skidded in by horse (or tractor) and sawed into four foot lengths for piling. |
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| (above) While the power chainsaw is now widely used, the two-man crosscut saw still has its place in the woods. Here a group of students receive training in saw filing. | (above) Man on right is measuring diameter of tree with a caliper, while the man in the center is extracting a core from a hollow auger to measure growth rings. |