Pete Collin

Hello All, Last week was the biggest forest fire I have heard of in 30 years living in this state.

I think I am getting the gist of the grid. They pertain to the layout of Township/Ranges in unincorporated land (the boonies). When I worked in Northwestern Maine, the Delorme Maps would call the square townships something like "T34 R24". At the Scott Paper office, they gave names to the townships because it was better to say "I'll be up to Hobbstown today, around Whipple Pond" than to say "I'll be in Township 34 Range 24!" So that grid would not pertain to anything we do in oh-so-domestic western NY. I was unsure if it had some military application.

Hello All, I have this old compass that I never use, but am curious about. It is made by Keuffer + Essel, who made a lot of precision equipment like drafting tools, etc. It's not a good woods compass, because it is rather bulky and heavy. It takes the needle a long time to settle down. It is well made, and the big dial could give you some precision, but it doesn't have a mirror, and the "gunsight" on the lid isn't really good to shoot a line with. There is no fixture on the underside to attach to a staff. The strangest thing is the chart inside the lid. A grid with numbered cells from 1 to 36. I googled around and couldn't find what it's for. I assume it's for some kind of point sampling, like to take ore samples, soil samples, or forestry measurements? Tick off each plot with a crayon as you go? Maybe one of you know something about this cool old artifact.

One thing that I didn't quite get across in my video is that there is a difference between finding one big tree and being in a forest of them. You can look for girthy trees in yards, parks and cemeteries because they won't get harvested for sawlogs, and being in the wide open allows them to put on a wide, spreading crown and grow fast. It is far more unusual to be surrounded by acres of trees that are thick-trunked, tall, straight (thus making for good sawlogs), and available to harvest. I live right next door to Letchworth State Park. There are sections that have drop-dead wonderful sawtimber that will never get cut. I love hiking through them and gawking at the sheer board footage. People sometimes say, "Don't you wish you could log the park?" But I don't really. There's nothing wrong with setting aside a few places where we can display what a forest is capable of becoming. And anybody who owns some land and a vision for the future can work on their little corner of paradise.

Which is why I have a job.

Oh! Was that the farm that had the spy apple orchard on it? That was so long ago!

Really? Whose?

On this site we can show off big racks, long beards and long spurs. Here's a video showing off some giant oak trees.

Tulip poplar is far more prevalent in PA and south than it is in NY. But it shows up in pockets - finger lakes, along the Erie and Ontario lakeshores, I find some in Letchworth Park.

Tulip poplar.

I normally run 2 drift bags. But on a previous trip, a frayed knot made me lose one of them. So I improvised until I could sew a second one out of an old cloth shower curtain.

Yes. Once I got a small Atlantic salmon, and another time i got a nice Chinook while jigging. But I target the lake trout.

Nice clock! I lost my dad this spring. He made over 100 clocks in his shop. I have 2 of them.

The shot where I show a bunch of gnawed nut shells on the ground is a mixture of walnut and butternut. I have 2 walnuts growing in my yard that are volunteer trees. They are far enough away from any potential parent trees that I assume a squirrel buried the nuts there and forgot about them. Could be a chipmunk, too.