Willie: I've never climbed a fir with 8" bark in my life, except for Burnham's Old Growth pig, with your flipline. We've got some second growth pigs with at least six inches on em' down near the ground, but fourty feet up em your spurs are already in the cambium again.
But I wasn't even talking about any of that... I'm talking about all of the introduced Red Maples and Hornbeams that we routinely prune around here in the spring. I could show you many an ornamental tree whose cambium in completely gone off the tops of the branches from guys climbing up with no spurs and standing on the limbs--where else are they gonna stand? The bark slips right off and then the limbs are going to decay there--right in the tension wood. The results aren't good, and yes, I'd way rather see a few ugly triangles on any of those trees, because they heal up really well with no lasting detrimental effects. Man, as far as fir pigs go, I could show you trees that we've finally removed after John Emmons had spent 25 years pruning em, roughly once every two or three years, and wearing spurs every time. We've firewood chunked a few of em down, and even cutting em into tiny 16" rounds, you won't find a single spur-wound in that pig.
