Felling with D. Douglas Dent

He was on earlier today.... if you click on his name in the thread, it shows when they were here last
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #177
Mr "D DouglasDent". What did you guys call him, DDD? D Doug? Dougie Dent?

Anyway, no hard hat in pic 2, post 2. I thought this guy was supposed to be The Man? Who would put up with that if they The Man?

We called him "Doug"...that was his preference. If you were a youngster new to his classes, it sometimes came up..."Uh, Mister Dent...? Answer, more or less a quote..."Don't act like a blankity blank piece of blank...I'm a man just the same as you. Treat me same as you would any other man".

We also from time to time called him "that bastard sob"...though the latter would not have been in his hearing :D.

Side note...though D.D.Dent was clearly a man of his times, and might well have thought women were not exactly suited to cutting big timber with big saws, he never gave the least bit of grief to the small number of women who came through his USFS C level sawyer cert classes that I was in. More likely to be the opposite...he took extra care and gave attention with the gals, and he also took the same extra care with the B cert newbies first trying to cross over into the top journeyman certification.

My opinion only, but I think he understood how intimidating his stature and reputation was, and tried to ease that a little with those students most likely to be set back on their heels by cutting in front of his eye. Though he'd not go very far on the gentle and kind approach...also in my opinion only...he loved being seen as the biggest dog on the porch :).

Although if a member of either group fell seriously short on skill, he would be merciless.


Oh...that hardhat fell off on the retreat...Doug carried it out with the sawyer.
 
Last edited:
I heard over the years that Dent gave up on using Dutchmans to try and steer a tree into the fell. Too many variables.
Anyone know about this?
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #183
You are correct...at least so far as teaching it. I expect he might well have still used it himself under circumstances that seemed appropriate to him, but not as a method to advocate.

Read from this old thread here, Chris.

 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #187
"If you ain't never run aground, you ain't never sailed much of anywhere".

Quote from an old sailing buddy of mine from waaaay back. Gads, we had some high times when we were young ;).

"just qualifying mistakes"...I think we all have some of those :D.
 
Ha Burnham, that what we say, if you've never hit a reef either you don't go out much or you are lying!
 
I think the expression, or variations are used in a lot of instances.

We have always said that in snowboarding or skateboarding, if you haven’t hurt yourself you are not trying hard enough.
 
It's all quite simple... we learn from our mistakes and pass the knowledge on.

The heck of it is, though, we all keep learning from making the same mistakes over and over. Each and every new and up-coming generation. The grand plan of life? The school of hard knocks for eternity?

Got to be a good conspiracy theory in there somewhere.
 
@gf beranek , did ya see the vid with Jed in it doing a 3 day felling class, its in Tree Felling vids, pretty cool.
 
Honestly, I think between Jer's Fundamentals book and the Working Climber DVD series, you can learn 99.9% of what you need to know in the tree care industry...those in the know, know what I am talking about.
 
You are correct...at least so far as teaching it. I expect he might well have still used it himself under circumstances that seemed appropriate to him, but not as a method to advocate.

Read from this old thread here, Chris.

Thanks B, I will heck it out!
 
Back
Top