Saving under story and re growth.
Also to ease the clean up. Steep slope.
Could not throw tree to creek with out large equipment and then mucking a frosty wet creek out. Big no no.
Other way side slope would have been treacherous to even try to clean up, and if the log rolled, an old water tank was a target. Up hill (the logical solution) was a grove of young black oaks the HO wanted saved.
By stripping the tree, we were able to lay it in a tighter alley way we had cleared of mostly all dead trees. We did lose some live oaks when the large portion of trunk rolled. But they were lower on the list of saving.
Clean up was a huge issue. What I left on the tree pretty much exploded. That was about a 30 foot square area, less of a slope and we could burn in place.
HO pretty much bought and wanted it done this way. I refused to top the tree and lower the tree any further than I stripped it. The loads on the smaller wood could have broke the top out. Even though the tree still had some green, it was brittle from using up it's stores in its limbs and stem. Like it had been drained dry. An end result of beetles and fungus. You can see how easily the limbs just popped when cut in the vid. Most of those limbs were 20 to 30 feet long and heavy as all get out. No "just dragging them off the hill" 100 feet down a deer trail.
