woodworkingboy
TreeHouser
With a slow pulling device like a Tirfor, I've always remembered the advice in Jerry's book about going with a high back cut on pull trees with back lean. I don't think that he is much a fan of high back cuts in general falling when not pulling. The two inches or so that Squish mentions, seems about right on average. Pushing decent sized trees over with a backhoe, I've used a quite high back cut. It worked out real well when pushing fairly low on the tree. Thinking safety there to keep a solid hinge until the tree goes over.