79 The Saga of a Bucker

Working for George bucking trees in the great rain forests of the central BC coast where it rains 24/7 took some getting used to. It was quite a different experience from my life in the woods helping my dad on Read Island.

George supplied the power saw, which was a gear drive Homelite 909G weighing about 35 pounds. This made it extremely hard to buck with as the chain turned one-third the speed of a direct drive saw and it took all the muscles I had.

You could not stall the engine by forcing it, as the harder you pushed, the faster it would cut. The first couple of weeks I found muscles that I never knew existed. I can remember crawling into bed at night feeling as if I would drop and when morning came, feeling just the same.

George had it easy that winter as the easy part of being a faller is as the name suggests, falling. A bucker on the other hand has to climb down into all of the brush and debris that the tree rips off on its way to the ground. Each tree that was felled had to be at least topped and limbed, and then depending on its size, bucked into one or more logs.

Falling trees is the most dangerous job in the woods and requires the most diligence before any cut is made. George had a tendency to make his undercuts a little to deep and narrow. This can sometimes cause a tree to barber-chair, particularly a spruce. Without warning the spruce he was falling suddenly slabbed up the back to maybe fifty feet and he was fortunate that he was not sent flying into the next world.

George was generally quite careful, but I will never forget the time he was falling a small three feet spruce into a stand of trees, not a good idea unless it can’t be avoided. As with all trees that you are falling you step back and to the side once the tree begins to fall. The forked top of the tree that George was falling caught a large tree hidden in the stand and without warning the butt of the spruce tree shot past him riding the top of its stump like a freight train ready to leap it tracks. George heaved a sight of relief as it finally came to a stop just above him as he lay on the ground his feet firmly caught in the brush. I didn’t start to breath easy until George had finally untangled himself. I had visions of me trying to pull what was left of George out from under a hundred ton spruce tree.

Learning how to cut with the tip of a saw blade makes bucking a whole lot easier particularly for doing the undercut. This is not recommended for the novice and is extremely difficult, especially with a gear drive power saw. I was determined however to learn how to do this, and if I did not kill myself in the process, have a much easier time when undercutting. I can still remember the saw being violently thrown out of the cut and slamming into my pelvic bone so hard it threw me completely over on my back. I lay there with the saw screaming wide open as I frantically held it above my head to keep from getting cut. I felt consumed with pain as I was finally able to shut the saw off and get back on my feet. I am happy to tell you that I finally learned the technique but not until going through the agony more then once. Practice makes perfect, if you don’t kill yourself in the process.

Life is fun but not all the time and even on the job there are the good days and those not so good. George and I had just finished off a small area and were moving to the next site with all our gear when the axe I was carrying caught in the waist high salal.

This caused the axe head to suddenly flip around and cut me deeply below my left wrist. I immediately squeezed it tightly with my other hand to stop the blood from flowing down my arm and we headed for camp. It was not that serious a cut but I did need to have some stitches. Louis Goertzen’s wife, Hazel phoned for a plane to come and take me to a clinic at Alert Bay.

The trip home later that day was quite uneventful, and it wasn’t until later that night that my arm started to really throb with pain. Nancy Gildersleve, one of the ladies at camp had given me some pain pills that she said were strong enough to knock me for a loop, well I tried them to see if they would help. I spent the rest of the night wishing for a box of M&M’s, as they would have helped more besides tasting a whole lot better and I wouldn’t have had to thrash around the rest of the night in pain.

Why the doctor never gave me any pain pills to take home before I left, I will never know.