Kesterson Liked Physical Work in Woods

SWAN VALLEY - Swan Valley resident Wes Kesterson started logging with his father Buck Kesterson when he was around 12 years old. After spending nearly 15 years, as a logger in the Swan Valley, the biggest change Kesterson has seen in the industry is that logging equipment is more efficient and has made logging safer.

Kesterson learned how to log on his grandmother's property located on the Swan River at Salmon Prairie. He helped his father with salvage logging jobs around the Swan Valley with the U.S. Forest Service or private landowners. They harvested timber lying on the ground or nearly dead trees that weren't badly checked or split.

"I liked working with Dad in the woods a lot more than sitting in school. I would look forward to driving the HD 5 Allis Chalmers after school." Kesterson hooked logs onto the attached bull hook by hand with the cables or chokers and skid them to the landing. Kesterson and his mother Edna de-limbed and cut them into lengths.

"I learned a lot from Dad," said Kesterson, "He always had a solution to any problem that would come up." If the choker got tangled and the tree wouldn't be heading in the right direction, Kesterson said his dad would have several tricks to remedy the situation. "I learned about how levers work when a saw got stuck in the tree as the sawyer was sawing it. He got a long pole, inserted it in the notch and lifted up to open up the notch."

"I think that Dad just learned how to log by doing it. Dad taught me how to fall trees, starting with the smaller ones. He was a good teacher. When he had his second heart attack I was a freshman at Seeley-Swan High School. I had to finish the job on Owl Creek and I had to learn how to do it quick." Kesterson had to fall trees, skid them, buck them (cut them into log lengths) and help load them onto the trucks.

On one job he was hooking the tongs onto the logs that were then loaded on the truck. The operator of the heel boom hooked a log that was located under his feet which knocked him off the deck. According to Kesterson, he landed behind the deck and he said he was lucky the logs didn't roll over him. He got up and told the owner, "before you kill me", that he was done. The owner said, "Who is going to load the logs?" Kesterson said he told him to get the truck driver and he left.

Kesterson said that all fallers should be skidder operators first so they know how important it is to fall logs so the butts are pointing in the same direction. He had a job once where the faller fell the logs pointing in different directions and on top of each other. It made the job a lot harder to hook chokers and pull them to the landing. Sometimes he had to hook a choker to the tops because he couldn't reach the butt end. "They [the logs] break much easier that way," he said.

"We had to carry our equipment with us [to] the job. We needed gas, a wedge that was placed in the notch to insure the tree fell the right direction, a chainsaw and an ax. In the winter we needed to carry a shovel to move the snow down on the trunk so the stumps would be the right height, a little more than a foot," said Kesterson.

Kesterson continued, "I always like felling trees the best but in winter sawing them usually meant getting snow constantly down my neck. I got used to being wet and cold. When my siblings and I were young we used to hit trees with the blunt end of an axe just to get the snow on our heads. I guess it was practice."

Kesterson thinks logging was more dangerous then than now. He lost his uncle to a logging accident when a tree fell on him when he was checking his saw. "A logger always needs to be alert in the woods. There are so many dangers with the equipment and the timber." Widowmakers, trees that are leaning, can come down on a logger anytime and skidders could roll on steep terrain he said.

The guys now days have it easy Kesterson said. He's watched videos of modern logging equipment such as harvesters, forwarders and feller bunchers that do the work of many loggers much more quickly.

"There was so much more walking, walking up and down the tree to de-limb it, walking in to the job, walking to the gas can. We had to put up with the weather. Now they have climate-controlled cabs to sit in and they can heat or cool the cab of the equipment by pushing a button at home that starts the motor." said Kesterson.

Kesterson said what is not easy now is the constant maintenance, the expense of the equipment and the stress of getting the wood out on time. A logger has to work quickly to pay the overhead and still make a living.

Kesterson said that logging continues to contain a lot of hardship that comes with it. Not only the expense but loggers have to deal with those who oppose it, and government rules and regulations. He hopes that compromises can be reached because logging is an important industry for the American economy.