Old Loggers Never Die, They Just Fade Away

OVANDO - Jim Bauer started logging with the Anaconda Company out of Missoula in 1956 after graduating from Missoula County High School. When he sold his logging business in 1988 he'd overcome many challenges and seen many changes in innovations and logging philosophy.

Bauer first became interested in logging because his two uncles were loggers. He also loved being outdoors so it seemed like a good fit.

He started working for Dick Rossignol with the Anaconda Company. His uncle Al Wulfekuhle was the wood superintendent for a crew of 15-20 people. Bauer started out as the choker-setter.

"Started out right at the bottom," said Bauer and laughed.

After a year and a half, the company trained him to run a skid cat. Bauer helped log all of what is now the Blackfoot Community Conservation Area, mid-reaches of the Blackfoot watershed near Ovando Mountain.

In 1961 he did his first clear-cut logging with the Anaconda Company when they took out 40-acre blocks in Arasta Creek. Bauer said they checker-boarded the clear-cutting in hopes that it would seed through.

Bauer left the Anaconda Company in 1963 and moved to Missoula. He worked at the Frenchtown pulp mill for two years. "I didn't care for it," said Bauer. "Too much indoors."

After working on a dry wood-pulping project for a couple of years with a partner, Bauer set out on his own starting Jim Bauer Logging. He started his contract with the Northern Pacific (NP) out of Seeley Lake in 1968.

"It started out the NP, then it was the Burlington Northern (BN) and then it was Plum Creek," said Bauer. "I went through all three of them. I was an independent contractor, building roads, piling brush and logging, the whole works for them."

Bauer was the sole owner of Jim Bauer Logging and his wife Norma kept the books. He started with a 15 to 20 page blanket contract with NP. Every project he did was an addendum to that original contract. When he quit in 1988, there were around 500 pages for each project.

"It's just the way the system went," said Bauer. "We had to have somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million in liability insurance. When we shut down you had to have $10 million in liability."

Bauer ran a crew of up to 44 employees, including truck drivers. They worked in the Lochsa in Idaho, Seeley Lake, down to Superior and as far east as Drummond on the private grounds. He said the first man they hired was the last man they laid off when they sold the business in 1988.

The full crew worked from June 1 through the middle of March depending on the spring work. Bauer said they would often deck two to three million board feet before they ever hauled a log.

The crew worked 10-hour days, five days a week in the summer and eight to nine-hour days in the winter because of the limited daylight. While snow depth never stopped the logging operation, cold temperatures ground progress to a halt. When working for Rossignol, Bauer said if it was -36˚F or colder, he could wait until 10 a.m. to come into work. If it had warmed up ten degrees he was expected to work.

When running his own crew, the coldest they would ever work was -20˚F. Otherwise Bauer said it was too hard on the equipment.

"Prices were good, but when I got out in [1988] they had gone back 10 years," said Bauer. "It was company policy and they thought another guy could do it cheaper."

Bauer said that often, Plum Creek would hire another contractor and, he said, they would "screw it all up. Then they would come to me and say, 'Will you come and clean this up?' I would say, 'Nah ah, no one has cleaned up behind me."

Norma said the most compliments he got were that he did such a good job especially with the cleanup.

Bauer said, "We averaged between 20-25 million board feet per year for the NP and then Plum Creek. I was really proud of my crew."

Bauer only remembers one year when BN switched him to logging dead white pine and spruce for pulp in the Lochsa. The wood was scheduled to be delivered to a pulp mill in Washington. They brought in rail cars and decked about five million board feet of pulp logs. They loaded the first 11 cars and shipped it to Washington.

"Then the [Frenchtown] pulp mill called Plum Creek up and said, 'We want the [rest of the] logs,'" said Bauer. "After we had already decked them there, we turned around and reloaded them eight miles out to the pulp mill [running 40 truck loads per day]. Those guys couldn't stand to drive by and see all [those] logs laying there."

Bauer's logging methods included line skidding and cat skidding. The fellers would drop the trees, limb the boles, skid out the timber and pile the brush. They did not do any of the burning. In some areas, Bauer agreed with clear cutting when it was over mature timber. In other areas, he thought the selective logging approach was more appropriate.

"When a stand of timber is thick, it's mature and it isn't going to grow anymore, take it out," said Bauer. "I don't agree with the aspect that they want to leave all the big trees and take out the smaller growing tree. It's just like a grain field. When the grain is ready to harvest you harvest it. When the timber is ready to harvest, take care of it. Instead of a yearly deal [like grain], it's maybe a 100 year deal in the area depending on the trees' growth."

In addition to logging Bauer built 50-60 miles of road per year including main roads and logging spurs. Plum Creek used the roads for three main purposes including logging, firefighting access and future management.

Bauer's crew built roads with a dozer until around 1978, when he started using large excavators.

"In steep ground you can't do a good job with the dozer," said Bauer. "It was more efficient and safer [with the excavators]. When we got into tougher, steeper ground to get rid of the right a way, the side hilling way was tough. You had to have good operators."

In contrast to how roads are being used today, Bauer thinks it is a crime that the Forest Service decommissions roads.

"I think if the Forest Service [today] would spend half the money they spend fighting fires doing thinning projects and cleaning roads out for access, the whole country would be so far ahead," said Bauer.

Bauer feels the Plum Creek's management techniques were two steps ahead. They logged it before they let it burn. Now he agrees with the collaborative approach.

"I think the mills and the loggers realize they gotta have each other to survive," said Bauer. "I think the timber is here, they just need to put minds together and don't spend so much time fighting it."

Bauer said that the advance in technology and innovation has made the timber industry safer but is part of the reason there are so few people still in the industry. There are no more big production loggers. It is all small operations with two and three men. He has seen the mills move in the same direction, replacing workers with technology.

"[The small operations] have as much money tied up in three pieces of equipment as we had in 15-20 pieces of equipment. What they are doing now with these processors and clippers is all computerized and it's state-of-the-art," said Bauer. "It's pretty hard to find someone now that will go out there and pack a chainsaw and know how to trip a tree."

Before Bauer sold his business, he was asked to switch to the mechanical side and go as far as Bozeman in the winter. "I said I don't think so. How can you afford to go mechanical for five to six months out of the year and then park it? At that time the ground we were logging you couldn't put mechanical on it."

Another observation Bauer made is the sales are smaller requiring loggers to move more frequently. When he worked for Rossingol, there were five years that his equipment was never on a low boy because they went from area to area logging until the railroad reload at Cottonwood and Highway 200 in 1960 shut down. When he logged for the NP he logged 160 acres to 200 acre chunks and could just build more roads to the next area.

"How can you make it when you are logging 250,000 or 100,000 [board] feet of timber in one spot and then you have to move 30-40 miles away to another spot that is the same? These to me are non-productive times," said Bauer. "I always said before, when that piece of equipment is on a low boy, it's not making you money, it is costing you."

Bauer quit logging for Plum Creek in 1986 but he continued to build roads for them for another two years. He auctioned off his equipment June 7, 1988. Part of the reason, he said, was because prices had fallen so much and he also saw the other companies getting rid of their logging contractors.

"And 31 years of it was enough I think. It's nice to be sitting in here instead of crawling through the snow," said Bauer. "There's an old saying, old loggers never die they just fade away."