What we do in the off season !!!

What do a couple of fishing outfitters do in the off season? That is one of the most popular questions that any of my clients ask in the summer. During the winter months there are plenty of jobs to occupy ones time and this is one of the current activities that has surfaced to keep me busy. A good friend of mine is in the building business and he called us up to help him get out a "piece" of timber to make some counter tops in his house. I was not quite sure what I was in for when I hopped in Paulson's truck, but I was sure that I was off on an adventure. We headed to Virgina City Montana to meet "Bird" who owns a portable saw mill to remove the piece of timber for milling. We left Bird's house and picked up a couple of essential tools for the job at hand and headed to a slash pile that had yielded some other fine pieces of wood which Bird had already turned into a very beautiful coffee table and a center island in his kitchen. We arrived at the slash pile and the log which is referred to as the "Piece" was situated under a good bit of slash that will be burned in the near future. Bird got to work with the chainsaw and began removing the small debris that disguised the piece. We managed to clear away enough debris to expose 12 feet of the behemoth log that was scheduled to be burned by the timber company in the coming months. We cut the piece into two 6 foot chunks and worked diligently to get a choker chain around the log. Once we had the choker in place we hooked up the piece to Birds truck and pulled it free of the slash pile. This was the easy part as the piece weighed well over a ton which made for a very interesting attempt to load it into the back of the truck. We wrestled with the piece for a while until we came up with a plan that was taken from a discovery channel show that I saw on building the pyramids. We rolled the enormous chunk of wood up on to a couple of logs and used a pribar to lever the log forward. After an hour of grunting and pushing we got the piece loaded into the truck and were ready to head for the mill. Once at the mill the rest of the task was fairly easy and we cut the huge piece into 8 separate pieces that were each 4 inches thick. The boards that we milled have some beautiful wood grains and I can't wait to see some of the furniture that Bird will make with the timbers we milled. Paulson and I each recieved one to the boards from the project and I still do not know what I might try and make out it. With some sanding and good finish the wood might make an excellent fly tying desk or perhaps a very nice bench to sit on back porch and watch my son play in the yard. We will have to see what comes of it and I will let you all know what was made out of the wood we harvested from the slash.