I'm not sure of people's honesty any more

[Don Palese]

OK .. so here’s the scenario .. last week my friend told me he was having a (hard) Maple tree taken down and would I check on the progress while he was away. It had a 30” diameter trunk and clear for about 8 – 10 feet. So I told him I would share the cost of taking it down and having it rough milled ($200 my share) for all of the wood. Well on Labor Day the tree came down and I got the slabs (2" x 5' x 20" to 30"). I neatly stacked the rest of the ‘rounds’ so that I could get them today. When I went to pick up rounds (almost a cord) .. they were all gone. My friend thought that I got them all … but thieves took all of the beautiful Maple and will probably burn it.
So what has our society turned into … in the old west we had “cattle rustling” now we have “wood rustling” ..

Thanks for listening ! Don in Medford.

[Van Huskey]

It wasn't theives it was beavers, to them it looked like a big stack of Pringles!

Sorry to hear about the loss, at least you got the slabs.

[Gary Max]

Be glad you got part of it-----some where it's written in stone

"Never cut wood until the day you haul it"
Very few thieves own chain saws .
Or
"Never Pay for a item until your ready to haul it"

[Fred Perreault]

Sorry about your loss.... it is easy to quickly become attached to potential turning wood. Wood that is cut to size around here that is left seemingly unattended..... disappears just like that. And I am sure that it just gets burned. Unfortunately, people value natural resources different ways.
You could always suppose that the thieves were not young, strong ruffians who will re-sell the logs, but rather a less fortunate family who has no heat, little money, 6 youngsters running around the house in rags and bare feet, and gaunt looking parents just trying to make ends meet. heck, I think I'm gonna' make myself cry......... :(

[George Sanders]

Thieves are thieves and I have no sympathy for them at all. :mad: They steal the fruits of someone else's labor for their own gain. They always have some sorry excuse for what they are doing, but I see no need to excuse them at all.

[Jeff Nicol]

With the nation the way it is, I think some steal just to steal so that whomever they are stealing from feels the pain of whatever shortcoming they are feeling at the time. Others like already stated need the stolen items to help in their survival. No matter the reason, it is always the wrong thing to do, but right and wrong are not on the minds of theives or hoodlums or whoever does the stealing. I think some do it for the thrill and the challenge not to get caught. We as non-criminals will never know what drives others to take what they want as we are not wired that way.

I bet someone saw who loaded it up and hauled it away, just ask around the neighborhood and see what pans out, not everyone is afraid to tell the truth.

Sorry for your misfortune at the hands of idiots,

More wood will come your way,

Jeff

[Robert McGowen]

Thieves are thieves and I have no sympathy for them at all. :mad:

What George said x 2.

[steve mcconnell]

So accuse me of being a glass half full kind of guy (and I live in town and not out West ) but perhaps those that took the wood thought it was just getting thrown away and was just waiting for the town/tree service to come pick it up?

I know when we take trees down, the wood must be cut to a certain size and then stacked neatly for the town to come pick it up to be chipped into mulch at the landfill. Any wood stacked on the curb is pretty much fair game until its gone from either the town or citizen pickup.

Again, we don't use wood for fuel much around here, and I do live in town, so none of this may apply.

End result is still unfortunate for you. Sorry to hear about it.

[Bill Bulloch]

Lets roundup a posse and go fine the #@#%$%* thives. If Oregon dose not have a dealth penalty, then we can sentence them to watching old Jerry Lewis movies for the rest of their live. I hate a theif and the horse they rode in on.

[bob svoboda]

[QUOTE=Van Huskey;1508981]It wasn't theives it was beavers, to them it looked like a big stack of Pringles!

Yeah, those Oregon State folks are a tough bunch:D Sorry for the loss of some great turning stock.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Ditto what George S. said. To me it doesn't make any difference. If you don't stop and ask it is stealing if you load up that wood. Had some Elm I had gotten from a friend of mine about 1 yr ago and he had given me several logs of it. I cut up couple of the logs into bowl blanks and since it was almost dark was going to go the next morning to cut up the rest and load it to bring home. All the blanks were stolen but the logs remained. I guess they were to dang lazy to load the big stuff.:mad:

[Reed Gray]

Hey, I like horses!

A lot of times, if it is stacked by the curb, it is considered fair game. Though I was raised to ask first.

robo hippy

[Ryan Baker]

Yeah, same thing around here. If it is cut and left anywhere people can get to it, the firewood wranglers will be gone with it before you can turn around. Move it as soon as it gets cut and don't leave it unguarded.

[Ralph Lindberg]

Don
It's gotten so bad here north of you that you can get arrested for carrying Maple, Alder or Cedar logs without a sales receipt or other documentation.

It's not guys stealing for firewood, they are targeting figured wood (like Maple) for sale to instrument makers (and other high-end uses)

Locally, Pope & Talbot had a small grove of BF Maple on one of their lots, old wood and large with lots of figure. One of their people was going in to check on something else and noticed the trees had been butchered (not just cut down), and only the best figured wood stolen

Their forester figured the retial on that wood was over $10,000

[Charlie Reals]

Rule of wood for years around here has been "don't cut more than you can tote home". It will be gone before you can blink an eye, leave it in logs and it will be there when you get back. Maybe:D:D, Some here even deliver firewood to second home owners on Saturday and steal it on Monday.
I cant count the times I have told weekenders to get the wood stacked before they leave.

[Karl Card]

I won an auction on ebay for a very pretty piece of highly figured maple that was spalted and curly and was a really nice size square chunk of it... well the stupid ass that sent it mailed it in clear see thru plastic. The mail man said he remembers dropping it off at the house but he was to stupid to put it under the mail box, which ment he only had to lay it on the porch beneath the mail box, instead he put it on the 3 foot high wall surrounding the porch and well it got ripped off... I to this day am still mad about that .... I have thought about it and the reason I guess that it makes me so mad is because there is nothing i can do about it. The cops are going to do nothing because basically what can they do. Just a bad situation.

[Mike Wenman]

Sorry to hear of the loss. Always hits hard when something is stolen that is yours regardless of the size or worth of the item. I work in a sporting goods department, and daily, I see the lack of honesty and more importanly the blatent lack of INTEGRITY most people in the general public have anymore.

[Jon Lanier]

'Wood Rustling' Why that is a a hang 'n' offense in these parts!

[Ralph Lindberg]

Rule of wood for years around here has been "don't cut more than you can tote home". It will be gone before you can blink an eye, leave it in logs and it will be there when you get back. Maybe:D:D, Some here even deliver firewood to second home owners on Saturday and steal it on Monday.
I cant count the times I have told weekenders to get the wood stacked before they leave.

Some friends of mine had their firewood stacked and covered in the backyard. A storm blew some of trees down and smashed their fence. They told me I could come and get the "new" wood, if I left them some (they don't have a chainsaw).
I got a call a few days later wondering why I had taken all the wood... well, I hadn't taken any.
So they checked their firewood stack and.... yup, the scum stole both the new fallen trees and some of their cut-up firewood, out of their back-yard.

[Karl Card]

'Wood Rustling' Why that is a a hang 'n' offense in these parts!


hanging sounds good but I was wanting to see if that wood was really curly or strategically placed.... with my foot behind it...