.44-77 PP bullets.

[Distant Thunder]

I cut a lot of trees and I had a Shindaiwa that I bought from my local small engine place. It was a good saw, not too heavy and did everything I asked of it. About three years ago I was cutting a dead tree and got the bugger hung up in another tree. While fiddling around trying to get the tree I had cut to roll off the tree it was hung in I got the darn saw stuck! It wasn't going well that morning.

Working with my chainsaw I got the tree to start to fall again, that's about the time the poop hit the fan! The dead tree instead of just rolling off the other tree pinched my saw as it was coming down. I tried to pull the saw free, but things were moving pretty fast and I decided the saw wasn't worth dying over and I back peddled out of there. The dead tree broke free of the stump and my saw dropped down and rolled up against the side of the stump. The dead tree sprang back off the branches of the other tree with a good deal of force and the butt end smashed into the saw and drove hard into the corner between the frozen ground and the stump.

There were a lot of pieces scattered around in the snow and my saw was bend in such a way that I knew at a glance it had run it's last.
I walked back to the house and told my wife, "I think I'm going to need a new chainsaw!". She just rolled her eyes and ask how long did that one last? I had to look it up, but I had run that Shindaiwa for 22 years! It was a good saw. I went back to the same small engine place and bought a new Stihl chainsaw. As I left I told the guy, "I hope this one last longer than that last one I bought from you!".

I've seen some unbelievable things happen when falling trees over the past 45 years. I always plan and clear my escape route before I start to fall a tree, you just never know what to expect. I have been knocked off my feet a couple of time as a tree will suddenly bounce or deflect of another tree and change directions, swinging the end with a lot of force. Sometimes you only have enough time to turn and take the hit in a way that will hurt the least. I've been lucky, I know a lot of guys who weren't. I never take for granted that a tree is going to fall exactly as planned, most do, some don't.