Two Lefevers, time travel pic

[Frank Srebro]

Here's a black & white scene with two Lefevers that might have happened 106 years ago. Both are original 26-inchers. Top gun a 1903 H-Grade 12 ga with twist barrels and lower one is a 16 bore DS made in 1912.

[Dean Romig]

Two very pretty Lefevers!... did they have chainsaws 106 years ago?

I love that 16 gauge.





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[Frank Srebro]

Good point Dean, the farm owner had some storm blowdowns. I'll keep that in mind next time I take a B&W. :)

Taken while hunting yesterday afternoon with a friend who has beagles. Three of us and we got 4 rabbits. This is the only one taken with a vintage sxs.

[Brian Dudley]

With how hard people worked back then, if they did have chainsaws there wouldn't be a tree still standing.

[Dennis E. Jones]

With how hard people worked back then, if they did have chainsaws there wouldnt be s tree still standing.

The "Woodsman" aka loggers of the early days didn't have chainsaws but they did have crosscut saws also known as misery whips and Swedish violins with which they nearly denuded Minnesota and other parts of the North East of pine trees. My paternal Grandfather left Minnesota in 1906 and came West to Idaho partly because the woods were playing out back there. My folks left Idaho in 1938 and came to Oregon because there was work here. My dad was a "timber faller" as were many of my uncles. I have a WW-2 era picture of my dad and his partner bucking a tree into logs with a crosscut saw, chain saws didn't really get into general use until after the war. By 1950 the woods were playing out here and most of the trees had been cut with crosscut saws.

If there is an upside to the wholesale cutting of the forests it is better habitat for most animals including game birds as most do not live in mature forest but along edges.

Just a bit of history from my point of view.

[Thomas L. Benson Sr.]

Look at this crew of loggers and you can see some of what they used back in the day. Thomas

[Rick Losey]

With how hard people worked back then, if they did have chainsaws there wouldn't be a tree still standing.


most people do not realize there hardly was a tree left- by the beginning of the 20th century 2/3 of the forest in the US had been removed -

i have a photograph of Losey Hill from that period - looking down the valley and there is hardly a tree insight, now days it nearly all woodlands.

The Catskills were denuded, a fact bemoaned by the earliest trout conservationists. Log rafts were built on the ice and floated down the Delaware in the spring.

If you go to the Adirondack's museum in Blue Mountain Lake they have a logging exhibit that shows all but the most rugged areas of the mountains cleared-

I would say it was not the lack of power in the saw that left a few stands but instead the difficult terrain that prohibited getting the logs out.

find any old growth in the eastern US and you will see why it was left

[Thomas L. Benson Sr.]

Frank:Great photo by the way and love those LeFevers

[Brian Dudley]

Back in the day? Those photos are dated today Thomas.

[John Davis]

Down my way the Long Leaf Pine was king. When Europeans first arrived the long leaf pine forest stretched from the Atlantic to the Mississippi river. They say a squirrel could travel from the East Coast to the banks of the Muddy Waters and never touch the ground. They also estimate that there were about 100,000,000 Wood Ducks. (There were a lot of beaver ponds that no longer exist). Only a small fraction of the virgin Long Leaf Pines remain and there are now about 2,000,000 Wood Ducks. But we're trying to do our part. Planting Long Leaf and putting up Wood Duck boxes every where we can.

[John Davis]

Sorry, I don't know what that had to do with the original post.

[Rick Losey]

no less than the off track posts we others have made

[Rich Anderson]

Nice guns Frank. The LeFever is under appreciated IMHO. I have a 16 and wouldn't part with it. In regards to the logging they say there was more money taken out of Michigan's Upper Peninsula in White Pine (white gold it was called) than in the entire California gold rush.

[Garry L Gordon]

Great guns, and a nice photo enhanced by the lack of color. It gives a nice sense of timelessness to the picture. Good to see someone hunting small game! It is a rare, rare day that we run into another rabbit or squirrel hunter.

[Bill Zachow]

They may not have had chain saws as we know them but did have drag saws. Some were steam powered, some with gas engines. They were a regular cross cut saw blade hooked to a reciprocating transmission. Most could be switched from vertical cuts (for cutting up logs) to horizontal cutting for felling.