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My old crew lead called spike knots 'widow makers' and I laughed until a 3 foot limb landed 6 feet from me in Tacoma
For 5 seasons I blew off hazard tree calls as the boring part of the job. Last month I was helping a buddy on a removal in Tacoma, a big Doug fir with a dead top, and he spent 20 minutes just staring up at it before he would even start his saw. I kept thinking we were burning daylight. Then he pointed at a spike knot about 25 feet up and said a limb that size can drop 40 feet and hit you before you ever hear the crack. We backed off, he did a pull test, and that limb came down exactly where his boots had been standing, 6 feet from where I was. I have been running saws for over a decade and I always thought the pull test was overkill on small limbs. Now I do it on everything over 3 inches, even when it feels silly. Anybody else got a close call that changed the way you read a tree before you cut?
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