BLA

I’m starting to notice a significant upgrade in the fencing being installed on some of these. RR tie fence corners buried a full 4 ft in the ground , smooth conductor that’s bowstring tight. Metal handle gate releases at every gate. These folks are putting big money into these fix contracts.

Posted by: @rankin_file

↑

I’m starting to notice a significant upgrade in the fencing being installed on some of these. RR tie fence corners buried a full 4 ft in the ground , smooth conductor that’s bowstring tight. Metal handle gate releases at every gate. These folks are putting big money into these fix contracts.

Yeah, this one is all steel, drill pipe for all the posts and braces. 

Posted by: @mightymoe

↑

BLA between two ranches. 

This is two years on, got started on it, then the patriarch of Ranch #1 passed and a halt was called. 

Had some minimal charges and forgot about it. 

Then I get a call, the client is Ranch #1 and wants to revive the project as the family kept the ranch. Ranch #2 purchased a neighbor when that patriarch passed. Now the BLA expanded after Ranch #2 got larger. 

I sent the PC out last week to get a start, locating section corners, setting ones along the new fence line being built and making a plan with the ranch manager to mean out the acreages being traded. 

He looked at me this morning as he left to go back out and said, "You know this property line is 15 miles long now".

I hadn't really looked at it, but yep, 15 miles with all the additional land, it starts in the middle of a township, stairsteps though it southwesterly, at the range line it begins to stairstep to the NW ending up just south of the NW corner of the township to the west. 

It's gonna take a while to build this fence line. 

 

 

And, it will be considerably longer when you add in all of the elevation changes up,down,up,down,up,down for fifteen straight miles.  Every watercourse crossing zone will involve more wire or upgrade to cattle panels or actual pipe fencing.  Doing it right the first time is priceless.

Posted by: @holy-cow

↑

And, it will be considerably longer when you add in all of the elevation changes up,down,up,down,up,down for fifteen straight miles.  Every watercourse crossing zone will involve more wire or upgrade to cattle panels or actual pipe fencing.  Doing it right the first time is priceless.

It's quite rough country, they aren't messing around. 

IS there a reason for an all steel fence? During my time in OK I was given to understand that a fence of that sort was for keeping bison and/or beefalo.

@norman-oklahoma 

Keeping the wire tight at all times is the first challenge.  The US cattle industry spent from WWII to the mid-1960s focusing on short cattle who could go to slaughter at an earlier age.  Then the packers switched, demanding taller, longer cattle that would take longer to get to market but provide a far larger carcass.  This resulted in most pastures with old fences being too short, thus encouraging fence jumping.  Last year, we took out a fence that only had three widely-spaced wires that had worked for Granddad and Dad but no longer worked for me.  

The taller fences with more wires demand more stability of the fence corners.  The choice is to either add weight, add depth, or use designed/constructed corners.  Large pipes with buried extensions, filled with concrete, provide far greater stability than the short wooden posts.  They have a longer life, if that matters.

In the late 1990s I owned a Limousin bull that weighed a bit more than 2000 pounds.  I needed to move him or sell him.  We caught him up in a nearly new corral with welded pipe fencing six feet high.  He was tall enough to look over the fence back to the pasture he had been living in.  He walked up to that fence, stopped, sprang up and landed on the other side without touching the fence.  It took three cowboys on heavy roping horses to catch him and drag him into the cattle trailer with full roof.  He went to the auction barn.

@norman-oklahoma 

It's fire proof fencing, most new fences are using steel braces with typical steel T-posts and barbed wire. Some wire will wilt during a fire and become brittle so there are new products for that. The one we are doing is more robust, it's a game fence so it's tall and using sheep wire. All metal, no wood, no concrete. 

@mightymoe 

Oh, man.  Game fencing.  That is even harder to keep tight.  Very robust corners are essential.

Section corner, replaced at the location of the original. 

One interesting aspect of projects of this size is the ability to evaluate the measurements of a significant portion of the township and develop a sense of the flow of the original work issues they were encountering or introducing to that process. Index errors and significant physical features that affected the work and measurements. Then finding monuments were they are, based on those factors after you didn’t find them at the “record” locations. 

Posted by: @rankin_file

↑

One interesting aspect of projects of this size is the ability to evaluate the measurements of a significant portion of the township and develop a sense of the flow of the original work issues they were encountering or introducing to that process. Index errors and significant physical features that affected the work and measurements. Then finding monuments were they are, based on those factors after you didn’t find them at the “record” locations. 

We have found some interesting positions. One Section corner is out of position by 110'. This is a 1917 Dependent Resurvey so it's a call to accept something that poorly set. We punted, don't need it for the two Section breakdowns. I'll just file a CR and let the next guy decide.