What are you guys surveying in the woods for?
Bill Kauffman may be able to shed some light on this subject.
What are you guys surveying in the woods for?
I spoke with Bill Ham (local USFS surveyor) about this. It is a cruise mark unique to one of the Conklin brothers. Ray Oman apparently had developed his own nomenclature for the marks and referred to this particular mark as a beavertail.
Apparently timber cruisers had unique marks they marked bearing trees with. Bill mentioned a coworker of his in North Idaho had compiled a catalog of cruise marks, associated timber cruisers and their years of practice.
Bill was going to see if anybody in this region had prepared such a catalog.
I have seen cruiser marks on original BTs and scratched into K-tags.