Ontario logging contractor Kyle Ramsay developed an affinity for forest harvesting through his family’s excavation business.

“I grew up in the excavation business, and in the winter we would fire up our John Deere 440 cable skidders and head to the woods,” shared Ramsay, explaining his background in forest harvesting.

In 2020, he established Kyle Ramsay Quality Excavation and Logging, and soon added a John Deere 540 cable skidder. He began taking winter contracts harvesting hardwoods for the Haliburton Forest Wildlife Reserve.

When the offer came from Haliburton to become a full time harvesting contractor, Ramsay upped his game, buying a feller buncher and an excavator-mounted grapple saw. “The buncher felling operation required chainsaw operators on the ground topping the trees which were skidded with a John Deere 648H grapple skidder to the wood yards,” explained Ramsay.

The Haliburton Forest is situated 300 kilometres north of Toronto, and is managed for ecological and recreational values, along with commercial forestry objectives.

Their forest management strategy is to space tree crowns to encourage growth of the highest quality trees, maintain species diversity, maintain a healthy forest with natural resistance to climate change and forest pests, protect wildlife habitat and maintain a positive social license with the community and stakeholders. The Haliburton Forest supports forest research with a number of universities and colleges.

Forest management is by single tree selection and group selection practices and harvests are guided by tree marking, with re-entry schedule on a 20-year rotation. The Haliburton Forest also offers land management services to private woodlot owners in the region.

For details on the Haliburton Forest Group and long-established Murray Bros. Lumber joining forces in a lumber producing alliance in Ontario’s Cottage Country, please see page 18 of this issue. With the alliance with Murray Bros, and the acquisition of several other mill operations in recent years, volume for the Haliburton Forest Group is now 40 million board feet annually.

Ramsay found that increasing episodes of wet weather were impacting his operation’s profitability, and resulting in muddy skid trails and wood yards. His operation was witnessing periods of shutdown because of wet conditions, to the point he began to seriously look for harvest system options.

Cut-to-length operations in his region, generally, are based on feller-buncher followed by a dangle head processor, with forwarders to match the buncher production. Ramsay was concerned about this multiple machine approach to CTL, in part because of the difficulty to find qualified and inspired workers.

He studied the option of a single dangle head harvester matched to a single forwarder, but realized the large hardwood in selection harvest would overtask run-of-the-mill dangle heads. He was also concerned about risking damage to the harvest head, specifically to saw bar chains when reaching through undergrowth and cutting the heavy hardwoods.

Additionally, with the selection harvest method, the operation has to be very cautious not to injure the residual crop trees, and dangle heads have little control of felling as soon as a tree is severed.

In time, Ramsay became aware of the Tigercat 822E harvester, equipped with a fixed mounted Tigercat 570 harvesting head, designed for hardwood harvesting in Michigan. After some study and viewing videos of the equipment, Ramsay was convinced the setup would meet his needs and went on to contact his Tigercat dealer, Wajax, to discuss availability.

Ramsay was disappointed to hear that the entire manufacturing run of the 822/570 fixed head had been sold to U.S. customers.

However, a short time following his initial inquiry, Ramsay received a call from Wajax that one of the U.S. orders had been cancelled, and a machine was available, and sitting at the Tigercat factory in Brantford, Ontario.

Within days Ramsay and his wife were off to Brantford to see the factory and the harvester with the fixed head.

The Ramsay’s toured the factory and met personally with the designers and engineer.

“We were impressed with the attention that Tigercat gave us, and also impressed with the design and work quality that Tigercat puts into manufacturing their products,” he says.

“We made the deal on the harvester and it was delivered in July 2023. We spent a few days doing final setup and training, but I was immediately impressed with the ability of the head to securely grapple on trees, and the ability of the 36-inch saw (3/4-inch pitch chain) to cut through big hardwoods, and to directionally fell the trees.

“The wrist function is similar to working a buncher head wrist rotation, but the stem feeding, length measuring, delimbing and buck functions presented a pretty big learning curve for me. During that initial learning curve, I became more convinced this machine was ideal for selection harvesting big hardwoods for Haliburton.”

The Tigercat 822E comes with a lot of features which make it an ideal heavy duty unit for selection and partial cut application, and at the same time a venerable machine in final felling applications.

The 822E has a seven-foot tail swing radius, shipping weight of 28 tonnes, with more than 280 horsepower, tight tuck boom geometry, and four separate hydraulic pumps. The 822E also sports ER boom technology which provides single plane boom movement with one joystick, and allows less than conventional oil demand, less demand on pump and cooling systems and improved fuel efficiency.

The Tigercat 570 fixed harvesting head is a combination of the reputable 570 dangle head, minus the dangle and combined with the Tigercat 340-degree wrist, which has served in feller buncher applications.

The wrist technology allows the harvester head to rotate to securely grapple leaning or twisted stems and control the felling.

According to Tigercat, the wrist-fitted head was developed as a response to customers looking for a high level of control when falling high value hardwoods and in other select-cut applications. The fixed head wrist allows a high degree of control and dexterity for delimbing and topping and processing lengths, particularly in larger (heavier) trees and hardwoods. The added control also reduces incidence of breakage and damage to crop trees left in the residual stand.

The wrist has a proven high torque, three motor 340-degree rotation system as the buncher application, which allows the head to more easily align to the tree for the felling cut.

The fixed wrist head has fore-aft tilting by way of the boom tilt linkage, providing even greater positive control to position harvested trees.

The three knife arms and the two feed wheel arms on the 570 head are fully independent and have full proportional pressure control, which allows the knives and wheels to more easily follow the curves and taper of a tree without excessive friction or undue loading. Full manual operator control of all arm functions is always available to give the operator maximum control for all harvesting situations.

The fixed wrist 570 head comes with a topping saw, which is only an option on the dangle 570.

Ramsay rounded out his harvester team with a 17 tonne forwarder, a John Deere 2510.

Ramsay held onto his feller buncher, and it starts new harvest blocks by cutting out the main harvest trails, and clearing infected beech stands.

“My forwarder operator comes with buncher experience, so on arrival at a new block, for the first day, he operates the buncher to cut the main trails. The harvester is the next to arrive at the block and I get a day’s harvesting in before the forwarder starts working. The new harvester generates enough logs to keep the forwarder fully occupied.”

Operating the harvester, Ramsay makes a concerted effort to mat the trails, and explained that the strategy results in minimal rutting.

“With the new Tigercat harvester, we are witnessing minimal damage occurring to the residual crop trees. Our wood is piled along the main truck road, so self loader trucks can load directly from the road,” he explained.

“We are also seeing greater volume produced compared to the buncher topper skidder operation, because we can produce more merchantable wood from the tops.

“Our operation is significantly safer with no chainsaw operators on the ground,” he added. “We are just a team of two and we are highly motivated to operate a safe and very productive operation.

“I was impressed with how well built the Tigercat head was compared to competitors and all the thought that was put into the head,” concluded Ramsay.

“We had a couple of little issues in the beginning, being the first one in Canada with this configuration, but with the great service from Wajax and Tigercat, we were never down for too long. We are at over 800 hours now and the equipment has been almost flawless. We have been into big wood with the machine and I haven’t grabbed a tree yet that it hasn’t cut in one pass—it also feeds big wood very well. It’s definitely a learning curve with it being a fixed head, but for what we are doing with it, the head works great.”

Ramsay figures they are gaining 35 to 40 per cent more product because they are able to generate more merchantable wood from the tops, compared to their previous setup.

“This equipment setup is producing extremely well for us, and we continue to learn something about the machine, and operating it, everyday. I am certainly convinced that cut-to-length forestry is the future for operations such as what we work in.”