Weird, cool stuff you found in the woods.

I didn't look at it close enough, You're right!

 

Sometimes broadheads go straight through....

 

Yeah but this was about 5 feet off the ground.

 

It's an antenna FYI

 

I figured that, but what kind?

 

It’s an Umbrella antenna
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_antenna

 

Nice VW Bettle find.

 

Fossil hunting trip, very isolated spot. Got up in the middle of the night to piss and felt like something was strange, went back to camper for phone and took this picture. Has to be fog or mist but the shapes are weird.

 

In keeping with the tree theme,
here’s a peeled tree i found, peeled by native people for medicinal purposes

 

You positive that was peeled for homeopathic medicine? Looks like the all too common "cat face" which happens from impact. Ran into with a bushhog, truck, ATV, SxS, etc. Usually the tree gets infested with bugs and dies is why I wouldn't think First Americans would do such. But I have been wrong many times.

 

Right?! Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between vehicle damage and a peel. The way the tree has healed around the peel, shows that the bark was removed a very long time ago. At least 100 years ago. Zuni and Navajo were still very active in this area not too long ago. Today they still practice their traditional culture in this forest but less so than in the early 1900’s.
Here’s a link to an article about peeled trees in the area where this tree is located, the article is too expensive to download in my opinion but the abstract is still interesting

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24544710?seq=1

here is another peeled tree in the same area

 

Thats what I was thinking

 

Well there you have it, people. Highly likely a First American tree bark harvest. Very interesting indeed. I would think that they'd use a comfortable working height of shoulder to head high then strip down. Evergreen growth down here on the 3rd coast is rather fast and a bushhog cat face could be 10' high or more in 15 years depending on the variety of pine.

 

Not sure where you found that but it could be one of mine

 

I have seen some trees that look very similar to this in northeast new Mexico but I was told that they had partially died in wildfires. Is there a way to tell the difference or was I given bad information?

 

No, I bet what you were told was accurate. Like vehicle damage, fire scars can look similar to tree peels. Generally, with fire scars, the missing bark goes all the way to the ground, this is the biggest indicator of a fire scar. Tree peels in NM are often oval shaped, opposed to the more triangular shape of a fire scar. Although, tree peels can also be tear drop shaped. These subtle differences are what leaves archaeologists scratching our heads. One really cool thing is sometimes you can see axe marks on the exposed trunk of a peeled tree. Its not easy, the differences are subtle, and I’ve definitely been wrong about CMT’s (culturally modified trees) before, often want a second opinion from a coworker on these things

edit: Also I'd be happy to send anyone the full pdf of that article I posted if you are interested

 

If you showed me that picture without saying anything else, I'd say it was a burn scar. The blackening on the trunk looks like old charcoal. It's a Ponderosa Pine and they have evolved to survive fire with a thick bark so even if one part gets damaged the whole tree is more likely to survive. Not saying it wasn't done by native Americans, but a few minutes with and increment bore would be really interesting. I'd take a core through the healed bark to get an idea of how long ago it happened.

 

It does look a lot like a burn scar but burn scars almost always touch the ground. Part of my job requires me to record peeled trees but dendro coring the tree is outside the project scope, it would be really cool though. Here’s a picture from google of a typical burn scar for comparison

 

Most of the examples I have been shown of burn scars are discs from trees so I never particularly took note of the height of the scars but it definitely makes sense they would start at the bottom or maybe parts of the top and not in the middle.

I would think that after a tree was damaged by peeling or a vehicle or whatever else the next fire coming through would char it up pretty good without the bar there to protect it so the presence of charring probably doesn't say too much after a couple of decades past.