Edi­tor’s Note

This is the first in a series of arti­cles writ­ten by Alex Bis­so about find­ing and col­lect­ing cot­ton­wood bark. The arti­cles will be pre­sent­ed over the next sev­er­al issues of WOM. The sub­ject of this first install­ment, although more mun­dane then the parts that will fol­low, is nonethe­less very impor­tant information.

Finding and Collecting Cottonwood Bark

By Alex Bisso

Part I — Obtaining Legal Access to Property and Permission to Collect

The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion is the result of my many years of col­lect­ing cot­ton­wood bark, most­ly in Mon­tana but some in north­ern Wyoming as well.

There are many loca­tions where spe­cial per­mis­sion is not required to explore the land for bark poten­tial.  These places include:

• Pub­lic (State or Fed­er­al) lands
• State, coun­ty and munic­i­pal parks
• Wildlife man­age­ment areas, often pur­chased from pri­vate landown­ers, by State or Fed­er­al Wildlife man­age­ment agen­cies and set aside to pro­vide man­aged wildlife habi­tat and pub­lic hunt­ing opportunities.
• Block man­age­ment areas which involve an agree­ment between the Bureau of Land Man­age­ment and pri­vate landown­ers to allow access to land for hunt­ing deer, upland game birds, etc.  Some of these only require sign­ing in at access loca­tions but some require con­tact­ing the landown­ers.  Landown­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in this pro­gram receive a small fee (like­ly paid from hunt­ing license rev­enues) for each per­son who access­es the land dur­ing the cov­ered sea­son. Access to these pri­vate lands is only pro­vid­ed dur­ing the hunt­ing sea­sons for which the area is man­aged for hunt­ing each year and then the access is allowed for hunters. Of course it is OK to look for large dead cot­ton­wood trees while doing that. Whether it be for deer or upland game bird hunt­ing, one should go and scout the area as a hunter. I have gone a num­ber of times with my son who is a bird hunter and found some good trees in this man­ner. Then it is easy to call the landown­er, let him know that you saw the dead tree while hunt­ing and ask for per­mis­sion to go back and col­lect the bark for wood carving.

In all of these areas it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that the per­mis­sion allowed to access the area does not include per­mis­sion to col­lect bark or oth­er wood from that area.  In fact some­times any col­lect­ing is specif­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it­ed.  In most of these areas I feel com­fort­able pick­ing up a few nice pieces of bark when I am check­ing the area out.  How­ev­er, before going in the area to col­lect a large amount of bark I make a prac­tice of and strong­ly rec­om­mend con­tact­ing the landown­er or land man­age­ment per­son­nel to obtain spe­cif­ic per­mis­sion to do the col­lec­tion.  Some­times this requires a num­ber of phone calls to even­tu­al­ly find the per­son who has the author­i­ty to grant you the per­mis­sion you need to col­lect.  The state, coun­ty and city parks usu­al­ly have some­one equiv­a­lent to a park super­in­ten­dent who is respon­si­ble for one or many such parks.  Since the land in block man­age­ment areas is pri­vate­ly owned, it is the landown­er’s per­mis­sion to col­lect that is needed.

For state and fed­er­al lands, includ­ing wildlife man­age­ment areas, etc. it could take a num­ber of calls to find the indi­vid­ual who is respon­si­ble for man­age­ment of the area.  This would like­ly be some­one like a state or fed­er­al wildlife biol­o­gist who lives some­where near the area.  A good place to start call­ing is the clos­est region­al office of the agency which man­ages the land where you want to collect.

Note that many pub­lic lands in Mon­tana now have signs which say “no wood cut­ting” and while I could tech­ni­cal­ly argue that col­lect­ing bark from dead trees does not involve any wood “cut­ting” I would not be com­fort­able col­lect­ing a whole Blaz­er or util­i­ty trail­er full of bark with­out specif­i­cal­ly obtain­ing per­mis­sion to do so.  Hav­ing per­mis­sion brings great piece of mind and assures that a good col­lect­ing area is not put at risk.

When pri­vate­ly owned land is involved it is impor­tant to get landown­er per­mis­sion both before you go on the prop­er­ty to scout promis­ing areas and before you go on the land to col­lect bark – each time.  When I get per­mis­sion to check pri­vate land for thick bark, I nor­mal­ly bring along an exam­ple piece of bark, and per­haps a bark carv­ing, to show the landown­er what I am look­ing for, and I let them know why their prop­er­ty is of inter­est (bones, dead trees, very large trees, etc.).  I also ask them where they sug­gest I look.  I nor­mal­ly like to do my first scout­ing on foot but some ranch­es are so large that ask­ing them about avail­able access roads is a good idea.  If I find good bark I then go back to the landown­er and exchange con­tact infor­ma­tion and make ten­ta­tive plans to come back on a col­lect­ing trip. Some­times I also get per­mis­sion to go and
col­lect some of the bark right then in addi­tion to mak­ing plans to come back
at a lat­er date to col­lect more if it is available.

Com­pen­sa­tion – I have not yet had to pay cash to col­lect bark but to main­tain good rela­tions with the landown­er I always give them a nice, fin­ished bark carv­ing when I find and get per­mis­sion to col­lect bark from their prop­er­ty.  If I do not have a carv­ing to give them on my scout­ing trip I always bring one when I return to do the col­lect­ing.  Some landown­ers have 3–4 of my bark carv­ings and I have devel­oped some good friends and rela­tion­ships in this man­ner.   Even after years of friend­ship with a landown­er, my prac­tice is to nev­er go on their land unless I obtain their per­mis­sion for that spe­cif­ic trip.

It should be men­tioned that it is a good prac­tice to vis­it with or at least call the landown­er on the way out of his prop­er­ty to let him know that you are safe and leav­ing their prop­er­ty, and that you closed any gates, etc. that you need­ed to go through.  I also like to give a small carved-egg San­ta or Christ­mas tree orna­ment, or pos­si­bly just a card or cook­ies, to landown­ers that I vis­it repeatedly.

In the next install­ment: Find­ing Cot­ton­wood Bark — or What To Look For

Here’s a peek at what’s ahead:

To give you an idea of scale, note the top of the vehi­cle in the back­ground Click for a larg­er image.

Alex Bis­so with a Cot­ton­wood Monarch.

Alex Bis­so is a wood­carv­er, and col­lec­tor and sell­er of cot­ton­wood bark and oth­er found wood. To view some of Alex’s carv­ings and cot­ton­wood bark sup­pl at Be So Good Wood, click HERE.