Leadwood: Bitterroot Forest works to restore damaged site

HAMILTON, Mont. (AP) — The long-bladed Husqvarna comes roaring to life with a single, well-practiced pull from a man who has spent nearly 37 years working in the woods.

On this cool fall morning, Bob Searle is down on one knee and looking up through the branches of the 300-year-old Ponderosa pine that's soon to fall.

With chips flying from the spinning chain, it takes Searle all of two or three minutes to send the tree crashing to the ground.

This time he was lucky.

His blade didn't hit any one of the hundreds of lead bullets buried in the pine.

"That can be a little hard on your saw when that happens," he said, while taking a moment away from his work.