Not so good a bad deal!

I was cutting the back pasture today. I went under a pine tree that had a long limb hanging down so I pushed the limb to the side and then all of a sudden I felt severe pain in the side of my ankle. The limb got cought on the tire and it pushed it to my foot and jamed it to the side of the tractor transmission. I could not pick up my foot to push the clutch in so the tractor keep going till the limb broke. Foot is sore but doesn't fill like nothing is broke. Limped in told wife what happen after she cleaned it, iced it up she reminded me that I said I was going to trim the limbs on the trees after I had cut the pasture in the spring. I am just thanking the Lord the outcome was a sore foot and not something worse.

Yeah,L'm really glad it didn't do more damage to your foot. I was out brush cutting last week and a two inch stick came thru and wedged my brake foot so I was still able to clutch out with the other foot..I wasn't hurt. Can't be too careful.

Working around trees is real dangerous. We have a lot of grape vines, snag one of those and it can bring a tree branch down on your head.

Like I mentioned a week or two ago on another thread, a couple of weeks ago I took my H and loader and pushed some dead branches out from under a big dead elm tree in the fence row near our house with the intention of taking the tree down in the near future.

I went back to the shop, parked the tractor, and heard a big "crack" and "crash". About a third of the tree broke off and fell right where I'd been working a few minutes before.

It's a learning experience, for the most part, trees and tractors just don't mix.

I've had similar experiences, it is good policy to stay out from brush and trees, if whatever you are running does not have good protection, even then, things poke through protection like thick woven metal screens like what you see on crawlers set up for the woods.

Just last week, I had a darned staghorn sumac, come up between the loader frame and tractor, slid up to the outside of my leg, rubbed me but good, but it could have skewered my leg just the same. I've gotten away with a lot clearing brush and fallen trees, but it is without a doubt, nasty and extremely dangerous work. Last week I tried pushing an uprooted cherry, 8" or so, and I know that if I went far enough, it could have came off the bucket, right up the loader arms and probably taken my head off. This thing was so strong that I could push it and spring load it enough that it would push the tractor right back, up hill !!! I knew it was time to quit before I got started, or they'd find me on this old ford 850, with no head LOL ! Not good. Best to get the saw out and clear safely. Ice storm, Dec., 2008 sure made a real mess, still trying to clear some of it.

Working under trees can be very hazardous. I've a friend that was bushogging under a tree, a limb caught on the outboard tire and was pulled down on him, crushing some vertebrae. He is now paralyzed from the waist down. An old timer told me he was operating a JD dozer and impaled himself onto a bent over tree. I was mowing with a ZTR mower and ran into a small broke-off limb, that left a pretty bad bruise on my arm. I find that a ZTR does not stop as readily as a tractor where you have one foot on the brake and another on the clutch.

Be Very Careful Guys.

did same while on a 6600 clearing a fence line...

thought I had broke my foot..

I lost a friend due to trees and bush hogging. He was using a tractor with loader, when the loader bucket snagged a grapevine which in turn broke off a large limb that hit him in the back of the head and neck paralyzing him. The tractor wandered off through some brush and into the woods where the loader hit a tree and sat there spinning till the engine finally stalled or ran out of gas, not sure which. His wife was out of town, at a teacher's meeting, and he sat there slumped over tractor unable to move for a day and half till a neighbor came to check on him. He was so hoarse form yelling he could hardly talk. He laid in the hospital for over a month and finally died form complications of exposure, etc.