Some stumps can really be a pain. About 10 years ago I cut a large cottonwood type tree down. For three years I tried to burn it out. Drilled holes, filled it with diesel, even took a 5 gal metal bucket and filled it with old motor oil and punched a small hole in it and it burnt for two days. It was a tree that just held water and would never dry out and burn. It was 4 1/2 ' across. I had a large backhoe and worked two days trying to dig it out, I was down about 12 ft. Rooting around and trying to cut all the roots, had a hole deep enough and large enough that you could have put a dozer down in there. I had finally dug deep enough and wide enough that I flipped it loose. It was so heavy I couldn't pick it up with a chain and the bucket. I finally dug a slope and tried to rake it out with the backhoe. I would just about get it to the top then it would tilt and fall back down. Even bent the bucket. Couldn't drag it out. Finally got it rolled to the top of the ground and as I rolled it for the last time it flipped over and one of the roots was so long it rolled toward the backhoe and smashed the rear window out. I finally drug it to the back of the property and every year I gather up all the limbs, pallets, scrap wood, I would saturate the stump with about 10 gal of motor oil and set it on fire. It took me about 7 years to get to burn up. That was one expensive stump to remove. I would have just called a stump grinding co. but where it was, I had to put a drive there and heavy eqpt. would be going over it and it would just rot and sink a little more every year, and I didn't want that.
I made the mistake of thinking that a small rotten stump would only take a few swipes with the backhoe and be done with it. Boy was I wrong not knowing what it was attached to and my 5 minute job turned into 1 1/2 hour job. Just another learning experience for me.
