(chainsaw roars) - One, two, go!

(driving rock music) - [Man] It is a lumberjack competition, seven different events: chopping, sawing, speed climbing, log roll.

And we have some chains saw events, as well.

All the events, have all come about, they've been around for well over a hundred years.

The old time lumberjacks in the woods of northern Wisconsin, you know, a hundred years ago, back around the turn of the last century, it was their day-to-day work, chopping the pine trees down, cutting them up into lengths, and of course, a little bit of rivalry would start.

Who's it gonna be?

(speech drowned by audience cheer) "I can chop faster than you," or "I can saw faster."

And of course, the only way to find out who was the fastest was with a competition.

Okay, what we have here is the single buck cross cut event.

We are using M-tooth saws made in Australia.

Pretty simple, one lumberjack, one saw, one complete disc off the end of the log.

So, I'll give him a countdown, here, and we'll get 'em going.

Sawyers ready?

One, two, go!

(saws grind) The object is to use that entire saw, use every tooth on that saw.

They're down through the top of that log.

They'll be into the short wood at the bottom.

The first guy with a cookie on the ground wins the point.

There it is!

And Trask just a couple of strokes behind.

- Yo, ho!

(man laughs) - Go!

The skills involved in lumberjack events are quite specific, actually.

You can't just, sort of, go to the gym and be stronger and automatically be good at it.

It's one of them things you have to do repetitively over and over.

And many of the events are brute strength-focused and some events like the ax row or the log rolling are a little more finesse.

We're gonna be doing a little ax throwing.

They're throwing double bit axes.

They have two cutting faces, they're a pretty common ax used in the woods years ago.

So, they're throwing this double bit ax, at this target, from a distance of 20 feet.

The center of the bullseye is five feet off the ground.

A little bit high.

Now, this is how we score it.

If they hit the green, that'd be one point.

If they touch the yellow paint, that's three points.

Red bull's eye's worth five.

So, Trask, would've got one point, there, and Jester's into that yellow just a little bit, but that still counts.

So, that's a three point throw.

There it is.

That's the bulls-eye he was looking for.

When they release the ax, it will make one full revolution and then stick with the leading edge in the target.

These axes weigh between two and three pounds, and they cannot have a handle shorter than 24 inches.

And that's that elusive bulls-eye.

(driving rock music) The sport is sort of growing in popularity.

A lot of universities have timber sports teams, so people get involved that way at a young age and many go on to become professional competitors.