"Redneck Geometry," Hot Saws, And The Bottom Line: Matt Cogar's Rise To America's Best Lumberjack

There is a blue cooler sealed with duct tape and a makeshift packaging label inside a small plywood shed. Enough sun peeks through the shed's lone door to illuminate a collection of axes—at least 20, but I can't keep count because they seem to blend together—and warm the interior on this cool autumn day in the Appalachian Mountains. Tools are strewn across the floor and hanging from the walls. Cans of WD-40 and other metal lubricant spray bottles sit on a table. Against the back wall is a large machine for cutting custom axe handles; it could also be used for baseball bats if someone wanted, but this family is more about axes. Anyway, it's the sealed cooler that interests America's best lumberjack.

"It's my new saw," Matt Cogar says as he peels the tape away. "It's my new hot saw." Stuffed inside is what appears to be a handheld, mid-sized dirt bike motor. The saw was built by Dennis Cahoon, a timbersports athlete on the circuit who competes against Matt. The shaft for the chain is in a box leaning against a table next to the door.

The Hot Saw event is one of the "motor head" events in woodsmen competitions. It's where the athletes can show off their ingenuity and excite crowds with chainsaws so monstrous that everyone within 15 feet must wear noise-canceling headgear. The woodsmen wear safety equipment as they guide the saws through giant logs as if they were paper mache.

The sawing events include a standard chainsaw race, the Single Buck, a one man cross-cut saw event, and a souped up standard chainsaw race, where the motors of over-the-counter chainsaws have been modified with more power. These are in contrast with the traditional chopping events—the underhand chop, standing block chop, and the springboard, in which competitors chop holes into a pole, into which they fit boards that they then jump and stand on, the better to chop a block at the top of the pole. The latter events require just an axe and a willingness to use it ambitiously, and they date back to the logging days of America's past, with deep roots in the Appalachian Mountains. This is an old and strange sport, and Cogar is on the cusp of becoming one of its greats.

Cogar's the youngest competitor in the STIHL Timbersports series to win three titles. He's won three consecutive American championships before the age of 30, which is unheard of. "[There's been] 30 years of Stihl Timbersports and the number of people who have won more than one is not that big. Matt is in rarified group," says Adrian Flygt, the Timbersports announcer and historian. "Most athletes peak between 35 and 45, when they get the mental and physical traits to link up. Matt has 25 years of racing ahead of him. He can rewrite the record books."

The only thing missing in Cogar's portfolio is a world championship, which is why we're here today. There's plenty of training to do ahead of this year's competition in Poland. Cogar held his own the first time he competed against the world's best. Last year he missed out because of an injury. This year he has a chance, again, to see where he stands.

Cogar starts picking through the cooler, pulling out nuts and bolts and the deadly toothed chain that will spin on the saw. His father, Paul, wanders in and starts asking questions about the saw. It's hard to make his words out, between the Copenhagen stuffed in his lip and a dense Appalachian accent. They talk about the saw in its specs, and then Paul disappears from the shed as quickly as he ambled in. Putting the saw together will have to wait. It's time to practice chopping.

Most of West Virginia's economy depends to some extent on pulling things from the earth. This is difficult work, and a difficult way to live. While the coal business is in what appears to be a death spiral, lumber is still in demand. People need wood to build homes, and some of the strongest and best wood in America comes from these hills. The people living there know they need to work carefully, so that future generations will have something to work with too.

Cogar grew up here, and spent much of his youth roaming the beautiful land around his family's log cabin home in Diana. The home is three hilly miles from where his dad grew up. Matt had his own room, but preferred being outside. His best friend lived just across the brook behind his house and they spent most of their time four-wheeling, tearing off as fast as they could, hoping they would have enough gas to get home at the end of the day. They shot pellet and BB guns. He went to church every Sunday and again in the middle of the week for youth group meet-ups. Eventually, he started hunting like most kids in the area.

When he was 12, Cogar saw his first bear in the wild while out deer hunting by himself. "I was watching the hill in front of me and heard a click behind me, so I turned around [to my left] and didn't see anything and turned around [to my right] and there was a bear right beside me," Cogar says. "He kept on walking, just ignored me, didn't smell me or nothing." That's life in rural West Virginia.

At the time, Diana was the center of the universe for chopping competitions. Cogar's father, Paul, still competes. His cousin Arden Jr. beat him in the 2012 Championship. And his uncle Arden Sr. competed in the Stihl Championship series until he was 60. Then there's Mel Lentz, arguably the greatest American woodsman athlete to live. Lentz moved to Diana in 1981 after competing in the Webster County Woodchopping Festival and fell in love with Elizabeth Sears. Diana and the nearby towns in Webster County were the perfect ecosystem for Matt to absorb the sport. And the same year that bear crossed his path, the chopping bug bit him.

"I grew up in it and started seeing people competing and I was like, man, that'd be awesome to do that," Cogar says.

Cogar decided to ask his dad about it a few months before the Webster County Woodchopping Festival. There was an under-18 group and he wanted to compete. He had helped his dad split wood for hours, but he'd never learned the fine art of chopping. Cogar cut through his first ever log that day, a 12-incher. It took him two minutes to pile the axe through it. Today he cuts 13-inch logs in 15 seconds.

Cogar entered the competition with five other novice contestants. It was the muddy season. Trees had begun to bud and nights were still chilly. Cogar was big for his age, but he still hadn't figured out how to use the axe, and it showed: he finished in last place.

"I wasn't embarrassed," Cogar remembers. "It was really the first event for the boys, so it was sort of taking pride in the fact that this is the next generation taking part in timbersports." Cogar was determined to be part of that next generation. He decided then that he would start traveling with his father and Lentz to competitions across the United States and into Canada to compete.

The winner of that first competition was Lentz's son Jason, and he and Cogar would become perfect foils for one another, competing and working together to carry on their family traditions. "The more you compete against somebody that's really good, the better you're going to get because you're going to do everything you can to catch that guy," Cogar says. And he was going to do everything he could to catch Jason and other competitors.

He started taping the old Stihl Timbersports series reruns and shows that aired on ESPN to study and marvel at. He still has those tapes today and watches them in search of a hint or clue that might give him an edge against his competition. More importantly, Jason and Cogar began training with an Australian axeman on the overhand chop, in which the log is placed under the lumberjack's feet. Australia and New Zealand dominate the world of woodsman sports, and have for a long time, thanks to a combination of extra-hard wood, a rich chopping culture, and a wealth of woodsman competitions.

Cogar competed in the novice division four more times and won it each time, until 2006, when he and Jason decided to compete in the B Grade division, which is something like the low minor leagues of woodsman sports. They competed against seasoned veterans, and held their own despite still being teenagers. They learned what it took to make this hobby something more, and they learned that they had the talent to do it.

***

Cogar's practice area, or "chip yard," is the same place he first picked up and axe with his dad 16 years ago. Chunks of wood are scattered across the ground, as are a couple inches of wood chips. A small stack of logs stands at the chip yard's edge near two metal holders, one for the underhand chop and the other for the standing block chop. A brook runs behind the chip yard, and a field runs up a hill and into the mountains. In the dirt driveway, a giant log is strapped to another metal holder.

Cogar places a large log onto a stand and turns a vice, locking it into place. The log is standing straight up, at a height that begins around Cogar's waist and goes up to just above his shoulders. He addresses it with feet spread apart, weight on his back foot, axe down near his feet. He brings the axe up slowly, aiming it where he wants to strike the wood, mentally sussing out the perfect angle for the biggest impact. He counts how many blows it will take to get through the 13 inch piece of wood. He is strong, but also has the soft-eyed look of a farm boy, with a baby's beard and young boy's haircut. He does not look like a man who can put an axe through a giant log in 15 seconds.

Once he has assembled the puzzle pieces in his head, Cogar whips the axe up from his feet with the power and velocity of a Jose Bautista upper-cut swing. He pushes out a big "whoosh" from his lips while swinging the axe, slicing a beautiful cut through the wood. He leaves the axe there, stuck, and examines his lines. There's a strategy to this. "Matt is really soft spoken and mild-mannered, but he's observant, he's processing like Rain Man," Flygt, the historian, says.

For this log, Cogar is going for 16 hits, eight on the front and eight on the back. Each hit determines his approach to the next. If there is a huge chip in the wood, Cogar will raise the axe above his head and swing down to knock it out. Cogar swings the axe again, working his way through the log at a methodical pace.

This is an exercise in muscle-memory. When the time comes, in competition, Cogar knows that he can crank up the speed. For now, he is seeking the edge that comes from practicing angles and perfect swings. "Redneck geometry," Paul Cogar calls it.

The better connection Matt gets when he whips the axe through its arc, the fewer strikes he has to make, which means a faster time. Anyone competing in woodsmen competitions can swing an axe; what separates Cogar is how he swings it. He says it's like NASCAR racing: everyone has the same set of rules to follow and tools to use. It's how they use those tools and how they drive the car that determines the outcome.

"Matt doesn't have the shoe size, doesn't have the brute force or speed, but he gets a lot of weight on the axe," Flygt says. "He's accomplishing more per swing so he doesn't have to go fast."

Cogar unwinds the split log and throws it onto the ground. He splits the two pieces of wood he now has and tosses the chunks into the pile. He grabs another log and examines it, checking to see if it's tulip poplar or pine, the two main types of trees used during Timbersports events. It's pine. He tosses it down on the underhand chop holder and secures it by whacking two large vice grips with large spikes into one end of the log. Before he goes at it, though, he grabs a sharpie and draws out the lines he wants to take when chopping the block and chops out flat spots to stand on. And then it's time for a quick drink.

Growing up in Appalachia, Cogar only had three real options for his future: working in the woods, working in a coal mine, or getting out of dodge and furthering his education. Really, there was only one direction for him: school.

Cogar's mother, Agnes, was an elementary school teacher in town and made sure her children worked their way out of a historic cycle of blue-collar work. Cogar ended up going to nearby Glenville State University and studying biology. The way the human body works fascinated him; for a time, he wanted to be a chiropractor. It was in college, ironically enough, that Cogar first learned he could make a small living as a timbersports athlete.

"The way I paid for my books was by winning wood chops," Cogar says. He would fill up his Volkswagen Golf with saws and axes and head off to compete on weekends. Sometimes Cogar would break even after accounting for travel expenses, and other times he'd come back with some extra money to spend. The competitions built up his resume for the big show, and the dread of coming home in the hole after a losing weekend kept the stakes high. Cogar still participates in these small-time competitions, but he knew what he wanted. He applied to the STIHL Timbersport series three times and was rejected three times before finally being accepted in 2010.

Financially, though, the story is still the same as it was when he was in college. "It doesn't really make a living, truthfully. There's enough money in it to still come out ahead, but you have to win," Cogar says. "You can make enough with the other placings to afford to travel and all that, but whenever I do my taxes at the end of the year, it is the equivalent of a part-time job—if you work a full year at a part-time job." When he goes to compete in Australia in February, Cogar will need to pack in as many competitions and chances to recoup his expenses as possible. And he'll need to win.

To offset all that, Cogar works for a local outdoors store doing background checks on people interested in buying a gun. He trains full time three to four days a week, which is more than most people. His cousin Arden Cogar Jr., for instance, is a partner in a law firm in downtown Charleston, West Virginia's capital, and has to find time to work on his timbersports training. Usually that's early in the morning or during some free time around lunch. But he works long hours in the office, and on the road for cases. That is his job, and timbersports is something else. For Matt, it's the other way around.

Cogar is forever looking for new sponsors, and while his success makes finding them easier than it would otherwise be, the sport's lack of exposure doesn't help. He would like to have some more money to build a training spot closer to the apartment he shares with his wife in Charleston, where she is studying for her PhD at Marshall University. For now, though, he drives an hour and a half each way to the chip yard at the family home. That isn't ideal, or even realistic over the long haul. None of it really is. Cogar's success as a three-time American champion has brought him three free cars of his choosing; he sold the first one, loaded up a truck after his second victory, and is working on getting his wife a car for this year's victory. But money is tight, and free cars can only take you so far.

Cogar came to Poznan, Poland as one of the favorites among a pool of the 23 best timbersports athletes from around the globe, but nothing seemed to go as planned at the STIHL Timbersports World Championships.

The first event was the underhand chop, arguably Cogar's best event. When the cadence clicked, Cogar went, but because of a glitch in the system, which was discovered later, he was disqualified for jumping the gun. He was still able to qualify for the second round of events, the Single Buck and Springboard, but it happened again—Cogar was flagged for a false start on the Single Buck, this time; this was when officials figured out the glitch that had been tripping him up, but the judges wouldn't let Cogar go back and redo his early event to after the glitch was fixed. "By that point I was not in my zone," Cogar says.

It showed. Cogar couldn't keep his composure, and didn't get a chance to warm-up his hot saw for the final round. He finished eighth, a respectable showing after such a huge setback in his first event; Jason Wynyard of New Zealand won it all, his 12th world title. "If he had not received the DQ, he would have finished between third and fifth overall," said Brad Sorgen, the executive producer on the STIHL Timbersport series. As it was, Cogar went home empty-handed.

Wynyard, too, started chopping wood when he was twelve and finished last in his first event. Since then, he's broken records and become the best to ever chop wood. This is the future that Cogar would like to make his own. The only way to do this is to keep chopping.

Weeks before the disappointment in Poland, Cogar wrapped up another long day in Diana. He pounded through a few more logs. Paul came and went, examining Matt's swing and connection, giving quick notes and walking away. Matt took mental notes of each log he attacked. The white pine, which is used in most North American contests, was chopping like butter. The Tulip poplar, a harder and denser wood like the kind used in Australia and New Zealand, crunched when Cogar hit it.

When one log was nearly finished and only the bottom half was standing, Paul walked up and went over each swing. Then he approached the log and, from a distance, pointed out some irregularities in the clean-cut wood. I could barely see them. They came from an uneven spot on the axe blade, which Matt just finished reworking yesterday. Matt and Paul have examined so many strikes that they can pinpoint any blemish on a log and relate it back to the axe. Matt ran his fingers over the blade and feels the exact spot Paul pointed out.

The sun crawled down behind the hills that surround the house. Cogar had spent the afternoon hauling wood out of the forest to chop another time and working on the saw, putting it back together. Now it was ready to use. He had tightened the toothed chain around the shaft and tightened every bolt. The saw looked as though it jumped straight out of the pages of a Dr. Seuss book, with an exhaust like the horn on an old cartoon phonograph. It takes two hands and extreme mountain man strength just to carry it outside once it's all assembled.

Matt put on a bright orange protective chaps. If the chain came loose and flew at him, he'd need them. Paul set up a giant log, making more room at the end so that Matt could cut it without bumping into the metal frame after slicing through the wood. He grabbed the high-octane gas and measured out one capful, as carefully as if he was giving cough syrup to a sick kid. Then he poured it into the saw and stepped away.

Matt pulled the chain and the saw kicked, coughs, and dies. He tried a few more times. Nothing. The chain wouldn't catch. He unscrewed the piece holding the chain in place and re-tightened the bolts, pulling the chain tighter. The same ritual. Matt pulled a few times and the engine kicked and then shuts off again. More gas. And like that, the saw roared to life. I was standing 15 feet away it was nearly too loud for my ears. There was no place to trap the sound in the wide open country.

Matt revved the engine and the chain ripped awake. He placed the saw above the log, then whipped through it as if it was butter. He made a few cuts and pulled the shutoff. It was silent, then. The sun was setting and a chill had started to creep into the air. Time to clean up. Matt had been chopping and working on his swing for hours, and he had an hour and a half drive home, away from the chip yard and back into his life. But he'd be back soon. This was home, and there was still work to be done.