Aaron Hovis chops and saws his way to timbersports success
by Jim McCarty | jmccarty@ruralmissouri.coop
Normally you can find Aaron Hovis in the woods. Sometimes he’s improving timber stands for landowners through the business he shares with his dad, Hovis Timber and Consulting. Or he might be helping electric co-op employees stay safe through the tree-felling classes he teaches.
But in the evenings or when it’s too wet to get in the woods he’s more likely to be swinging an ax behind his home near Marquand. For the past 11 years, Aaron has been a timbersports athlete. He’s made a name for himself by chopping and sawing his way to the podium in collegiate and professional competitions.
Most of the six events that comprise the Stihl Timbersports series pay tribute to the skills used by timber cutters for centuries — only faster. Three are done with an ax: underhand chop, standing block chop and springboard. The other three use a saw and include stock chainsaw, single buck and hot saw.
The latter is the only timbersports event that bears no resemblance to anything Aaron would do in the woods. In this event Aaron wields a saw that is more motorcycle than chainsaw. This 65-pound beast has a 325 cc Honda engine, a jet ski carburetor and a custom bar designed to handle a chain moving at more than 200 mph. With it he can cut through a 16-inch log in less than a second.
Aaron’s timbersports career began while he was a student in the forestry program at Three Rivers College. “I started doing it because it kind of looked like fun,” says the Black River Electric Cooperative member. “I thought, ‘I’ll try it out and see if I like it.’ Well, the adrenaline that you get in a competition like that is addicting.”
Soon Aaron was the guy to beat. In 2014 he took third in the regional collegiate qualifier. That was good enough for a wild card invite to the nationals. “I got dead last because I hadn’t had any quality training,” Aaron admits. “YouTube videos were all the training I had.”
At the competition Aaron met one of the legends of the sport and ended up training with him. In 2015 he won the Midwest qualifier and took third place at the national event held in New York City’s Central Park. A year later he finished second, losing by a couple points.
He turned pro in 2019, nearly making it to the finals in t
he Stihl Timbersports series. He’s competed in the series ever since, typically ranking in the mid-teens nationally. His best event is the hot saw, where he finished in second place this past July by making three cuts through an 18-inch log in 5.87 seconds.
Aaron competes with racing axes made in either New Zealand or Australia. Polished to a mirror surface, they are so sharp he can shave hair off his arm with them. Each of his dozens of axes are custom-made for a special purpose or a type of wood. Likewise, he has competition crosscut saws designed to quickly slice “cookies” off a log, sometimes with his wife, Shelby, pulling the other end of the saw.
The equipment is important, Aaron says, but there are two other keys to his success: “Gear is one part of it, and then there is your health and fitness, so your strength. And there is also your technique, which is really more important than brute strength.”
He says swinging an ax into a log inches away from your feet can be dangerous, but protective gear minimizes the risk. Still, Aaron has sliced his finger to the bone pulling the ax from a log during a springboard event and once escaped serious foot injury thanks to the chain-mail covers he wears on his feet and ankles.
While the competition is fierce, even the best athletes are willing to share their secrets to success.
“All I have to do is make one phone call and go train with somebody that’s really, really good,” Aaron says. “There’s no other sport like that.”
You can follow Aaron on TikTok at @aaronhovis95, on Instagram at @that_timbersports_dude and on Facebook.