Whether or not he was going to be a woodchopper was never really a choice for Deloraine's Dan Gurr.
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Growing up with a chopping champion father, in a region and a state synonymous with timber mills and tree trunks, Dan's destiny was always laid before him.
"I competed in my first chop in the arena when I was four years old," Dan said.
Nineteen years later, and with close to thousands of woodchopping competition experiences under his belt, Dan stands among the best woodchoppers in the world.
Chopping runs in the family, and Dan will swing his axe at the Stihl Timbersports Woodchopping Australian Championships barely 100 metres from where his father Matthew Gurr started chopping in 1983.
"My Dad chopped. I grew up following him around, watching him chop and wanted to do the same thing, just like any little kid," Dan said.
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The relationship dynamic is a little different now, and there is a mutual respect for each other's chopping accomplishments. Dan is equally in admiration of his Dad as Matthew is proud of his son.
Dan would be competing in the championships against his father this year, like he has many times in the past, if not for a COVID compromised competition that has a reduced number of choppers vying for the title.
As for who holds the axe in the family Matthew's memory was a little muddled but Dan was more convinced.
"We competed against each other in Adelaide and I beat you," Dan said to his Dad.
Competitiveness between the two is slightly out of character, but perhaps it marked some kind of passing of the axe from father to son.
Now Matthew is the first one to talk about Dan's accomplishments - like how he was the first Australian to win the rookie world championship in Marseille, France or the time he was invited to Norway as part of the Australian team.
Or how he is a hot chance to again be recognised as one of the very best choppers in the world ahead of the championships.
Dan is a qualified arborist and runs a forestry business with his brother. Short of eating wood chips for breakfast, he is a wood whisperer in every way.
His background, like many of his competitors, gives him a unique x-ray-like vision into the log that lay under his axe. He can "read" the log and pick what parts of the wood are most vulnerable.
"A lot of competitors have different ideas on how they read the wood and how they would like to cut it," he said.
"So everyone develops their own way as to where they want to put the softest part of the log and where they want to start and finish in terms of where the hard and soft wood is on the log."
While many of the 11 other Australian's competing in the championship are burly and big-chested beasts, Dan is more refined.
"I'm not very big, so technique is really important to me to get the most out of every hit," he said.
"It's a bit like golf. There's a lot of technique involved."
"You don't just line up for a golf ball and smash it as hard as you can ... you need to make sure that your timing is all right and you hit in the right place."
"It's the same with chopping. You need to put the axe on the wood in the right place, on the right angle. It's a lot more delicate than it looks."
There are six disciplines as part of the championships and each is quite unique. Some require the chopper to wield a chainsaw, while the others call for an old-school buck saw or a trusty axe.
One area Dan knows he will do well in is the springboard hop.
"My best event would be springboard," he said.
"Best" is an understatement according to Dad Matthew, "Dan is the best in Australia at springboard", he said.
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Springboard is based on an old lumberjack technique where the chopper's task is to cut notches in a trunk, place a board into the notch and then climb onto it in order to cut a top log.
Speed and agility gives Dan his advantage here - the best athletes usually climb the trunk is 10 axe hits, and lop off the top log in another 10 whacks. The process takes between 40 and 60 seconds.
Lead up competitions are a big part of the training regime that gets Dan into tip-top shape ahead of a national event, but they have not been on the cards in 2020.
Dan said the break was not necessarily a bad thing, but a fire is burning in his belly to get back into the sport.
"I've enjoyed the time away from it. Because I've spent my whole life chopping, it's consumed my life for so long and it was actually good to spend a bit of time away," he said.
"But I think coming back into it now I'm a lot more excited to get back into it and go and do it."
The Australian championship is being held virtually this year as competitors from around the nation are not able to get together. Dan will, however, be able to size himself up alongside fellow Tasmanians Kody Steers and Josh Bakes.
With COVID-19 having put woodchopping on the back-burner over this year, Dan has no idea how he will go in the championships.
"It's going to be interesting because we won't really know how we'll go. We'll know compared to each other but not to everyone else," he said.
"It'll be a really weird feeling, we'll be like 'oh, I guess that was good but I don't know."
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