L.C. I'm not saying that nature didn't cause some trees to grow malformed I'm saying that after you find 20 some odd trees in one general area and they're almost identical and they're following a giving path of least resistance leads one to believe it's man made.
Hi Orange..I'm just going to use Oak Trees for an example here although Any Tree Produces the same outcome.
Acorns from Oak trees carry the same 'Genetic' markers as the tree they fell from. Some grow straight and tall with very few low limbs, others are shorter and have many limbs. Still others look bent or deformed in some way.
When you see a concentration of them in an area, that's why. The cycle keeps going. When you see basically the same tree formation in a larger area that you hunt..squirrels and other animals are carrying acorns and some drop along the way, gravity going downhill or rains wash them to other areas and a within a few years the acorn starts growing into a tree that looks like the tree it fell from. Your average oak tree starts producing acorns at 20yrs old. Some don't produce til 50yrs old.
If an acorn is injured by weather or an animal bite and goes on to grow into a tree...there could be some damage to it that causes a deformed or bent shape.
I've seen pictures where what someone thought was a dying 'pointer' tree had what they thought was a younger 'pointer' tree planted very close to the dead or dying tree. That's not the case...it's the markers in the acorn that recreate the shape of the tree. Like humans...If parents are tall and thin, chances are, their children will be tall and thin.
I'm not at all saying that Indians, Outlaws or Settlers didn't bend a young tree for a trail or water landmark...But trees were never intended to be permanent markers. An odd shaped tree could of been used as a landmark to mark anything of value and people could of died before it was recovered...but if there are a lot of those similar shaped trees, that's unlikely that a tree like that would be used.
I could go into the grafting of trees and other ways to create 'community' or individual landmarks and markers in our part of the country but I don't think this is the thread for that. I just wanted to save you a little frustration and boot leather if I could. I hope this helped some.
Kace