Stumbled on a 3-year-old pruning cut I made and couldn't believe the difference

I was back at a job site in Boulder today doing a follow up on a silver maple I worked on back in 2020. The tree had a massive crossing branch that I took off with a proper three cut method, leaving a clean collar cut. At the time I was still figuring out my angle and thought it looked okay but not perfect. Today I saw that same cut had healed over almost completely with just a small donut of bark left. The branch that I left in place had grown strong and the whole crown looked balanced. Compare that to the neighbor's tree where someone just hacked a limb off flush with the trunk and there is a big rotting hollow opening up now. Made me wonder how many other cuts I regretted are actually doing fine. Has anyone else gone back to old work and been surprised by how well it healed?

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dylan_rodriguez16h ago

Did you measure the collar angle that time or just eyeball it?