Admit it: a girl with an ax is pretty hot.

You may laugh, but watch the lumberjills in action down at the Great Maine Lumberjack Show in Trenton, and you’ll understand. It takes a lot of skill to throw a double-edged, razor-sharp ax onto a bull’s-eye 20 feet away. There’s something about a woman sporting flannel and a chain saw that’s undeniably appealing. What sounds better – a bunkhouse full of sweaty, hairy lumberjacks, or a group of strong, sexy lumberjills, who look good in both heels and steel-toed boots?

Logging sports are the passion for a small but devoted network of lumberjacks and ‘jills, and “Timber” Tina Scheer is the unofficial queen of the lumberjills. She entered logging sports at the age of 8, when virtually no women competed, and has sawed and chopped her way to the top of the game. More than 30 years after she first picked up an ax, she’s showing no signs of stopping.

“Before the ’70s, all women really did was the log rolling,” she said. “But they were token women. It was a man’s show. In the late ’70s, a couple women started cross-cut sawing. And then in the mid-’80s, we started seeing women from the college level start chopping and chain sawing.”

Scheer said that it wasn’t until the mid-’90s that women actually started competing in logging sports. In 1994 she founded her team, the World Champion Lumberjills, or, as she affectionately calls them, “chicks with axes,” who travel around the country giving logging sports exhibitions. After appealing to the board of directors of the Lumberjack World Championships in Wisconsin, she got the funds, the time, the wood and the ‘jills to stage the first competitive women’s events in the nation, though it wasn’t until 2001 that there was a women’s title for the wood chop.

Since then, more and more women have been trying their hands at being a lumberjill. It’s still a sport dominated by men, but like other male-dominated sports such as boxing, hockey and weightlifting, women are becoming more accepted as skilled competitors.

As the owner of the Great Maine Lumberjack Show on Route 3, which has daily shows at 7 p.m., Scheer’s made it her business to make sure every show features at least two lumberjills onstage. And she has nurtured budding talents such as Pennsylvania native Allison Melton.

Melton got started in logging sports when she was a teenager.

“I saw a collegiate competition when I was in high school,” the University of Maine senior said. “I thought it would be an interesting thing to try. There aren’t a lot of people in the sport in general, and there definitely aren’t many girls in it, either.”

The 21-year-old ‘jill excels in numerous logging sports, including underhand chopping, single buck sawing and the ax throw. She’s a member of the Woodsman team and travels to competitions throughout the Northeast every few months. Most recently she went to Tupper Lake, N.Y., for the Tupper Lake Woodsman Field Days.

“I’ve placed [in competitions], but it’s difficult to get first or second place because there are more experienced women competing,” said Melton. “But I’ve placed in several events. They usually pay out to sixth place. But you’re definitely not in the sport to make money. It’s something you do as a passionate hobby.”

And it’s an expensive sport – a cross-cut saw can cost between $1,000 and $2000, and a new chopping ax costs between $150 and $400.

“They may all look the same, but they’re really precise cutting tools,” Melton explained. “It takes a lot of skill and work to get the equipment ready for competition. To make a nice edge on an ax it takes up to five hours of stoning. It’s a lot harder than it looks.”

Though there are logging sports fans across the nation, there are several areas that are meccas for lumberjacks and ‘jills. Scheer’s home state of Wisconsin has produced world-champion log rollers, and there are many fans of the sport in other parts of the Midwest and in New York, New England and West Virginia.

UMaine is among a few colleges in the United States that boasts a Woodsman team, and many athletes compete only on the club level. At Canadian schools, however, logging sports rate the varsity level. They’re also extremely popular in Australia and New Zealand, and both countries have produced world champions.

Alissa Jones, who’s been working in the Great Maine Lumberjack Show for five summers now, had lumberjill tendencies before she was “discovered” by Scheer in 2000.

“My dad’s a caretaker, and I worked with him in the winters, so I cut trees. I enjoy using chain saws,” said the 25-year-old Mount Desert Island resident, who says log rolling and chopping are her favorite events.

Michelle Morse, another lumberjill in the Trenton show, has been performing for several summers now.

“A friend of mine who worked at the show said to me one day, ‘You should come work at the lumberjack show.’ I was pretty much like, ‘Yeah, right!'” said Morse. “But I tried it out, and I’ve done it for a few years now.”

The 32-year-old spends the rest of the year teaching K-8 physical education and coaching soccer at the Lamoine School. Her slender build and role as a teacher belie her fierce skills with an ax or a saw, and she said she gets a lot of different reactions from people when they find out she’s a lumberjill.

“I get everything from ‘Huh?’ to ‘Awesome!’ said Morse. “I get a lot of reactions.”

“I think people picture a lumberjill as a big, husky girl,” said Jones. “They see people like me and Michelle, and they say, ‘You aren’t lumberjills.’ We’re small, but we’re powerful.”

One event that has remained a difficult one for women to break into is the tree climb, in which a lumberjack scales a 60-foot wooden pole using only studded boots and a rope. It’s true that many women do not have the upper-body strength that men do. Morse, however, has no trouble getting to the top.

“Michelle’s really good at it,” said Jones. “She’s more cautious than the guys, though. They just run up and end up falling and ripping half their arm off. She’s a lot more careful.”

Being involved in logging sports, no matter what your gender, is fairly unusual, even as the sport has grown in popularity after ESPN started the Great Outdoor Games, which is televised every year.

“It’s definitely a topic of conversation,” said Melton. “I meet a lot of different people because of it.”

Melton has other interests; as a studio art major at UMaine, her favorite medium to work in is metals. She’s an accomplished welder in addition to being a lumberjill.

Logging sports is an activity that appeals to a wide variety of people, whether they grew up around it or not. Indeed, scrolling down the list of lumberjills on Scheer’s Web site for her chicks with axes, one sees many different lifestyles and careers: cheerleader, theater major, coffee shop owner, nurse.

All the lumberjills seem to share one thing in common, though: They love what they do, and they don’t care what anyone might think of them.

“It’s a lot easier to progress in the sport if you’re male, but it doesn’t really intimidate me,” said Melton. “Basically, I’ve never been told I couldn’t do something because I’m a girl.”

The Great Maine Lumberjack Show runs through Sept. 4. For more information, call 667-0067, or visit www.mainelumberjack.com. Emily Burnham can be reached at 990-8030 and eburnham@bangordailynews.net.

Lumberjill events

. Underhand chopping: A lumberjill stands on top of a log mounted in a metal stand and chops through the log.

. Ax throwing: A double-edged ax is thrown at a round target 20 feet away.

. Cross-cut sawing or double-buck sawing: Two lumberjills saw through a slice of wood as fast as they can using a 5-foot 6-inch double-handed saw. The solo version of this is called “single buck” and uses a one-handed saw.

. Hot sawing: A lumberjill uses a chain saw to make three quick down-up-down cuts through a log.

. Speed climbing: A lumberjack (or ‘jill) climbs up a 60-foot wooden pole using only a rope and spikes strapped to the climber’s boots.

. Log rolling: Two lumberjills spin on a western red cedar log floating in water and try to knock the other one off.