Are any of these worth collecting (junipers)?

Hi. A person in my area is looking at having these old junipers removed. I wanted to know if people here thought any of these trees were worth trying to extract and save.

When collecting a juniper like this, is it OK to prune a lot of the tree before extracting it? A lot of this stuff seems like it might be dead, but also shows lots of potentially nice deadwood to work with/practice on... (I am wondering if the one with wood spreading over the ground is almost certainly dead). I don't own old junipers, so this could be a chance for me to get my feet wet.

Sorry about the pics, they are from the land owner, not me. I think I can see some large trunks in some of those pics..

Please advise and let me know what you think! Is this even good practice material, or just not worth the effort?

If they've gotta go anyway, why not? It's only work. Do you or the landowner have any idea what kind of juniper these are?

It is impossible to tell what is under the snow and the deadwood, but they look old enough that there's bound to be something there. But be aware that these may end up being shohin size bonsai by the time you're done with them.

I'd be hesitant to cut much live wood away before you dig if only because you have no idea how much root you will be getting.

Thanks.

That's what I told myself. I also think there must be something under there.

I'll try my hand at getting them. The owner does not know what kind they are and neither do I. I've only seen these pictures so far and won't see the actual trees until the day I extract them. All I know is that they are in the back of their yard and they want them gone.

I'll not mess with the roots on extraction, so do I just slip the rootball into a large pot with a fast draining substrate around the edge? Or should I gently remove as much soil from the rootball as I can?

Thanks again!

That looks like some pretty amazing material to me. From what I can see they appear to be Parson's Junipers, Juniperus Davurica 'Parsonii'. But, that's a guess and it's pretty hard to be certain when evaluating junipers from pictures.
I hope you have a truck. You'll need to remove some of the foilage to collect these trees, but it's likely some of those branches you'll want to keep are going to extend a long ways out before there is any green. Parson's Juniper landscape material that isn't pruned back pretty hard as maintenance on a regular basis, can definitely get pretty rangy.

As far as removing the soil, that will depend on what actually comes up out of the ground with these trees. If you wind up with a really sticky lump of almost pure clay around those roots, you'll want to work a good bit of that out before putting the tree down into a pot. Otherwise, if the field soil looks fairly decent and doesn't look like it will impede water draining from the pot much, I would leave a good bit of the original soil in and around the roots. When the collected tree is placed in it's new (big/non-bonsai) pot, you can then carefully work in some gritty soil amendments down into the roots with a chop stick, when building up the soil.
I think these trees are a great find! It looks like you could be in for some hard work on collection day, but old, well-established landscape material just like these have initially provided the foundation for some really nice bonsai later on, for a lot of folks.