Sour smelling? Sounds like wetwood, also called slime flux. It's a bacterial infection of the heartwood, and the ooze is from the bacteria. Trees will live for many years with it, and it hasn't been shown to hurt the tree physiologically, however it can be an eyesore. Occasionally it is recommended to drill a small hole into the heartwood and install a plastic tube to help move out excess "slime", however it's unclear if it really helps.

if you are familiar with maple syrup ... sap bleeds ... in pine ... it is resin ... there was some insult to the integrity of the bark and trunk ... could have been mechanical .. or insect ... thought i have never seen it like that from one bug ... million year old sap is amber ... cool with ancient bugs trapped in it .. or i am wrong.. lol ken

Thank you very much for your reply. I'm pretty sure that Tree One is a Norway Maple. I'm glad to know the other one is a native Sugar Maple. I had the feeling that's what it was, but wanted to ask just to be sure. Well, at least there is one native tree out there in our "maple area". Thanks again.

I'm sort of a newbie as well. I've collected it a few years, mostly as a curiosity, but this year we started using more spiles with our trees. I noticed that as well, however it was also dripping into the bucket. Do you notice anything in your buckets, or any sap at all on the end of the spiles? Did you make sure to point the spiles down a little bit at an angle? I think it's normal for it to have some wetness running down the trunk, but as I said we haven't been doing the sap thing for very long. We're also getting lots of sap this year, it can take a day or so for the bucket to fill up also. I've found that any trees we have that are close to a lot of sun and have a lot of branches don't make much sap, but the ones deeper in the woods do way better, especially the ones with larger diameter trunks. I also noticed that when we had a slight spring thaw in early Feb and we left the spiles in the trees, and they started dripping even when I didn't think they would. Hope this helps!