I had told dwarves to cut down trees in an area a good distance away from my base, across a river. After doing so they left the wood lying about where the trees had been, despite the fact that my wood stockpile was empty. I even tried creating another stockpile nearby to see if they brought the wood to that.
Things I've checked
- I do have dwarves with the wood hauling labour enabled.
- The area is accessible
- I have not told dwarves to stay within any burrows, or created any for that matter.
Best Answer
There is one possible reason not mentioned above. In your dwarves' standing orders is an option disable all wood-hauling. The standing orders are where you can change settings like telling your dwarves whether to gather refuse, whether to auto-loom thread into cloth and so on.
o to get into the standing orders screen, then w to toggle wood-hauling on or off.