Hey every one How many of you have logged your woods. My uncle owns the family land and after many year of talking about logging it because it was way past do. He is finally getting it done now. It is selective but its so past do that it means a lot is being cut. Any ideas on how this will affect deer hunting this fall? I know it should make it better in years to come right? any one know about how long it’ll take?
Assuming its mostly oak, you’ll be changing it from a food source to a bedding area. Had this at my farm and learned a lot…the hard way.
As for the logging, I assume you’ll be bidding that out with different companies to come in to cut/skid & haul. Make dang sure ANYTHING you discuss and want is in writing. Typical is for them to cut the tree at the crown, take the trunk, and leave you the mess. I STRONGLY suggest they cut anything smaller than 3″ and stack it in piles not to exceed 8′ in height. Discuss logging road, lanes, and access – plus ant restoration.
Check your pm
Quote:
Assuming its mostly oak, you’ll be changing it from a food source to a bedding area. Had this at my farm and learned a lot…the hard way.
As for the logging, I assume you’ll be bidding that out with different companies to come in to cut/skid & haul. Make dang sure ANYTHING you discuss and want is in writing. Typical is for them to cut the tree at the crown, take the trunk, and leave you the mess. I STRONGLY suggest they cut anything smaller than 3″ and stack it in piles not to exceed 8′ in height. Discuss logging road, lanes, and access – plus ant restoration.Check your pm
Lots of good ideas here.
1. Make sure they scale and PAY for every board foot of lumber, before it leaves your land. That means a check is written for every truck load that goes out.
2. Make sure they know where the property boundaries are. Getting into a boundary dispute with the neighbor and a potential timber theft lawsuit is no fun.
3. Make sure they fix/re-grade all logging roads and seed them down with a cover crop.
4. consider not cutting your oaks between April and October to cut down on oak wilt transmission.
5. get two or more competing bids for your timber. Some loggers will tell you that you only have $10K in timber, but they sell $25K and only tell you abut the $10K.
6. don’t let them cut any walnut trees during the Summer. Summer cut walnut is damn near worthless. The same tree that is cut in the winter is far more valuable. Walnut that is full of sap generally grades very low.
Logging is a once in a generation project for most properties. Do your home work on the logger and make sure the company is a ligit operation.
I am very interested in how this works out for you. Please keep us posted with what you learn/experience.
Some excellent advice above.
PowerFred is right, this is a once in a generation activity, so make sure it gets done right or not at all.
I will tell you on several properties that we hunt in northern MN that were logged back in the 1980s, there are still deeply rutted roads and in some low areas you can follow grapple skidder tracks that were cut 30 years ago.
The damage done by poor logging lasts forever. I have no doubt that in 100 years, there will still be visible ruts in some of these areas.
Grouse
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