Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How many acres would 400 cords be?

Good stuff, Lonny.
OP,
Tough to know what the now deceased owner had in mind.....or what he signed up for.
I'm not saying loggers are crooks, but some folks get taken " advantage of".
If the price is so cheap that you don't care if it's clear cut, I say continue to do your due diligence and move forward.
Who's watching the cutting?
When does the 400 cord number get " filled?"
Or do they just get to cut til there length of agreement runs out and they say they didn't get enough?
Logging companies aren't in business to overstate the amount of wood they plan to harvest.
Road building?
Culverts?
Engineered?
Easements?
Personally, if for recreation, I would be very cautious about committing myself to buy until after I was able to tour the property post logging.
If you were going to chop it up into parcels to sell, the roads and drainage may be a huge advantage to you.
Hopefully the company with the contract on this is the best logger ever.
Wonder what the family sold those rights for?
Too late now probably, but if they sold them for $40,000 (100 bucks a cord) it would have been nice to just add that to the price before purchase.
Good luck.

If it`s not done this way the mess will be overwhelming. It will be hard to walk anywhere other than the logging trails. Getting clear shots at deer will be difficult if the tops aren't cut up. If the slash isn't removed or ground up it could be tough going for a few years. I'm going through it now.

I have found the "mother lode" of Morels in these kind of slashings.Son in law picked one hundred and forty morels.Took five steps anf picked a hundred and fifty more.The largest was fourteen ounces,three weighed thirty one ounces.Dabble

Heck of an informative thread.

That is predominantly pulp wood country sold by cord measure to paper mills
and OSB plants.

Much of the wood is hauled pole length 8-10 cords per trailer load IIRC.

Within two years,, you will have a stand of "dog hair" popple providing
food and cover for deer and grouse. Clear your shooting lanes and trails
while the saplings are small.

A small acreage of woods we used to hunt here in KY was logged back in the early '90s and changed the whole look of it but it didn't seem to affect the deer activity very much after a short while although squirrel hunting dropped off considerably. The loggers zig-zagged around cutting only certain size hardwoods and left big, tall brush piles of cut limbs which soon were overgrown with vines and all kinds of weeds growing in the cleared logged areas were the sun could now get to.. If a wounded deer managed to crawl up inside one of the brush piles, assuming you could even find it, you'd likely need a chain saw to get it out.

The worst was they just left assorted human trash like drink cans, bottles and cups, paper and Styrofoam coffee cups, snack and sandwich wrappers, cigarette packages, a few empty chain saw oil and 2 cycle oil containers, wads of toilet tissue, etc, just scattered around on the ground. In one spot it looked like a piece of their heavy power equipment probably sprung a leak as there was a fair size oil stain on the ground.

That entire little woods is gone now, though, bulldozed down, cleared and planted, most likely done by the current farmer/leaser and/or land owner in order to gain more tillable acreage.

Hahaha

Loggers in Tn will leave the top 1/3 of every tree and usually several dozen empty hyrdaulic fluid jugs.

I never like cleaning up with a cat [ bulldozer] you get to much dirt in the piles and they don't burn well, i use mostly an excavator you stack higher and burn better .

someone mentioned top 1/3 of tree left,,bingo,, most people do not realize the volume of wood debris in the canopy,,it is hugh and of course depends on type of tree.

norm

Made me curious. google always knows. 1 to 50 trees, depending.

http://ucanr.edu/sites/placernevadasmallfarms/files/76320.pdf

Some here will buy a log truck load of 32 footers and typically get about 12 cords of split and stacked firewood. That number too depends on how tightly one puts together his stacks. So, about 33 big rig loads. That's a lot of wood to pull off of 65 acres. About 2 acres per load, but I don't recall seeing many clean 32 ft logs being moved when I lived back east.

From an efficiency standpoint, the quickest returns come from the largest of trees. Limbs are a complete waste of time unless one has some really spiffy commercial equipment for bucking, stacking, and hauling. A potential boost from what is typically waste would be to bring in a portable pellet mill. Those can swallow anything and kick out the finished product leaving a pretty clean site.

With western conifers, we have few limbs to deal with, but the reverse is true of deciduous hardwoods. Unless the deal includes the piling and burning of slash, the lot could end up looking like a bombed out nightmare. I'd ask for a few more details on the contract specifics. Some states also demand one submit cutting and reclamation plans before commercial actions can proceed.

I suggest one rent a forester for a day and ask them for an assessment. They'll likely go through "Steelhead and tkinak's process" above and likely also consider tree height. Things are a bit different if one cutting 100 ft+ verses 50 ft trees. Get into larger trees and rounds become a bit heavy to handle. They do stack up quickly though.

One might also consider buying the contract and doing things your way. That could be 60 to $80K in firewood depending on price. With labor considered the contract might be had for half of that.

When Cookie and I go to the woods, we rarely consider anything that less than 24 inches. Run the saw for an hour, and we're good for a 2 cord winter with some left overs.

In the midwest slash is left on the ground and actually helps with regeneration. Within 5 years the place will have lots of prime deer and grouse habitat. Especially if its logged in the winter.

The only reason I would NOT BUY IT, is that it is surrounded by a bunch of PUBLIC HUNTING State Forest... You will have googans camped out on every border, or worse, trespassing...

You're going to be up by Orr somewhere? Remember that stuff doesn't grow as fast up there. But in 5-10 years it will be a hellova nice grouse hunting spot. If I had that land surrounded by 1000's of acres of state forest. I'd not worry too much about it. The price of land will only go up.

With all the timber down, you'll be able to get a true lay out of the property's terrain. It might not be as bad as you think having it logged off. Might be easier to cut some trails in, put up some out buildings, a shop, tree stands.

If you like, grab it. Trees grow back.

Big pile of good advice there.

I was thinking that I could get out there after they are done with a bobcat and make a trail system. I could make some clearings and plant crab apple trees along with some berries and rose hips. I'd have years of great grouse, deer and bear hunting right in my back yard. Be great for the kids and grand kids to come up and ride four wheelers and hunt. I guess the next question is, how many No Trespassing signs do I need to cover 65 acres?
I'll need something to keep me busy in my retirement.

You’ll probably need a schitload of “No Trespassing” signs. I was thinking the same thing as you. Get out with a skid steer and piss around at your leasure. The land being loggged off may not bug you because you’re not local to the spot. If you grew up on it or hunted it before it was logged, it might bug you that is barren now. But hell, you get to start over. That could be fun!

Crapapples, Choke Cherries, raspberries....get it all in there when the trees are down and I’ll bet the grow like mad.

If you get it bought, be sure to have a fresh pot of coffee on when I'm drivin' by.

If you're worried about what it will look like post logging, get a option to purchase. Might cost a few bucks, but it will give you piece of mind.

Hopefully they clean up the tops. Broke my ankle on the way to the blind opening morning two years ago trying to navigate that crap.

If they clear cut it or even selective cut, you can configure your property they way you want to hunt it. Shooting lanes, food plots, blinds, etc. 65 acres of different habitat among 1000 acres might make it a bit of a wildlife sanctuary. Your biggest headache will be trespassers "who've been hunting here for the last 35 years".

While I defer to others here that are more knowledgeable about logging, I can tell you that a
friend of mine had his 50 acre hunting property logged (not sure how much they took out), but he was PISSED that the loggers knocked down old stone walls that had been there for centuries, and made a general mess. This was years ago, and there are
MANY saplings coming up because of the “opened canopy”.

For me, unless the price is ridiculously low (worth buying if it was bald), I wouldn’t buy it
before it’s logged. Maybe you could put a refundable deposit down based on the results of
the logging process? -TomT

On the stone wall deal...same thing at our place. A wall built by slaves under the Albert Newell, iron baron in this area of Mid Tn back in the 1850s.

Scumbilly loggers rammed parts of it down after being informed to be careful. Then the logger wanted to know if me and my pop would let him take some of the limestone flat rocks for his cabin 'project'. Said no, well he went and mooched permission for portions of it that went beyond our boundary from the property neighbor.

Came back across our line, he got supposedly confused and ended up scooping up about 50 ft of it on our side. What an ass. Typical high school dropout, posing as a quasi logging operation. Never again with us.