Buckthorn removal week

River-X

5 year old buck +
I set out to rid my hunting land of some buckthorn this last week. I have been at it for a few days now and it feels good to look back and see some progress. I will take some pictures of the areas cleaned out tomorrow And will post a few updates during the next week or so.
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Is that one of those “clamps” for ripping out trees? Just talked to a guy about one lately that he says does a good job. My main concern was how efficient it is.


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That looks good. What is your long term plan for the area? I've been cutting and spraying lots of buckthorn the past few years, but it is definitely a multi-year effort since there are millions of seeds in the soil bank that are waiting to sprout.
 
Yes. This one is the Danuser Intimidator. It works very well and just like a lot of attachments, the more you use it, the more efficient you get to be with it. It is my favorite attachment with my grapple coming in a close second. If you have invasive trees and shrubs and/or fence lines to keep cleared out, it is a fantastic tool.
 
The guy I talked to that has one owns a fencing company


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Long term plan is just to gain some ground on the invasive buckthorn. Hoping to achieve better light to the areas and the forest floor. I will follow it up in the spring with some spot spraying but have found that if I pull it out, the native stuff can put up a pretty good fight to reclaim the areas. I have had a bit of buckthorn try to re-establish itself but a quick spray and it normally terminates it. I’m sure it’s seed lying there that takes off if conditions are right and nothing is competing with it yet.
 
Made some good progress in the past three days. Way back in the day (1930’s) this area was cattle pasture all along the river bottom. You can’t see the river in these pictures but it is only about 60 or 70 yards through the brush. I have old aerial photos from back then of this farm and it shows about 30 big oak trees and no other woody plants, just open pasture. It has sure blown up over the years to where we couldn’t even bow hunt down in the bottom because you couldn’t get a shot more than 5 yards from a tree without massive lane cutting.
 
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In the picture above, you can see I cleared the buckthorn from the edges of the old path and about 10-15 yards into the woods. There is still a ton of buckthorn deeper in there and the picture gives you an idea of how thick this stuff is. Especially looking at the right side of that picture.
 
Next you can see some areas where I cleared it pretty extensively around some of the big oaks. The reason I went a bit cleaner here is there are 3 wild apple trees in there and I wanted to free them up and hope they will produce a bit better next year if I trim them up a little also.399A907F-6A25-43FC-AF99-110F1F72B8FB.jpeg436C2B07-4E3F-4AD6-8EBC-D2F24A58B1C1.jpeg
 
You're of course aware that once you engage in the buckthorn battle, you're in for a multiple year(decade)war - correct?
 
Here are the apple trees. First three trees to the right of that big oak that is on the left side of the picture. I ran a picture of the leaves and trees through the “picture this” app and it says they are “Paradise Apples Trees” and then says that they are domesticated orchard apple trees. But that app says that about a lot of the apple trees I have taken pictures of so I don’t know if it is a generic name the app uses or what. I did find another apple tree today that had pretty big, nice looking apples on it and the app said it was a European Plum tree, but it obviously has apples on it.
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homerj,
Absolutely. Been cleaning fence lines for 20 plus years, so I know it is a never ending battle. Just hoping to create some huntable pockets throughout the over grown areas of the woods. I know if I want it to stay semi-open, I will need to stay on top of it.
 
Ambitious project. What you’ve done looks great! Ugh... I wish I shared your energy.
 
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