Wow that's nuts, 48"! Do you have any pics of those? That's like the holy grail.
We have a 15 acre piece in the middle of our farm that was planted to hardwoods - walnut, oaks, and ash. 5,000 trees were planted 25 years ago when I was in 7th grade. I got to skip school to help. Probably less than half remain. The oaks are all gone and the ash are in various stages of death. Some of the walnuts are very nice. The lower the ground, the bigger they are. I had a thread going on the evil forum about how I tried putting 1,200 various shrubs throughout the walnuts to add some cover and diversity.
Here's a 2 year old article about the desire of black walnut lumber:
http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/everyone-wants-midwest-walnut-20141202
I have a farm for sale with them on it you can go look yourself if you want. But if I get over there I will snap a picture. But those 48" trees ain't what you are thinking. They are gunstock walnut trees. They have huge branches growing out of them starting at 4' high. You could not get a good log out of them if you wanted to.
Personally I think boards and gunstocks are the most noble cause for a giant tree anyway. But yes, I assumed your monsters had low limbs, just as our creek bottom ones do. I was just impressed by the shear size. That would make some awesome live-edge table tops!
Yes.When you guys are saying Hedge...I'm assuming you are talking Hedge Apple?
My wife's uncle told me about a large black walnut tree that he had growing in his residential yard that he wanted removed. Tree service quoted him $3,000 to cut it down and remove all the wood. In the end the guy agreed to cut the tree down for free as long as he could keep the wood. Supposedly the tree service shipped the logs to a buyer in Iowa who then sells them overseas. I wonder how much over $3,000 the tree service guy cleared.