Someday isle
5 year old buck +
I hired a forestry mulcher to come out and expand/connect my food plots and to open up my logging roads. I did plenty of research and found a local guy who was willing to drive out to my property and put in a couple days work. I thought I’d share my experience, my thoughts on why I did what I did, and share the early impressions as well. I asked permission to share his name and company and he agreed. Hopefully it’s okay to share his name on the forum. If not, I’ll be happy to edit it out.I brought my 36 acre property in 2016. It was all woods except for a campground area and a few overgrown logging roads. The first couple of years we cleared the logging roads and successfully planted the LC Cereal grain mix and had some really nice clover trails as a result too. Over the course of the next few years I gradually cut down some trees, ground probably 125 stumps and established 3 approximately 1/4 acre food plots. I’d estimate we had about 1 1/4 acres of plots in total including the trails.
I decided it was time to hire out some equipment and more or less double my plot size and connect things a little better.
I priced a high lift operator who wanted $1400 a day to clear the trees but I didn’t really want to deal with the compaction and all of the trees and root balls - and he guessed three days of work. I decided to price out forestry mulchers. I found a couple guys in the area of my property who had skid steers with mulchers but it seems their equipment was always broken and it’s just hard in that county to get guys to come out and look at what you want to have done.
I eventually found Kyle at Missouri Brush Control last summer. He’s based out of St. Louis County. I sent him pictures of what my trails and plots looked like and asked if it was a job he’d be interested in. He said sure and to call him when I was ready. Late winter I called him and we set up an appointment to walk my property and give me an estimate. He gave me two estimates. He could use his smaller skid steers for $250 an hour or his bigger machine for $350 and hour. It sounds like a lot but I decided it was worth it. I showed him what I wanted and we both agreed that the bigger machine was the way to go. He put me on the schedule and said he was 4-6 weeks out. And thought he could do what I wanted in two days. We then had lots of rain for a few weeks and even some severe storms. He got to me right at six weeks.
We spent all day Thursday and Friday last week out at my property and honestly everything far exceeded my expectations. It cost me $5600 and it was worth every penny as far as I’m concerned. I took lots of pictures and some not very good video. I didn’t do a great job of before and after picture sequencing so that won’t look great here but I’ll still post what pictures I took.
Kyle showed up Thursday right on time. His truck and equipment were both clean and in great looking condition. I always think that’s a good sign. If he cares enough to take care of his equipment that’s maybe a good sign that he cares about his work too. He worked from the minute he got there until he out in a full 8 hour day. We only took about fifteen or twenty minutes for ,much and then he went right back to work. I tried to stay ahead of him by marking the areas I wanted done before he got to them. He was very conscious about safety and wanted to make sure I knew to stay clear of the oath of the machine and the debris.
He cleared a new parking area for me, expanded three of my logging road trails into plots - they’re now two half acre plots and a quarter acre plot. He then cleared an area between two previous quarter acre plots and it’s now a long narrow one acre plot.
Some portions of the areas cleared are pretty much bare dirt and would be ready to plant if timing and weather cooperated. Other areas there is quite a thick layer of mulch that I’ll either clean up a little or let it decay a little bit. Our ten day forecast is mid to upper 90s and not a drop of rain in sight so there’s no planting in the immediate future. I’ll of course need to take some soil samples but I’ll probably throw down some lime at some point in the near future and maybe time a rain with some buckwheat just as a cover crop until fall. I think it might be a year or two until they’re really good plots but I still cloukdnt be more thrilled with the results. Fortunately I’ve got the rest of the summer to plan and adapt depending on circumstances.
I know this is a little bit of a long post but one Last thought and then I’ll post some pictures. I’m glad I went with the bigger machine. It did amazing work. I’d describe it as equal parts giant flail mower, extreme stump grinder, and a tiller on steroids. Kyle took down some pretty big cedars with that machine - maybe as big as ten inches in diameter. The hardwood trees and stumps were a little tougher but it was still impressive the amount of work that machine could do. Kyle himself was both a very skilled operator and a really high character man. I really enjoyed getting to know him throughout the process.
I’ve got about 2 1/2 acres of food plot space now that kind of winds it’s way throughout my property and after I add a couple more stand sights I’ll have six good stand locations for a variety of winds and conditions - and multiple locations where I can cover the entire width of the plots with a bow shot.
