Forestry mulching

Someday isle

5 year old buck +
IMG_2554.jpegI 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. IMG_2555.jpegIMG_2556.jpegIMG_2584.jpegIMG_2557.jpeg
 
The pictures don’t really do it justice. The amount of daylight created and the size of the trees and brush he took out was amazing. The machine both mulches and tills the soil at the same time. When he was done he then ran over everything again and leveled and mulched as much debris as possible. He actually finished everything I wanted done and had time left over so rather than call it a day he spent the extra time going over the areas where there was lots of mulch in the ground and just continued to grind it down - in other words even though he finished early he still gave me. Full two days work and made things even better.

Some of the bigger trees he could take down I’ll either leave or eventually cut them down. I intentionally left a couple big oaks in the plots and he worked around my stand locations to help accentuate some funnels for me too.

I realize for some bugger property owners two and a half acres of food plots is on my property it’s going to be a lot. We’ve had great success with our little plots that we just carved out of the forest. While I’m sure some of these changes might effect a couple of our stand locations negatively I expect that it will also enhance the overall hunting on the property.
 
Those machines truly impress me, and the operator did a great job for you! I like the idea of a cover crop now and a fall blend come late August. Thanks for posting the picture.
 
Looks really nice! Any idea what you're going to plant first?
 
Looks really nice! Any idea what you're going to plant first?
It’ll probably just be a cover crop of some sort depending on rain. Buckwheat is an easy choice for the summer to get something growing. This fall I’ll do the Lickcreek cereal grain mix. It’s been pretty fool proof as long as we get a little rain at the right time. The next couple of weeks our forecast is very hot and very dry so I’ve got time to figure it out. Kyle was good at working around quite a bit of the clover that I have established already so at least there’s something of a draw in the original plot areas until the heat makes the clover go dormant.
 
It’ll probably just be a cover crop of some sort depending on rain. Buckwheat is an easy choice for the summer to get something growing. This fall I’ll do the Lickcreek cereal grain mix. It’s been pretty fool proof as long as we get a little rain at the right time. The next couple of weeks our forecast is very hot and very dry so I’ve got time to figure it out. Kyle was good at working around quite a bit of the clover that I have established already so at least there’s something of a draw in the original plot areas until the heat makes the clover go dormant.
You've got a mountain of carbon out there now with those wood chips on the ground. Lean heavy on the legumes first go around.
 
SD will those legumes eat that carbon on the ground.
 
SD will those legumes eat that carbon on the ground.

In theory it should do very well. I haven’t been able to test it, and I haven’t been able to talk anyone into it.

The closest thing we can get to in real life is beans no tilled into back to back 250 bushel corn residues. The deeper the corn trash the better the beans do. A heavy rye straw crop followed by clover is a close second. Legumes are bare dirt can be touchy, but put them in heavy carbon residue and they seem to go bananas nodulating and providing the fuel to the microbes eating that high carbon trash.


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I expanded a food plot a few years ago and then had a stump grinder come in to take out 100+ stumps. That left a layer of wood chips mixed with dirt, so I was a little concerned about the wood chips locking up the nutrients for my food plots. I decided to add some lime and fertilizer to the new plot and then I planted round up ready soybeans that could fix their own nitrogen. That allowed me to get something growing quickly and also to take out the flush of weeds that followed with round up. That plan ended up working really well and then in late summer I overseeded the soybeans with a fall mix.

If you plant anything that needs nitrogen, you might want to bump up the fertilizer quantity since the wood chips will soak up a bunch of the fertilizer.
 
Looks great! A decent amoutn of crops ill do well with that amount of light. Some selctive cuting and stump grinding will really open it up more. Cereal grains and most legumes should be just fine as is.

The more you feed the soil, the more it feeds the trees. Just keep that in mind.
 
Looks great! A decent amoutn of crops ill do well with that amount of light. Some selctive cuting and stump grinding will really open it up more. Cereal grains and most legumes should be just fine as is.

The more you feed the soil, the more it feeds the trees. Just keep that in mind.
I agree with this. I'm sure it looks drastic to you now, but the first thing I would do is cut most/all of those trees in your plots, as well as those to the south of them. I made the mistake of leaving a few nice trees in plots 10+ years ago and now they have massive, light-blocking canopies. The other issue (at least in the Midwest) is those trees dumping leaves all over your nice tender fall plots and smothering them out. Just something to think about.
 
Thanks for all the input.

Yes - I’ve dealt with leaves in the plots before as they are all only a quarter acre or were old logging road trails. It’s an issue but we’ve managed it well and have had quite a bit of hunting success by our standards. I plan to either cut down or hack and squirt the trees remaining feeding in each individual tree.

I was out there today just taking a look around and spraying weeds in my clover. We’ve since had a pretty big storm with heavy rain and whiles there’s obviously lots of debris there’s also a lot of soil mixed with it. I’m sure it will take a couple years but I’m really pleased with the results. I’m excited to see how it all develops in the next couple of years.
 
Interesting I left a tree in each field and now I wonder if I should just cut them down and drag em into the woods. The sticks and leaves are a pain in the ass
 
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