Rx Fire After Hack and Squirt

hesseu

5 year old buck +
Anyone ran a fire through their woods after doing H&S? Just curious what / if any issues they ran into. Getting ready to tackle some TSI, and kicking around the idea of H&S...but, I am planning to run a fire through there next winter / spring.
 
you never got a reply. I'm about to do the same. I can't theorize why there would be any issue whatsoever as long as the trees are still fairly green. If you did H/S two years ago and had some dry standing trees you could risk some fire poles.
 
Only thing is to not burn for a month or two after spraying to give the chemicals time to kill the tree. After that burn away. As trees fall burning on an interval will help keep floor semi clear.

Not really much issue I've seen with fire "climbing" a dead tree. Now dead kudzu vines up a tree, looks like towering inferno.
 
Only thing is to not burn for a month or two after spraying to give the chemicals time to kill the tree. After that burn away. As trees fall burning on an interval will help keep floor semi clear.

Not really much issue I've seen with fire "climbing" a dead tree. Now dead kudzu vines up a tree, looks like towering inferno.
Why does the tree have to be dead before burning? Do you think the heat from the fire inactivates the chemical? The chemical should be down to the roots shortly after spraying.

As for the towering fire... I recall very well some standing dead pine burning overnight on one of my burns a few years ago. It was on a ridgetop a few hundred yards off of a rural state hwy. A handful of pine (very much dead with bark falling off) were like burning totem poles. Cars would pull over occasionally to get a view of the spectacle. No issue with safety, but definitely drew a crowd. FWIW these pine weren't killed by me. Natural death.
 
Anyone ran a fire through their woods after doing H&S? Just curious what / if any issues they ran into. Getting ready to tackle some TSI, and kicking around the idea of H&S...but, I am planning to run a fire through there next winter / spring.
In the past month, I’ve waged war via hack & squirt on well over 1000 sweet gums. Also targeted are trees crowding desired mast trees. It’s been pretty wet here in south central Mississippi but planning prescribed fire on approximately 110 acres as soon as feisable. Good luck!
 
I did a hack and squirt on everything smaller than six inches. One year later, you could not hardly walk through the area for all the downed trees. They usually break right at the hack area. No way I would have burned it after one year - it would have looked like one of those california wildfires.
 
I did a hack and squirt on everything smaller than six inches. One year later, you could not hardly walk through the area for all the downed trees. They usually break right at the hack area. No way I would have burned it after one year - it would have looked like one of those california wildfires.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Older timber sales and just falling timber and my forest floor is covered in dead trees. I've always wondered how people do burns with all of that. Do you have to clean it up first ?
 
If the downed trees are well contained inside a good fire break I am curious what the problem would be? I'd want to walk it and make sure none of the larger pieces were too close to the base of good trees but other than that the fire itself wouldn't be a concern?
 
Funny, I was thinking the same thing. Older timber sales and just falling timber and my forest floor is covered in dead trees. I've always wondered how people do burns with all of that. Do you have to clean it up first ?
Yeah. Not an issue. The big trees don’t burn all that well, imagine throwing a whole uncut log on the fire.
 
The dead trees on my place were 1” through 5” in size - and lets not forget about the tops. I think running a fire through there would have been so hot it would have killed the remaining trees
 
No expert by any means with burning in timber, but I would assume if you can run a fire through not long after a precipitation event that would help keep the fire from burning the larger stuff as hot. Fine fuels dry out fairly quickly, larger ones take longer to dry and therefore harder to ignite. I guess it comes down to what you are trying to accomplish with your burn?
 
PRetty sure in NY you can't burn, but the DEC does every few years on a miuntaintop where there is blueberry bushes. They run the fire right through the open mountaintop, and the blueberry bushes recover.

IF they recover, im sure tougher trees n shrubs would recover without trying to kill them first. I'd guess anything pinky sized trunk and smaller might not survive. Guessing here, I'd let the stuff you hack n squirt stand. I could see a stump cut low might recover vs having a charred burnt end ontop of the herbicide.
 
I have burned a lot - used to do it in my job. I have seen a lot of 18-20” oak fire scarred. Me personally - I would have expected a lot of pernamently fire damage leave trees in my hack n squirt if I had burned at one year. A lot of the tops of the dead trees were laying on the ground - completely surrounding the live tree
 
Top