OT need logging advice

Have any of you had your property logged? I've been considering it but have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I've cut up plenty of trees for firewood but never thought of marketing them for sale. I've got a small amount of black walnut and burl oak. Is there any market value in honey locust? I appreciate any thoughts or advice you guys have.. Thanks guys.

Contact your local forester and he can tell you. I had 30 acres logged off this spring and mine made sure it was done right. Most of mine was pulp wood but I had maple saw logs and several very large popular logs that were 28 inches across the stump went for saw logs

I 2nd the advice, have a forestry person come in, figure what needs to or can be done, harvest, thinning etc. Quantify what you have going out, check that when its headed up to be loaded up. Specify or agree to what will be done with tops, limbs, firewood,haul road restoration etc. Be sure to have these details agreed to up front.

Some logging outfits will steal, make a mess, damage trees to be left and or any combination of undesirable things or activity while on your property. I've seen them go off the property they were hired to log, to steal from someone else. Mind you I don't care for the majority of them. I have seen it done correctly where both the landowner and the logging outfit did right by each other.

I believe in this state, DEC can be called in to assess what you have and what the best course of action is. It's not quantum physics to manage a woodlot correctly, but you do need to have some knowledge of it just the same.

Don't skin the bark off the remaining trees when trailing out the cut logs.

Adjoining property just had it done. What a mess. All the tops, etc, scattered everywhere. Standing trees damaged severely. Property owners don't live on the property and evidently don't care. Logger trespassed on my property.

I had a bad experience with it with some fly by night operation.

I was living in town at the time and not on the farm. I went through about 20 acres of timber with the fellow from the logging company. He had a spray can of paint and marked all of the trees I told him he could take. It was close to a week before I got back to the farm, and when I did I found they had cut down about a dozen large, mature oak trees and left them lay. They were gone by then. I never did find out why.

When I first went around with the guy, their vehicles had Missouri plates on them. When I tried to contact them all I hit was dead ends. I never did figure it out. Whether they cut the oaks by mistake, whether they figured to grab them and run and chickened out, whatever. Anyway, the big oaks I'd planned to sell for hardwood lumber wound up being firewood.

When mine was cut in Jan of this year they brought in a processor that had 4 foot wide tracks over the rear tandum axles. It had a boom with a head on it and he could reach 27 foot each side and in the front. He would cut and pull the tree to him lay it down and cut it into 8 foot lengths in about a min. The tops were all layed in front of the machine so when he moved forward the tracks chewed them up. He said his best day of cutting he cut 150 cords of wood. The machine had a computer that told how many trees per day he cut how many cords per day and per job. He run this machine using his thumbs on a key board with joy sticks on it. Then when they finished this was compared to the haul slips from the trucks which is where I got payed from the haul slips. When they finished the land was flat you could not see any tops sticking up and you could walk in there but was hard to do because of the ground up tops. The new growth is up in some areas to over 5 foot tall. I never thought it would come back this fast

Educate yourself. Talk to someone that has had some logging done and ask if he/she can recommend an honest logger.
Talk to forest service. Get all agreements in writing. Read the contract carefully. If you don't understand something, ask a knowledgeable person.
It would be better if you are living on the property. There are plenty of loggers who need to be watched. Even then they can and some will steal timber.
Know what is on each load. Pulp, chip & saw & saw logs all have a different price. Even logs are broken down into pine or hardwood. Pine usually pays more than hardwood.
If you can't be on sight, you can have the timber cruised (estimated) by a forestry company. Make sure they only cut what is specified.
It is hard to keep a thief honest. They deal in timber on a daily basis and most landowners don't. The dishonest loggers know this and an uneducated landowner is
prey. They can read a landowner real quick.
If you don't have time to learn about the timber business, get a forestry company to deal with the loggers.
If you only have a small amount, you may want to agree on a set price, then get the money up front if at all possible.
Good luck.

I have and it is nice to get new trees growing in there but when they log it they leave a big mess of down fall.

There are guys that log with horses still if you are worried more about property damage than the most profit. Just throwing out an idea.

Joe

Some years back I had my property done by a crew using horses. Fantastic! They cut and skidded with the horses to a laydown area where the knuckle-boom loaded the truck. Very, very few tops left. Stumps cut very low. No damage to standing timber. A year later if you didn't know it had bee worked, there were no visual cues. I was thrilled. Looking for a crew now for the property at Natural Bridge.

(quoted from post at 16:46:25 08/27/17) Some years back I had my property done by a crew using horses. Fantastic! They cut and skidded with the horses to a laydown area where the knuckle-boom loaded the truck. Very, very few tops left. Stumps cut very low. No damage to standing timber. A year later if you didn't know it had bee worked, there were no visual cues. I was thrilled. Looking for a crew now for the property at Natural Bridge.

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Highly recommend the horse logging approach if at all possible. There are even some guys using oxen, which is really far out to watch.

Conventional logging can make an absolute mess out of wet areas and once you have ruts and tree damage, they never go away.

Grouse

Be especially wary of any logger who says he'll cut the mature trees and leave the little ones room to grow.

What that really means is that he'll take the good trees and leave the crooked runts that will never amount to anything. Any trees that won't grow up into nice saw logs should be cut for pulp or firewood.

Getting a forester in is good advise if you are wanting to just harvest part of the trees. I've got a tract that I'm clearing off now. The cutter is cutting everything marketable and pushing up the tops. I get half. I'll dig out the stumps myself and smooth the ground.
I sold the timber off another place a few years ago. It was the 1st time and I got an education. I let them set up the sawmill on my place and got a Percentage of the lumber. I was told that the slabs had a value and they were mine to sell. I ended up burning them and finally gave away the sawdust for chicken house bedding. The tops were a mess and I allowed anyone who wanted fire wood to cut the tops. It was almost a disaster but it finally was cleaned up.
Get everything in writing with what ever you decide and don't be afraid to follow it to the letter.

We have sold lots of timber over the years, most of the loggers in N MN are very reputable. Usually it's sold consumer scale, when it goes across the scales, and we get copies of the scale ticket. Last winter they cleared a power line ROW across our property, clear cut 13 acres, did a sloppy job of cutting, random lengths, didn't but off the rotten buts like a real logger would do. They were from out of state, and piled it up at the end of our road, and we sold it to a timber company, about 230 cords, most of it went to a board mill (OSB) in Canada.

Mine was logged before I bought it.The tops were left,pushed into the bottom of the reveens where I could never get them out, and I had to leave them to rot. they only took the biggest and the best,talk to your state forester.

We have had a few parcels that we sold timber out of and always liked to have the check before they are cut. Logger then comes in and cuts them.

Let me tell you how most places work. Almost none will take told, they are of no value to pretty much any operation, even pulp and firewood operations. They are too hard to handle. Most around here sell the tops after the fact to a smaller firewood operation that is cut with chainsaws, not the expensive machines the mills have to pay for. Of hauling logs, selling logs, and felling trees, I've never seen or heard of one place around me or anywhere nearby that dealt with the tops. The price given is for the logs, tops not included. Stumps are cut close to the ground if they don't have much of a bell, or are very valuable. That bell is full of dirt, and has to be cut off somewhere before it can be ran through the mill, let alone loaded on the truck, so it's easier to leave it on the ground. Also what you have done depends on the mill you have. Not many around me deal in more than one type, but a few do. You have sawmills that only look for saw logs, firewood guys that will take crooked, poor quality trees usually as long as they are hardwood, and pulp guys that will take the softer light colored woods. You could specify that they take all the crooked trees that are worthless as saw logs, and not very valuable as pulp wood in general, remove or burn all the tops, cut and grind the stumps, but then most of you would say you got taken by the logger. A LOT of timber buyers are crooked, that's why it's best to get 4 or 5 different prices, and tell them what exactly you want done. If you tell them you want saw logs and pulp wood taken, don't expect to have any trees left, only tops and stumps. Specify you want only trees taken for pulp over so many inches in diameter. Look at it this way:If you ask for a price to mow your yard, that's what you'll get. If you expected them to trim your bushes, edge the driveway, fertilize the grass, and rake the clippings, guess what? That is not going to be included if you don't ask them to, and if you do, expect it to cost you more. If it didn't, they'd go broke. Sorry to be so blunt, but many don't understand how it works fully. Relatives of mine have owned a sawmill for a long time and have been loggers for generations, and it is a side job of mine. Not all are bad, just have to look around at your options.

Question. "Pine pays more than hardwood". Where do you live? Around here pine is about half of hardwood. And that's only white pine. Can't hardly give red pine away.

I've found that hiring a Forester is the best way to get a good job done. He moniters the logger, calls the shots, and you are clear of the hassles.

Another reason to hire a forester is to know if you should do it now or wait. Timber markets fluctuate wildly year to year even month to month. Rboots has a lot of good information. Loggers have to try to stay in business by paying their bills like the rest of us. You insist on more work, it is going to reduce your check or increase what you pay. If you get nothing done for 60 years, guess what, you are going to have a lot of falling down trees and the tops will still be there. What is the problem with some tops and limbs left to rot? that is God's way.

Get the expert. Locust use to be the first two logs down in a log cabin. It took 25 years for the log to rot and get down to the second log. At the end of 50 years you were either dead or had the big house built and using the cabin for food storage. Another few years and it rotted into the ground. Locust now generally makes fire wood.
Logs too big in this area now go south to a single mill left in operation for the big ones. I have a few of those. Unfortunately, bigger means the rot usually starts on the inside and works it's way out until it falls over. Thus big trees can be worth less. Especially after the trip south to the mill.

Honey Locust has no value other than the minimum sawlog value. It rots in a very short time in the weather & has no veneer or grade lumber use. The advice below refers to Black Locust, which has superior qualities in porches, cabins & fence posts.

You got some good advice except on the 'Professional Forrester' some of them are fine but many are in with the loggers and are just as crooked as the loggers can be.The most honest small
logger in my area cuts all the logs drags them into an open area sorts them by species,size etc then gets bids on them from the mills around.He will show the landowner all the bids and then they make a decision on who to sell to.Says he'll probably get 20% more over just hauling each load to a mill.As far as the tops he'll bring in his chipper and chip them but the landowner
won't get much out of it because of the expense he has and the places to sell the chips don't pay much.Personally clear cutting is the way to go in my opinion.No matter how careful the
logger is a lot of damage happens to smaller trees when the big trees are cut and unsalable big trees are left because there is no financial reason to cut them.Pulp guys don't care
what they look like.