I cut a lot of dead, crowded and leaning trees in my wood lot, that's easy. But I need close to a cord of really high btu wood for the cold, winter nights. So I need to cut several large Hickory trees. It really bothers me to have to pick which ones. I spend hours trying to figure out which ones to sacrifice. I am leaving most Sugar Maple in case I ever want to make syrup. My lot is only about 11 acres so my selection is limited. Do any of you struggle deciding which trees to cut?
I cut the same way here... have some nice big hickory trees as well... I would cut the ones that would do the least amount of damage to other good trees when felling them.. When I still had my climbing gear, I use to climb up and top out a tree just so it wouldn't do damage to another really nice tree.. 99% of my wood comes from standing dead and blow overs here. I do leave some standing dead for the critters too... they need a place to stay warm in the winter too
I have the same issue. This is my 2nd year burning, first year cutting. I have 13 acres of hard wood. This past weekend i cut down 8 aspen (popple), 3 sugar maple, and 2 oak. I have all mature trees over 80 years old. I know the aspen is not the best wood, i just can't bring myself to cutting down a 30" oak or maple. My idea is to make a small food plot, my only justification for cutting down the oak. Next year I'll start cutting on my neighbors land, he doesn't mind (my dad's land).
I don't cut many live trees unless they're storm damaged or diseased. But ones that are severe leaners and/or without tall straight trunks are ones that get culled first when doing management.Any with large bends,limbs less than 10 ft to the ground also.If it has 2 or 3 trunks (Stump sprouts most likely since parent's 10 acre woodlot was part of a 40 acre parcel that was originally part of a Century Farm for previous owner & was last logged off 80 or so years ago...) the worst one is cut,best ones left to grow. I like to leave 2-3 snags per acre for wildlife per the Iowa DNR & USFS recommendations also.
Yes, all the time Jack. So I enlisted the aid of my State Forester to show me the types of ones I should take. I've got 25 acres, so I have more resources to play with, but its still a problem for me too. After the usual factors you already describe ........ dead, crowded, leaning, diseased, species, etc............ I look at the crowns, not the trunks. My goal is to cut to enhance the growth of the more valuable future trees. Most folks look at trunk spacing to determine being "crowded", but the key is to look at the tops, who's crown is shading who. Stage #1 was to bite the bullet and take out most of my really big stuff for timber, that left me 120 tops on the ground that I'm getting close to finishing cleaning up. Stage #2 (which I actually started a couple years before Stage #1, it was a really tough decision to take out most of those big ones) is to clear the remaining acreage using the factors listed above. My woods is dominated by smooth/shagbark hickory, ironwood, dead/dying ash, and beech. I am cutting like you to favor the maple, red/white oak, cherry .................. leaving a few of the dominating species for biodiversity. When you get down to those final tough decisions, check out the crowns ............. your answer might lie there.
i am on 11 acres and doing the same. i have plenty of oak blow downs still from sandy. i do have two big ones though that are too close to the house that i need to tackle after i clean up the blowdowns. i try to get the birches as they are dying before any fungus starts growing. once that happens they are already starting to punk. then i leave them for nature to handle. havent touched any of the hickories yet. trying to cull the smaller tulip poplars. leaving all the maples until i can definitively tell which ones are sugar. anybody do any limbing to keep trunks straight and branch free? where is the best spot to cut limbs? right up against the trunk? 90* to the branch? leave a little?
No, not right up against the trunk. You should be able to find some nice resources on line showing photos of where to prune limbs. You want to leave that small ring of cambial growth tissue that will grow to cover the scar. Sometimes you can see that little "hump" at the base of the branch, sometimes not.
You want to leave what's called the branch collar... That allows the tree to form wound wood to heal the cut. Branch collar looks kind of like a ring of raised wood, cut parallel to that, leaving that.. Flush cuts are not correct.
that is what i thought. what if the limb is coming off the trunk more vertical than horizontal? i feel like a lot of stub is left, but if thats the correct way so be it.
Just follow the angle of the branch collar, leaving that.. I usually take the main branch, leaving about 2 inches of limb wood before the collar, then make your final cut with no big limb weight... When I was a climber , I use to finish a lot of my pruning cuts with a tricut hand saw, just so as to leave a really nice cut for the tree to heal, plus no bar oil near the cut... Here's a video, not the best picture of a branch collar but you'll get the idea... I sometimes make my final cut from the bottom up, less chance of having the wood tearing out on the branch collar, but you must hold the branch stub with slight up pressure as to not bind the saw.. Good book is called A Tree Biology, by Dr Alex Shigo. You'll learn a lot about trees..
Doing a patch cut and razing an entire acre or more can be an effective management tool also. This is especially true if your woodlot is even aged and if it grew back from a farm fields it probably is. Creating a patch of early succession growth opens your lot up to a lot of different animals that thrive in the less mature forest. I know it is hard to contemplate leveling an acre. but razing an acre is going to give you the wood you want now and could set up a better future for your woodlot. If you have 250 acres to mess with it is a different story, this 5 acre patch cut was done in September 2012. A game biologist from the state of VT was actively involved with it along the county forester. This was farmland up until the civil war, I'm not sure of its history after that and into the early 20th century, i do believer that it was acively logged. I know that it was highgraded for timber at in the late 50's and 90's. It had little more than pulp grade wood on it as a result. It was clearly time to start over. (Myself and my sister with my 2 and her three kids.) And how it looking a year later. I'm excited to see how this grows back in over the next 20+ years.
Not much land here (8.5 acres) with quite a lot of White Pine, Spruce, some Poplar/Aspen, soft Maple, and very few Oak. Sis-in-law has 10 acres not far from me where I also cut. Her place has mostly Maple and Oak, so we're good for quite a while. She also has a bunch of large Poplar that I plan to cull. I'm always looking for trees that have trunk damage, or canopy dying back, dead standing trunks, and of course all the fallen stuff. Very easy to find all that at SIL's, but not so much here at mine. I like the info posted so far.......obviously, most here are concerned about the future of their woodlots. I'm starting to shy away from the Pine, because I think the Poplar/Aspen is easier to cut (sap), split (knots), and it burns a little better. Always going for the Oak first due to drying time, but I've found that soft Maple is very good for decent fires too. I'm starting to veer here a little, so I'll stop.
Around here, 11 acres would most likely heat the average home into perpetuity just by cutting what nature takes down / dies naturally. A lot of good advice above so far on what to look for when you are taking out a live tree. What to take out depends a lot on what your goals are (timber value, habitat, etc) and a forester can really help you out with that.
Actually , I want my woods to look neat when I ride my ATV. I like my trees spaced nicely with the low branches off. I spend more time cutting small trees and brush that I do cutting firewood.
Jack, Trouble is , cutting too many small trees will one day leave you with no firewood... I just cut what I absolutely need to, opening up old logging trails to get my blow downs, etc. Big plus, the deer love an easy way to get around, so they use my new trails as well. I actually have a lot of Hemlock canopies preventing some new growth in areas,, they should come down.. Never burned hemlock... I don't think the log value is worth enough to have someone come in and harvest some...
10 acres of woods should supply you with firewood for the rest of your life. By necessity, we have cut primarily white ash for the last 10 years or so and still have much to cut. Really sad to see them all die.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who struggles with this. I had the big pines around the house logged 8 years ago to pay the property taxes. Been kicking myself ever since. If you like the big Sugar Maple and Hickory, maybe you should find another source of the good stuff especially if that 11 acres is around your house and you see them every day.
I struggle with this same thing - just Tuesday after finishing up that blown over Maple I was looking at all the hickory and telling myself not to cut them. There are still many a tree that I notice each time I hit the woods that get put on the hit list. Best time of year is late August - the most stressed/diseased will stick out(poplar will lose leaves naturally around this time though) bring some flagging tape and mark the rough looking ones - if you don't cut them during the winter check them again next year and make the decision then. By doing this I've got 4 red oaks that need to go(one monster) 2 hickories, a poplar - and every damm sweetgum(not that I'll cut them all) that are in my future hit list. That should yield 8-10cords easy - more than enough burn time for future trees to join the list.
Forgot to mention that at my sis-in-law's (cutting floor), someone had marked many, many trees with red paint. I presume this means "cut em down" or cull. Can anyone verify? If I lived over there, I'd have cut a lot more wood.
