Question for you Hardwood thinners/burners.

So we're cutting about 60 acres, 80% of that is probably in natural regen pines. Some good Hardwood stands mixed in on the hills and bottoms. I asked the forester if he could just thin or select cut the hardwoods to allow some sunlight to the floor. He said that wouldn't be a good idea because the hardwoods would make off shoots or begin to sprout limbs along the trunk essentially making it worse( to allow more sunlight to floor).
I've seen Gobblers pictures and those hardwoods are straight with no limbs trying to grow low around the trunk. Here's a picture of my point and how do u prevent this.

Technical term for it is called “epicormic branching”.

How do I prevent that from happening? I would like my hardwoods to be thinned without epicormic branching occurring. Will fire get high enough along the trunk of the tree to prevent that?

If a fire gets that hot it would probably kill the tree. The sprouting is caused from being opened up after growing with competition. A long handled saw to prune them maybe. In the early 70's IP had a couple of small motor machines that they strapped to pine trees, then they would crank it up and the machine used spiked rollers to climb the tree and knock off the branches to improve the quality of the future log. It didn't work real well tho, and was a real man hour user. They called it a Monkey and I don't know if it was a production item or not.

I believe I've read a short paper that some species are more prone to epicormic branching than others. So you could exert a little control by selecting for species. But I'm pretty sure this comes down to a density issue.

From what I've been reading today I think you are right. Density maybe the biggest issue. I still want to allow enough sunlight but not so much that is allows too much branching. I think ill just let them be and try some fire on them next year and get them on a burn rotation. Thanks for all replies.

I did some hardwood burning beginning about 6 years after logging, I've noticed no increase in epicormic branching. The state forestry folks did the burns and I don't remember the Forester even mentioning it as a potential problem. The areas I did were cut pretty hard, don't know if that's a factor.

I think epicormic branching and burning are totally unrelated. The branching is all about density, like you said.