Bwhunter, Your opinion is correct because American’s generally are too use to quick gratification for least amount of effort and time applied. The future value of the Walnut Lumber is strictly speculative and has very long term appreciation horizon. I grow several 100 acres of pine trees now and still trying to figure out income strategy and at the same time not get taken to the cleaners by the middle guys required to participate and the market changing conditions. Your example of Timber Investment Companies making income is extremely complicated and difficult for many reasons that is why so many have merged over the last 15 years. To plant black walnut trees for the future requires a separate set of success scales. Most timber operations can not afford the investment, is the answer to your question and most will not exist at the trees maturity anyway. I would enjoy being around on payday 40 yrs out with my walnut trees, it will certainly be a much better experience than my investment in GE for the past twenty years. Sometimes it worth taking the road less traveled! Corp. America does not have all the answers and are not always run by smart people. Auburn should be!

What is the market going to be in 40 or 50 years on Walnut? The mill up the road will probably be out of business.

Call Allen Deese at The Wildlife Group and let him help you choose. He is a great guy and he plants their trees across the southeast for folks so he knows a little about what grows best and where. Expect 80% survival rate out of what you plant.

I contacted the Wildlife Group and downloaded their catalog. I'm looking forward to getting started.

Sounds like my experience. I started very aggressively planting lots of mast producing trees from the Wildlife Group and others in 2006. Planted 1000’s of trees over 1000’s of acres for 10 years. I think I use to fantasize that I was Johnny Appleseed. Killed them every way you can kill a tree - mowing, spraying, over-fertilizing, under-fertilizing, you name it & I did it. Spent way, way too much $ for a very limited return. Wildlife Group sales good trees, it’s just difficult to pull a small tree out of a nursery and get it to mast bearing age in the wild. Hardwoods are much easier than any soft mast tree. We’ve planted over 100,000 trees for wildlife. Every condition and every scenario can imagine. We spared no cost with our program. Tree tubes, weed mats, irrigation, fertilizer, chemical treatments, you name it & we did it. Our success rate with apples and pears over an 11 year period has been less than 5%. Some of these continue to die from fire blight each year. Hardwoods are much better with a success rate of more than 80%. I’m sure plenty of people will comment on everything I’m doing wrong, but believe me we have done it every possible way and still can’t our success rate with apples and pears over 5%.

Instead of planting nursery grown trees, we started identifying, daylighting, and nurturing native trees, primarily native crabapple, plums, and persimmons. I’ve never walked a property where they don’t exist. Our success rate is near 100% and our property is now covered with native fruit trees. Just something to consider. This work was conducted in So Cullman County under very controlled conditions.

Crabapple orchards of about 1/4 acre in size.
Deer love them and they drop every year on my place.
Just plant them so you can mow between them.

I've had Wildlife group apple,pear, and crabapple for about 5 years now and have been producing fruit for several years. These were 7 gallon grafted tree's.

Regards to fruit: Alabama cooperative extension's aces.edu site has a lot of research for agriculture/etc in Alabama. Type aces.edu, publications and services, aces publications and store, search box type, Fruit Culture in Alabama Selecting Adapted Varieties (http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-0053-F/ANR-0053-F.pdf). Probably something on mast producing and nut trees also. Everything Alabama, go to that site.

I started planting trees 5 years ago on a small property, my first purchase was a 25 tree package from Realtree Nurseries that had Dunstan chestnuts, sawtooths, American persimmons and Southern crabapples. I have also attempted to add apples, pears, plums, Jap persimmons and peaches at different times. Six of my original 7 chestnuts are still alive and look healthy, I had my first nuts on 3 of them this fall. I have also grown several other chestnuts from nuts I bought online and have about 10-12 others still alive. I learned a lot from the old QDMA messageboard about growing chestnuts. My Sawtooths look healthy, but so far still no acorns. Persimmons and crabapples have not thrived, either died or struggling.
I agree with what others said about Jap Persimmon, waste of time. They produce a pretty fruit, but does not fall, and have yet to see sign of deer eating. My apple experience has not been positive, even with spraying I've had lots of diseased trees that don't make it past a 2-3 years. I won't replant any more apples. Keiffer pears are doing pretty good, haven't produced every year but trees are healthy and a lot of fruit per tree in good years. Overall, the Dunstans and sawtooths are the healthiest trees I've got, and the persimmon trees (native) I left standing in my food plot are awesome, probably due to (like RiverWood said) opening them up to get lots of sunlight. Also, I fenced my young trees with field fencing wire, it prevents the deer from damaging.

If I was going to try and improve an area, I would fix a few Honeysuckle patches. Deer love the stuff, it's cheap, it is very hardy, easy to start and it stands up to heavy foraging even in winter months.