Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum Question for the tree guys.

We had approximately 75 acres replanted this past January. Everything went smooth and were happy with all parties involved, but we had over a 50% mortality rate in the trees this year. Probably more likely 60-70% mortality rate. I completely understand losing some, say 10%, but this is way past that. Has anyone ever experienced such a high mortality rate from a planting? And if so, any idea what caused it. We are trying to figure out what direction to take regarding a re-plant.

Few more details.
50 acres in loblolly - highest mortality rate
25 acres in long leaf
75% of the acres planted were clearcut that was prepped correctly
25% was open fields
Sprayed summer 2018
Planted late January 2019

Not sure where you are located but the drought we had last summer into early fall could have done them in.

We planted longleaf in 2016 and then suffered a horrible drought shortly after. The trees in the cutover actually survived better than I expected.
But anywhere they had grassy competition it was about a 90% failure rate.
I'm actually going back in very soon to plant a variety of hardwoods where we lost the long leafs.

Outback...funny you mention the grassy competition. The worst areas were where we planted into bushogged fields. Probably close to 100% failure rate in these areas.

We had a recent failure in grassy competition as well. Longleaf. I'd be interested for any Aldeer foresters to chime in about planting into a bunch of weeds. I cried foul from the onset but I'm not a forester. I try but I can't do everything myself. Looked like dumbassery to me. They are trying to plant a place that the weeds grow chest high before July, couple old crop fields. Bout to re-plant and looks like same situation to me.

They burned it wet. Didn't do crap. A Bush Hog job would have been better prep.

The drought got them for sure.

We have lost some. Planted part in '17 and part in 18.
Didn't burn this year. Won't know the damage until after next
year's burn. May not know it then because partial areas
were missed in the planting. Plus a truck load of trees
sat without cooling for 4 days and the temperatures hit
85 degrees during that period.
Real cluster.
Longleafs, btw.

no excuse for that. planting contractor should be held accountable

If it's former cattle pasture and you didn't do anything to break up any compaction, loses are going to be high. Best field planting I've seen used a ripper mounted in the center of a 750 JD dozer pulling a machine planter. They had better than a 95% survival rate where traditional hand planting without ripping in adjacent fields that were part of the same grazing rotation had close to 40% loss.