Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum Replanting Spinoff

How many acres does it take to be worth replanting these days??......Will you be able to get a first thinning done when it comes time??

All depends on LOCATION

Plant thinner and avoid thinning. Pulpwood has no value and in some cases will cost you to thin.

Wider spacing and higher quality seedlings are pretty dang common now.

That makes sense. Timber Company recently planted our lease and its widely spaced planting.

Depends on where the tract is. If I have a client South of Hwy 80, we’re planting like normal. If my client is North of Hwy 80, we’re discussing different options.

The pine beetles have thinned ours pretty quick.

Pine sucks now. I regret planting pines

Wish I had never planted them

I have 110 acres that was bought as clearcut in 2020. I cleared of 20 acres for row crop and another 40-50 working towards pasture. The remainder has been kept burned with some volunteer scattered. I debated planting the remainder but now gonna let it grow wild and keep burning. GP cedar springs shutdown recently and I'm hearing pines will cost money with little to no return.

I was always told timber was for managing money not making it.

Thats how mine was planted about 3 years go

When they plant the trees on beds on some of the sections of our place , the beds were 10’ wide and the trees were 7’ apart on the beds. This is also how they were planted when they used the dozer pulling that tree planter. They said that was the desired amount of trees per acre.

Made some money back in the 90s. Talking to a forester the other day who said we grow way more pine than we consume

I'm glad I didn't replant pines on ours, you cant give pulp a way, I have so much more wildlife and hunting than I would have had too.

If I were gonna plant pines, I'd go with a ArborGen MCP Elite seedlings, space them out and grow for saw timber and forget about pulpwood.

I planted 200 acres of MCP in January 2014
At the same time planted 40 acres of common loblolly. The difference in the two are amazing.

Plant long leafs at about 700 per acre if you have the appropriate site index. You’ll have great deer hunting the first 10 years or so. After that you’ll have a beautifully raked, weed (and wildlife food and cover) free monoculture that will generate $3-400 per year in pine straw production. You can burn all you want until baling begins and don’t have to worry about thinning until they’re 23-25 years old. Pine beetles are less of a problem and you can generate 3-5k per acre in income between years 12-25. It’s a no brainer compared to loblolly if income is your priority, not so much for wildlife during the productive baling years.

We planted MCP at approximately 540 TPA this year and some LL on the same spacing. We will like plant next years spots with MCP at 540 again. We also have some small spots of a few acres that were clear cut during thinning due to beetle damage. Probably going to let them regen naturally. We may hire a mulcher after a year or two to mulch rows in it if the regen is too thick.

We’ve also thought about getting these small spots sprayed with a drone but pretty sure any standing snags would have to be cut down.

Interesting conversation. I just had 12ac clearcut. Nobody is ever coming back to thin something that small most likely. I'm 100% concerned with wildlife over timber. My plan for now is to spray this fall, burn and replant with Long Leaf. I love how longleaf with a forest looks when it's burned regularly, but that's 20y down the road before it looks like I have in my mind.