Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Managing Regenerative Pines

This spring I was blessed with the opportunity to purchase my first piece of land. It is approximately 40 acres of clearcut pine.
Today, I had a very knowledgeable wildlife biologist visit the property to offer his advice on how to approach the property in the future.
Re-planting in pine is going for approximately $400 an acre; he made a suggestion that I wanted to bounce off of yall and see if you had any experience with it. He said that we could give it one more year of growth because it is a newer clearcut, and next summer/spring we could spray it with a Drone to knock back the sweet gum and then just manage the re-generative loblolly pines that are growing back naturally. Saving thousands of dollars in planting longleaf costs. I am a firefighter and am far from rich, so that sounded like a great suggestion especially because it was coming from a wildlife biologist that does this for a living. What do yall think about managing the clearcut and letting it regenerate naturally?

The pine growth will be slower and thicker! I cut my 90 acres last year but left the hard woods, not doing anything to it, let it grow wild!

Agree with the wildlife guy. Take the $400 an acre and invest it in the stock market. You’ll come out way ahead.

We do this often. Standing large pines around some tracts reseed fairly well. Some stands are overstocked. Some have a great stocking rate. Each is different. An application of imazapyr will take care of the sweetgum, introduce fire around year 5 and roll with what you have.

I got a couple of questions for the group……

Are we talking about just letting it go at whatever density reseeds in or is there a plan for thinning them out to a reasonable density when they’re still young?....What means are you going to use to thin them?

If you just let it reseed and it grows so thick that none of the pines are ever merchantable……How much money did you lose over that amount of time by not replanting?......In other words if the volunteer method brings you $0 per acre in future timber sales because it was too thick or it brings you very little value because its trash…….then how much did you lose by not spending the $400 upfront and cutting $2200 of good pine later??......or whatever the total value may be for the life of that pine stand……Is that a consideration??

Yeah thats a valid point. So if it does reseed too thick, I may have to go in and select cut it 4-5 years down the road.

I’d at least get a dozier to push out a field or two…

It has two 1 acre food plot fields and I want to burn a portion of the clearcut and make it a natural open field with native flowers/grasses

Financially, I can find no market factors that show pine timber values coming back to a point where it would impact management decisions (like it did in the 90’s and early 2000’s). I back fired 40 acres of 5 year old re-seeded and severely overstocked cutover and the remaining loblolly are growing well. I would go the cheaper route here.

The same could be said for the future of hardwood pulpwood. It will never recover from the glut of crp and wrp plantings in the south.

Let your big pine trees do your replanting for you and mow your edges and in 3 years mow strips if needed. You should have good hunting for several years this way and good fawning habit for several years I let this happen on a few tracts in Dallas county and it turned out really good long term when I flipped them and I had good hunting in the mean time. What area ate we talking about and what are your long term goals.

I forgot to mention that the places I was talking about was old ag land that grew the pines and everything else really quickly

The property is in Dale County, my long term goal is to have a great place to hunt with my kids. 3 boys all under age of 6 currently.

Good for you brotha…raise em in the good Lords outdoors is the best way and congratulations on the land man. I know you are pumped!

So where would the line in the sand be for you on what IS worth replanting??

Keep fire on it to reduce overcrowding

Lots of reasons to plant trees and I kick a dibble bar every year. But for pure ROI projections from fiber value given multiple highest and best use scenarios…I’m not sure there even is a line in the sand for a small to medium size private landowner.

It is a serious hassle to manage small tracts. The danger of natural regeneration is a carpet of young pine trees that will compete with each other for resources. They will naturally thin over time but the remaining trees will be stunted and never will match the growth of replanted pines in a sprayed and burned site prep.

It can be done. The times I have seen it work the landowner used a bush hog to mow strips and thin the trees. Leaves great shooting lanes and diversity. There is going to be considerable wear and tear on equipment. A cool season burn in a few years will kill the small pines and leave the more vigorous but there is a danger of killing all the trees.

Keep us updated on how it works out.

Doesn’t that natural thinning also invite pine beetles in because of the stressed and dying wood??.....It seems like this is weighing two gambles against one another and deciding which is the better bet

If it was a larger tract, that would be a good candidate for a micro-chipping job aimed at Enviva Wood pellets out of Cottondale FL in a few years. Small stems ... don't matter. The chipper at the deck dont care if its tall and straight or short and crooked.