That's some steep terrain for sure

Yes it is water table is not far under the ground.

Gotta be about 85% slope - trees growing out of sides of hills

I would be cautious of opening up the canopy too much. Fern may really impact regeneration. Maple does required much light to regenerate and grow.

Forgot to say why you want start/finish dates, The guy that got the contract with the open dates screwed around with other jobs all spring, summer and part of the fall, and started a week before Deer season.

Up hill both ways too!!

A good contract can be key.

It can be tough to put many stipulations in a contract during a down market though.

I agree with those on here suggesting strongly that you get a forester to lay out your sale/cut and advise you.

Your objective should NOT be to "get rid of some trees" or to "make a few dollars from selling wood." Rather, your objective should be "how you want your property to look.... and what wildlife and future timber it will produce in the future!"

Foresters know about silviculture and how to design a harvest to achieve those noble objectives!

Pete

I'm meeting with the 2nd forester to get into the DNR program .

Here’s the basic problem. You don’t even know what is needed to make a timber sale or, more importantly, make sure you get the results after the timber sale. To start with: basal area by species and size class, volume/acre, total acres, access, season of operation and your goals for the property. You should be able to answer two fo those questions and I would bet good money you can’t do the rest.

If the logger promises to pay $500/1000 for the maple how do you know how much you have? How do you know how much he is going to cut? Hire a forester, they know how to answer all of these questions.

Remember, it’s not how much you get paid for the timber or what timber is cut, but what is left after the logger is gone. That is what determines your future forest. Also, you will likely only do this once and you don’t get a redo on any of it.

We don’t have those trees down here, but I can tell you NO ONE down here lets anyone cut anything without a forester coming out first. I don’t care if it’s 10ac or 5000ac. A forester comes out and marks the trees after you tell him what your long term goal is or what you’re wanting. I have no clue what they charge, we have our own on the payroll, but for land management they are worth their weight in gold.

We recently had a rather large acreage thinned. I called that area Sherwood Forest. What’s so bad when clients would ask what course we were hunting I’d say Sherwood Forest and they’d ask, course 5 or 6?
It was logged in early Spring before quail nesting and we decided not to burn anything back there due to the loggers knocking down a lot of the grasses and thickets. To see it now, you’d not even know it was logged other than the huge wood piles left. Those will be burned next year or the following year. The rest will go back on the burn rotation next year. I can’t wait for the clients to see it this year. It’ll be like hunting a completely new area. After burning next year it will be even better. What’s funny is it was during turkey season and we didn’t even go back to that area. Talking to the loggers as they were leaving they assumed no one turkey hunted out there. I asked why and they said they were seeing strutters every single day and even cutting trees they’d watch birds gobble every time that saw would start hitting the trees. Afterwards we saw several hens with poults back there and now plenty of quail and their broods. Logging definitely helps when done right.

The loggers can come in a cut some trees. There is a area that's wet and squishing that area no trucks! Don't want big ruts they just have to use the winch to get the trees out. No stumps over 1' high . And I don't want my woods to look like a wind storm went thru!.

Maybe it’s been mentioned but be aware large equipment (skidders,ect,) can do harm scraping smaller trees.

Here is the way a sale should go. Friend sold 90,000BF of hardmaple last winter. Full bid price paid before starting plus $5000 performance bond. He limited the size of the skidder and had the logs winched to the main skid trail as much as possible and tops were left in place. The logger did a beautiful job, very little residual damage, header graded/seeded, any ruts back bladed and water bars cut where needed. This job would grade A+.

Including nuisance seeds. You don't want them bringing in noxious weed seeds.