I’m in the planning stages of bidding out a big thin of our pines and hardwoods. 240 acres of varied habitat, but we are lacking browse for winter food. Missing that grass/torn understory component. Timber harvest and fire will work well to correct that.

Conversion to oak forest type is a goal, but there might only be 3 or 4 mature oaks currently on the property so it’ll be my lifetime before any meaningful forest type switch becomes evident and fruitful. I sure hope my son appreciates it down the road.

The only way you’ll see understory growth is to open it up to sunlight.

Wanted to burn some of my place last year

Then the Panhandle burned off and I lost interest in setting anything on fire

Gonna aim for trying again in the spring. I have a local guy that used to do controlled burns for the state that has offered his assistance

Be sure to plan it out in blocks to cut or burn on a rotation every 3-5 years. If you burn or log the whole 240 acres at once, it will be great for a few years but then the regrowth will be too tall for good winter browse. Even 10 acre cut/burns is enough to support quite a few head of deer during the winter.
If you really want the best of the best, have it logged in the winter. The fresh tops provide excellent winter browse for the deer and by spring you will already have new, tender shoots coming up that will be available for the next winter.

I have 35 acres in warm season grass and burn 1/3 of it in the spring before the end of march. I have separator strips with clover and grass that I will mow short around the section where I am going to burn to help keep the fire from creeping. Back burn into the wind to set up a fire break before you light the head fire. Gas leaf blowers work better than water or anything else I have found to put out the creeping fire to keep it under control. I try and burn when there is some moisture in the ground so it doesn't burn down in the grass roots. Lots of fun.

The results from logging are usually different then burning and thinning. Often logging will take the most desirable trees from a commercial standpoint. These trees can be the most valuable wildlife wise. White oak is a good example. Logging and wild life management are often at odds.

In my woodlot when thinning I will never cut a White Oak But I will get rid of every Red Maple. I have a priority of what I'll cut and when when it comes to different types of trees. Also when thinning it doesn't necessarily mean cutting. I often will kill a tree and leave it standing. Leaving dead standing trees is a good practice for wildlife and it also protects existing stand trees from wind throw. Killing a red maple and leaving it standing isn't good for deer but its better in the long run if the goal is a more Oak/Hickory woodland with an under story of grasses and forbs.

So much of this dependent on many factors. Not all woodlots are equal. My woodlot is different than my neighbors even tho they are connected as they have been treated differently over the years.

I would disagree that logging and wildlife management are typically at odds. Moreso, one of those things that just depends on landowner objectives, silvicultural prescription, and even execution of the logging plan. The scale of the benefit is also worth considering. Seems there is typically a short-term benefit to a lot of wildlife and differences long-term depending upon the prescription, execution, and environmental response.

Ex: neighbor had his entire 40 of hardwoods thinned in winter, probably too aggressively, and a big storm that spring ended up blowing down most of the remaining mature trees. Effectively it was clearcut. Short-term it provided a ton of browse for deer, and now serves as a phenomenal bedding thicket. However, this reset the stand, likely shifted the species composition, and destroyed future timber value for the next 50 years. Neighbor will have to do some TSI in order to guide the stand composition but will likely be dead before its at that stage.

Long story short, Forest management is very subjective. I see fire being a supplement to thinning and a great tool for grass and shrublands, sometimes forestlands.