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Few and far between!

Hedge posts make great fence posts. I have taken out many line posts that the old timers, dead now for 30 years, said were put in before their time. After a few years, corner posts are easily burned. When doing controlled burns, I make it a practice to check them after the fire passes. I have saved myself a lot of work doing this.

I remember going with my dad and cutting up hedge posts.. I learned to wear gloves handling it,,, that sap is pretty hard to wash off your hands.
Dad used the scraps for firewood in the wood burning stove… had to be careful with it because that stuff burned mighty hot.

Speaking of burning corner posts of osage, here is a story for you. I used to log osage for the archery industry in the late 90’s / early 2000’s.
One day I was driving around with a farmer who had several miles of hedgerow. He was just showing me the extent of his rows before I started cruising them and marking the trees.
We got to one section of row with almost all the trees missing, and he said “grass fire went through that one a few years ago and burned them all down”
“So they were all standing dead?” I asked
“Nope all alive, mid fall, leaves were dropping” he replied.
I was not sure what to make of that, so I started asking questions.
He said that the grass fire went through the row, and he did not think much of it because the fire could not go anywhere. He just went back to whatever he was doing, and the next time he looked at that row days later almost all of the trees were gone. Well, not gone, just all fallen over every which-way, and many were still slow-smoldering at the bases. He said he was as shocked at the time as I was to hear him tell me that. Living trees, smoldered until they fell from just a quick grass fire.
I ended up cutting 50 or so very nice trees from his hedges that following winter.
One other funny thing that happened with him, one evening I was trying to get some tops cut up and it got dark so I put on a headlamp and kept working. I was a good half mile from the road, and all the sudden I see everything light up from headlights coming across the field. He pulls up in his truck and says “what the “heck” are you doing kid!?” I started to explain that I was just finishing up this top, blah blah blah, and he just cuts me off mid-sentence with a stern “NOPE”. I was confused and asked what the problem was. He says “you don’t run chainsaws after dark on my ground, pack it up and come back in the morning AFTER IT GETS LIGHT!” I thought about it for a brief moment, shook my head in the affirmative, and started packing up. He was actually a great guy to deal with, and I made him a bow from wood I cut on his property because I did so well there. But he was definitely not having any chainsawing after dark…

It makes a better duck call (in the right hands of course), than a fence post.
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Lots of good uses! My brother crackef the stovebox in a brand new Ashley with dry hedge.

Hay how much would it cost to ship a few of those post if a guy wanted some ? Osage orange is supposed to be some good bow making wood

It grows down here ya know....

Never seen it in my area, I looked plus posts would already be dried

Make sure your fireplace screen is up when burning bois d’arc. About like a roman candle

Same here brother. Then they sit and drink coffee and chat about where all the pheasant and quail went.

And then get a hand out on top of it.

Theres plenty of habitat around here but no pheasant or quail. Still see a few quail but one pheasant the ladt year and I drive a couple hundred miles a day. Some say its because nobody grows milo
Some say its turkeys busting nests. Nobody knows.

Wood rat nests at the base of a hedge tree will burn a tree in a heartbeat.

Around my place, the fences haven’t been removed, but the crops that were there 50 years ago, disappeared with the 40 acre farms. Timber(whether planned or natural growth) replaced the crops. But regardless, the fence row habitat needed for quail, is gone.

Hedge post', when planted while still wet/green will frequently sprout and take root, many a fence line windrow came about this way.

I just got about 50 ten foot posts cut for a new fence I'm starting next month. My timber is full of them. If they grow in with regular hardwoods they will grow straight and tall like a hickory. You get some beautiful post out of those timber trees. Some grow with one truck. Some grow multi trunked and will have a lot of posts in them. My record is 54 posts out of one tree. It was a big one. There was a lot of splitting.