Favorite way of clearing large parcels of land

What is your favorite way of clearing larger tracts of ground. Had to get permission :-( by FSA and soil conservation, although never in CRP or set aside, to reclaim about 20 former Christmas tree farm acres grown up in autumn olive, sumac, persimmon, sassafras, etc. Plan on putting it into no-till corn. Wanting to avoid hundreds of root-ball holes and stubs everywhere so Dozer w/4 way not working out very good. Opening this back up and leaving brush piles along outside perimeters is making immediate quail and rabbit habitat - seeing very good population increases. Soybean thieving deer ain't too happy, though.

prawn farmer, I cleared 50 acres of Central Texas red berry/blue berry Juniper. 20 yrs ago! They are Crap trees, Invader species, also no real food value to deer, cattle, and other wild life. In an existing field. The best way for Me was the dozer route! Pushed out the trees, piled and later burned them. Then burned the field. Chiseled, Plowed, Cross chiseled, Cross plowed.and put the field back into production
IMO push out the trees, pile, burn and put the field back in shape first. If you don't it will limit what you can do later on in the years to follow till the root balls decompose enough to where they won't tear up a plow or disk. I an pleading with you to not short change this step for it can and will come back to bite you in the Butt big-time.
Later,
John A.
PS a grubber attachment for the blade, or Trackhoe and grubber would help get the root-balls out but not as smoothly as you are hoping. Also this needs to be done in the driest time of the year so the root balls will shake out with little to not trouble!
Look at the units found in from Abilene, to San Angelo, to Brady to deep South Texas used to Grub Mesquites! Hope this helps.

For your problem myself i would prefer a little bigger dozer with a root rake and a three shank ripper on the back. . Years back we did a thirty acre plot that had been logged and we had to pluck stumps that were cut off anywhere from six inches to a foot off the ground . One 850 Deere for plucken and one 750 Deere for pushing to the piles . Six days and we were out of there ..

Pile it and burn it. Don't leave the piles... that's just misery looking for a home. A root rake on the dozer is your friend. Level the holes with the dozer. We've generally used an offset disc to chew the rest up after the dozer is done.

Rod

If your wanting to leave the brush piles for animal habitat, then everything said thus far would work good. If you just want to get the land cleared as fast as possible, and tilled down a little ways, leaving a relatively flat area, then consider getting someone that has a mulching head on a skid steer, or dedicated mulcher to do the job. Depending on the size of the material and the depth of the root balls, you may, or may not get all of them torn up and tilled in this way. That said a lot of that will depend on the model mulcher used as some of them can till in the material they mulch relatively deep, which would also take care of all but the largest root balls. Ultimately you wind up with everything gone on top of the round, with the mulch tilled in to help fertilize the soil as it decomposes.

A track hoe/excavator with a thumb, followed by a dozer with a root rake.

"Burn Atlanta." It works.

We cleared 130 acres here did very little dozer work some trees 4 inch popler and spruce alot of alder 10 foot stuff used a breaker plow and 50 horse IH found if you could drive over it you could plow it then all had to do was disk it down nothing on top breaker turned a furrow 15 inches deep 30 inches wide also had skidder ring chains for traction

They are clearing about 10 acres just north of me now. They have a big track hoe (30 ton I think) 1 smaller track loader. and a Challenger rubber tractor pulling a big heavy disk. Oh and a regular TLB. It is really neat after dark. Seems like a small town is a-fire. You can feel the heat a 1/8 mile away.

I'm breaking rank to answer questions you didn't ask but I believe are important to you. I don't know where you are located but judging by the remark concurning quail,the population must be lower than desired. We lost the intire population in the Eastern 2/3rds of Texas and 80% of that in remaining Western 1/3rd mostly because of clearing land to plant coastal burmuda. I suggest you contact Dr. Dale Rollins in San Angelo Tx. He can put you in contact with someone in your area if you are outside Tx. Google his contact info. Dr. Rollins has a business model where quail return more profit per acre than most other use. The beauty of it is that you can still plant your corn and pocket cash from quail or do as others do,maintain a nice family hunting preserve. Depending on surounding land,all or part of the brush in piles may be golden. I can tell you that we in Tx would give our left ----,well let's just say "half of a prized part of our anatomy" to have opertunity to reestablish quail on our property.

Goats !!!

Gene

My neighbor has one of those big drum type aerators that they welded 6" extensions on and when they clear cut or are thinning timber they run over this over it. Wait a few months then burn it. Then they go in with a clearing harrow.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned no-till farming it. What kind of land and where do you live? The guys I sometimes farm with no-till some land that was in CRP with all kinds of volunteer Cedar and Mulberry trees in it. It's in some kind of conservation program that prevents deep tillage so when it came out of CRP the land lord had someone with a skidloader with a shear come in and cut the trees off flush with the ground. They've farmed it for three years by no-till with no problems except for the first year, but if they ever want to deep till it they'll be in trouble. Cedar stumps take a long-long time to rot away.

The stumps need to be flush with the ground and not taller. In one small corner of the field the landlord wanted to save some money by cutting a few trees off with his chainsaw. He left little short stumps that wreaked havoc with the cutterbar on the bean head. Landlord ended up buying them a complete new 40' cutterbar for a Lexion head. $$$$$ Jim

Habitat is the key, I agree. I leave a buffer of clover, timothy and lespadeza on both sides of my fence rows and waterways. That has definitely helped the rabbit, quail, meadowlarks and then the red tail hawk population.

Some very good tried and true suggestions posted. Yep, as mentioned, planning on no-till corn on this - maybe 2 years in a row.
Checked on a mulcher head and went into sticker shock plus had to have a forestry package with high flow hydraulics which my T250 doesn't have. Maybe look at some alternative type saw for it. The fellow I hired with the dozer only spent about 3 hours or so on this and loaded it back up on the semi after coming to the same conclusion as me on the results. Tree came in under his sweeps and mashed his newly installed exhaust stack closed within the first 15 minutes he was there so that kind of set the tone for his early demise, too.

Get someone else that knows what they're doing...
Land clearing is not for the faint of heart but a medium sized dozer with root rake or a 15 ton excavator either with bucket and hydraulic thumb or root rake will do the job just fine.


Rod

I started the process of clearing 40 acres of heavy brush and pine trees about 3 years ago. Not exactly fast but cheaper than having it done over night. Burning is not practical due to the fact that we had/have burn bans due to the drought.

I brought in a timber co and had him cut as much as we could sell 1st. I then hired a shredder to come in and mulch as much as possible. Next a dozer to dig out the stumps. I also had him dig a couple ponds. The stumps I loaded up and hauled off.

Lots of work and slow but I couldn't afford to do it all at once.

If it's mostly brush and small trees I'd go with one of the bigger mini excavators w/ a thumb. Easy to clean alot of acres in a hurry, then you can make small-ish piles to burn, Not have to worry about pushing the piles very far. If there are bigger stumps, a full-sized excavator would be my tool of choice. Or start with the mini to get most of it then just rent a big machine for a day or two to take out the bigger stuff.

Ben