How long after logging does the land look natural again?

[JOE.G]

G Man that looks fine also, I am not complaining the logger I used did a great job, I am just wondering what to expect as time goes on.

[thecfarm]

I hear the stories of guys able to cut 10 truck load a day. I usually say,Not on my land you will. bill sure is not one of those guys. I only cut on my land,so I get all the money,so I can spend the time to do a real nice job. I like to cut my brush about 2-3 feet long. I even run the saw up and down the limbs to remove the smaller limbs too.I like to walk other loggers jobs. The real nice job I spend some time just walking. The bad ones I don't spend much time on.

[Bogue Chitto]

After my pines were thinned, all the limbs and tops where chipped up and sent to the mill.  I ended up getting a check for the chips. 

[Tramp Bushler]

A healthy forest , and a park are 2 very different things most of the time . A small tree service size chipper will get alot of work done for caring for your land .

[SwampDonkey]

We thin young tree stands with brush saws and the cut fir, spruce or hardwood might have limbs 6 feet off the ground attached to a tree that might be 20-30 feet long. In 10 years and the winters that go along with it, the brush is all pretty much soil. All you see is the stumps that were 2" to compare with the remaining trees that are now 6" on the but.  ;D I can walk you on thousands of acres of thinned ground and it's all clean under it, just moss and actually very few anything else except the rabbits, partridge, song birds, squirrels, and moose. ;D

[g_man]

Ten years ago this was a landing. There was a huge slash pile of mostly white pine just behind or to the left of that firewood. Without exageration that pile was as big as a house and at least 16 feet tall. Being white pine I thought it would take 30 years to get to where it is now after ten. It is still rasberries and there is still rotting slash in there but it well on its way to being gone. I have not done anything to it. just let it sit.

[JOE.G]

Wow that rotted away quickly, I like the hard wood, trees and that is why I left most of them, I have a lot of Cherry Ash and maple, I do have hickory, ironwood,oak, sicamore, beech, birch and some others, but the first three I mentioned makes up the majority of my Hard wood, I have Hemlock and a few different types of pine also.
I do have a lot of fruit trees also but they are in a different section.

[ArborJake]

 We always found the best place to hunt was were it had been logged, right away and for the next few years. In New York were I am it usually grows up with briars right away and all the wildlife makes use of them. They're just miserable to walk through.

[WDH]

The blackberries and raspberries are very important wildlife foods.  Opening the forest floor to sunlight from logging brings in a whole another group of pioneer plants, many which are very beneficial food for the birds, bees, and critters.

  Disturbance in a landscape has very important wildlife benefits.  Wildlife thrive on edge between habitat sites.  Logging creates a lot of edge.

[JOE.G]

That is part of the reason why I wanted to open it up some, give some other plant life a chance to live, I don't have any briars around here don't want them either.

[markd]

Don't worry, you'll never know it was logged a hundred years from now.

[Corley5]

I took a ride through my own woodlot last evening.  We cut it a year ago and it's looking good.  It's quite open in places because of the removal of some very big diseased beech.  It's filling in with northern hardwood regen, raspberry and elder berry.  Looks good to me.  Lots of green  8) 8)  Looked pretty rugged after it was done ;D

[Ed_K]

I've been doing so TSI work on a job that was logged 2010 I took picts there not as good of picts as I had expected.Their in my album,I'm going to take another when I get a day of better weather,to post here,just wanted to bring this back up.

[JOE.G]

I took a quad ride with my kid's last week, some places look nice others look rough, the log roads are pretty muddy at this time I am guessing with time thatll harden back up.

[thecfarm]

Those rough areas just go in with a saw and cut things down. I never realized how many dead trees I had until he got done cutting. I'm still working on them.

[JOE.G]

He took out some pulp wood along with some fire wood, there is still enough wood down to heat a home for the winter I wish I could find someone to come in and get it.

[Phorester]

A logging job is not a landscaping job.  Never has been, never will be.

I have landowners call who are horrified at the way their woods look during or after logging.  I ask, were you satisfied the way your woods looked before this logging?  They say, yes.  I ask, how long ago was the last logging done?  Many landowners don't realize that their property had been logged before because their woods "looked so nice".  (Something to think about here..........)

I say, Your woods looked like it does now at the end of the last logging job, too, but you liked the way it looked before this one, and it will look good again after new vegetation softens the harsh look of this recent logging job, and the tops and limbs rot down.  On small jobs around here, say 2 - 5 acres or so in a subdivision, there are some loggers who will bring in a mulcher and mulch all the tops and limbs, but it is a big expense for the landowner, as has already been mentioned.

How long before it doesn't look like it's been logged?  In my area, maybe 5 years.

Again, a logging job is not a landscaping job.  Never has been, never will be.

[JOE.G]

The loggers I had look at the part of my Property that I had logged this year said this area doesn't look like it's ever been touched. But I got your point.

[SwampDonkey]

Hardwood up my way, by this I mean "mature" sugar maple, yellow birch, beech, white ash don't sucker so the stumps get consumed by the earth so to speak. So I might question the "this area looked untouched before" line. ;) This happened pretty quick when the second growth over grows the site. By the time I run a brush saw over a clear cut (about 12 years after harvest) no sign of a hardwood stump. Keeping in mind the species I mentioned. Because red maple will sucker like the dickens, mature or young tree stump. ;) So if a similar site had a selection done, the same would happen to them stumps. I'm thinning right now on a farm woodlot that gets cut by the farmer piece meal for firewood and logs and pulp over many years. And the sections I thin near his skidder trails have no stumps. You'd almost think he bladed trails down through the woods that grew back up. Nope, just nature.  8)

[leeroyjd]

I just started a job I had cut 10 years ago and it looks great.I won't take all the credit-the forester is,in my opinion,one of the best.Also the landowner cleaned up the tops on their own.

[Phorester]

The loggers I had look at the part of my Property that I had logged this year said this area doesn't look like it's ever been touched. But I got your point.

JOE.G, wanted to be sure you knew that my comments weren't directed at you personally, just meant to be general in nature.

[JOE.G]

No it's fine didn't take it wrong, The area I logged this time wasn't something that is easy to get to, I had to put culvert pipes in and stuff, it is a remote area along a river the trees were very large and there weren't any roadways had to make our own, if it wer logged it had to be many many years ago.

[Ed_K]

Here's a pict I took after cutting in a heavy hemlock stand.


 
We're hoping to generate oak & w/pine on this 44 ac property.The trees are cut and left to keep the deer out hoping for 15 yrs before they rot down.
So it all depends on what your trying to accomplish as to how bad or good the land will look.

[lumberjack48]

Ed i don't understand how your going to keep the deer out. I've been deer hunting on blocks where the logger left tops in the skid trails, tops everywhere. I could barely get though it, what a mess, deer had been bedding down all over in that cut. They were safe from the hunters, nobody in their right mine would try go through it.

Any logging i did it looked like a park. I always had designated limbing and topping areas. It was the way i logged, it didn't slow me down, it speed-ed things up i was never stumbling over tops.

Ed_K the lot in the picture looks very good, i would grade that a [ A ]

[JOE.G]

"Any logging i did it looked like a park. I always had designated limbing and topping areas. It was the way i logged, it didn't slow me down, it speed-ed things up i was never stumbling over tops."

It would be nice if everything was limbed and topped in one spot.