# information on select forresting



## Dvoigt (Dec 6, 2007)

My father owns 40 acres up north in Michigan. It was land that was handed down to him from his father. It is surounded by state land that was recently thinned and now my dad says his acreage looks thick and unkept compared to the surrounding land and it is hard to walk through.

He talked to someone about comming out to forrest it and was going to use a thrid party person that lives in the area to make sure that they do it responsibly. 

I sort of have a bad feeling about it, but wanted to get the experts take on it. Is this a "good" thing. How much money can be made from doing this? The land will probably sit there for another 40 years without anything really being done to it.

I was thinking that he should at least wait until the lumber prices go up.

Thanks!

Derek


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## jeffreythree (Jan 9, 2008)

I would make sure the select is not a high grade in disguise. Use a forester for sure to mark what goes and a performance bond from the loggers just in case. A thinning takes out the junk and crowded adn leaves the good stuff to grow bigger quicker. The risks of thinning, other than the human factor, are usually thinning to much getting epicormic branching on the good hardwoods trees and blowdowns later on if they were crowded for a long time. Because a real selection cut takes junk first you may not see much money in this harvest, but it will make the next one much better. You can usually take a few crop trees as well to sweeten the pot for the logger and get a little extra money, especially if your trees are crowded.


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## Boardman (Sep 9, 2007)

Just out of curiosity, where's it at in the U.P.? I traveled it a lot when I lived in MI and some areas have not much except junk.


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## KevinK (Sep 18, 2008)

Hi

Luck you I wish I had a woodlot to fool around in.

I would suggest you get a forester in the local area as well. If you are going to use a selection silviculture system, you want to target an even distribution of diameter sizes so that the long term you will always have some trees to remove. You also want to determine the minimum age of harvest and the number of years between harvesting activities. If this is a hardwood stand, which I assume it is it works best with a selection silv system because of its ability to regenerate under a canopy. Make sure you avoid high grading, taking the best trees and also make sure you leave not only a distribution of diameter classes but also species mix and age classes. You want to open the canopy some enough to encourage growth of your desired species. Also there are basically two types of selection silviculture systems which target an uneven aged stand (as opposed to clearcut silviculture system with target a even-aged stand, used in conifer stands) they are group and single tree selection, which one to use depends on the tree size, terrain, equipment and your objectives.

Well good luck and have fun

Kevin


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## Dvoigt (Dec 6, 2007)

The land is in the higgins lake area. 

But from what I'm reading the benfits are more just to encourage future growth.

But what sort income could be generated from the inital run? A few hundred or a few thousand?


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## jeffreythree (Jan 9, 2008)

Dvoigt said:


> But what sort income could be generated from the inital run? A few hundred or a few thousand?


This is where the forester, not the logger, comes in. Look up the Michigan DNR. They have loads of info for land owners including a nice pamphlet on why to use a forester, current stumpage prices, and how to find a local forester.


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