Honey Locust trees excavator, Track loader, Dozer

I have about 145 acres near Greenville Texas, with about 100 acres I bale for hay and about 60 acres of it with Honey locust trees scattered about. They are mostly 2"-12" trees, 15'-30' tall, typically they grow in clusters so many grow together making large bases in clay soil. I probably have about 60 clusters, maybe 250-400 trees I want to eradicate. I'm familiar with remedy, how they grow, root shoots ect, I've dealt with them for a decade and have gotten rid of 100s, but I've let these grow too big. I have a Deere 333E 100hp CTL and recently bought a Danuser Tree Terminator. I cleared about a 4 acres area, about 40 trees with it this weekend, still have to burn and clean up some holes. Had to chainsaw several and spray, just taking too long to get stumps out, and I've broken off the bolts on the terminator's shield 3 times now, bending the crap out of it several times, caught/cut a line once, and I think this job is too big for what I have. It works great when it's a single tree, under 6", but there's few of those. I also use my property for a yearly offroad event that has about 600 ATVs and motorcycles and hundreds of campers, so I've been very hesitant to use a big dozer and spread millions of thorns. I'm tempted to hire, rent or buy an excavator. I had two guys that were supposed to give me estimates this weekend, but they never showed up. What size is best, weight and HP? I assume about 30k pounds, with a thumb, 125 ish HP? Seems thumbs rarely come with rentals. What's a good price to have an excavator come out and do this type job, per week? 1-2 weeks? Also might do some pond work while it's here if trees don't eat up the entire budget. I think paying a good operator to pull em, while I help build burn piles with mine and grab the smaller ones. I have a 110 HP tractor as well. Trying to avoid getting more than usual number of flats in my tractors, baler, cutters, rakes, trailers, UTVs, motorcycles ect ect. I tried a neighbors Dymax tree shear, biggest one I've even seen, cut a big 12" tree great, didn't leave much stump at all (I sprayed it good). But I had to search for a single like that, not many. It wasn't good at clusters, because it could easily get around any one or two of them, but there is a knuckle near the end of the blades that would always hit a tree after cutting just a couple inches and then stop. It was almost impossible to position where it wouldn't. So what's my most cost effective option? If I have to spend over $12k , I'd start leaning more towards buying something and chipping away at it in the next few years. Also considering a different shear, like Jenkins unit, looks like it might take bites better and could get thru in 3-5 bites? My 333E easily handles them once they are down. Thoughts?

We are doing a contract job like yours right now, over here in Denton. Clearing Mesquite and Honey Locust trees and stumps. We have found the most efficient way to get rid of the trees/stumps, is with an excavator. A JD, Model 103G, with nice sharp teeth on the bucket is working best. THis way, we get a lot of the roots as we dig the stumps out. We are renting the machine by the month at Rental One. We found that the next smaller machine, the JD75G, is not powerful enough to dig out the stumps in a timely manner. In the past, we have tried forestry mulching and stump grinding. This excavator is working better, and getting more of the roots.
note: A bigger excavator would be even better, but those get kind of pricey.

Those honey locust thorns man! They are neat, gnarly looking trees but death traps!

Sorry, that is a 130G.
Jeff

If your interested in tag teaming it I could bring a mulcher over and cut them a few feet high or 10’ high, grind the stumps and you could drag the rest to the burn pile. Or I could bring a saw but it’s going to take longer and not get the stumps ground down. I can get them flush to the ground with the mulcher. I’m in Paris so your not far off. I’ve done literally tens of thousand of trees this way so it works and its pretty efficient. Sounds like your steer can handle a set of big grapples I could bring over with me to.
Your going to have lots of work to do after digging that many stumps, just a heads up because fixing the holes will be more time consuming than digging them up.

FYI we can do what took you all weekend in just a couple hours,

Mulch it as fine as possible to minimize any remaining thorns. When the stumps resprout, spot spray with a good herbicide to kill them off permanently. If you want to keep your grasses, Crossbow should kill the woody growth without killing the grasses.

A rubber tired mulcher can cover those spotty areas, quickly. I covered 22 acres of "Seek & Destroy" locust patches in a day for a local cattle farmer that suffered several blind cattle. Trees ranged from emergent growth to 15" dbh trees. Horsepower is king for covering lots of acreage. That and thin density of growth.

Yesterday's work was NOT thin. It was more like hair on a dog's back, but with Sweet Gums in damp conditions. This machine has done a lot of locust trees over the years and to date, no flats from the thorns.

Reuben Frazier said:

If your interested in tag teaming it I could bring a mulcher over and cut them a few feet high or 10’ high, grind the stumps and you could drag the rest to the burn pile. Or I could bring a saw but it’s going to take longer and not get the stumps ground down. I can get them flush to the ground with the mulcher. I’m in Paris so your not far off. I’ve done literally tens of thousand of trees this way so it works and its pretty efficient. Sounds like your steer can handle a set of big grapples I could bring over with me to.
Your going to have lots of work to do after digging that many stumps, just a heads up because fixing the holes will be more time consuming than digging them up.

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I have been hesitant to use a mulcher, but this may be one of my best options. Cut as low as possible, and get the stump just below ground level, I grab and pile trees in burn pile, and jump out and spray. What size of machine/mulcher do you have? My cell number is 214-802-278seven. Text me with a guesstimate on how long you think it might take the two of us to do this job (I know you really need to see it, and probably just do some to really know for sure) and a general price for a weeks worth of running the machine. Thanks, for the response. I'll try to post a few pics if that helps.

I’ll shoot you a text later today, if you can get a few pics that would be great as well or I can run over and take a look.

@treemuncher I just visited your website, man, you've got some monster equipment! Good stuff. I wish I lived closer so I could apply with you for a job!

aighead said:

@treemuncher I just visited your website, man, you've got some monster equipment! Good stuff. I wish I lived closer so I could apply with you for a job!

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Thanks for the complement but no chance for any hires. I've been working alone for nearly 24 years now, ever since I started the mulching work. I enjoy my freedom too much to be anchored to those kinds of responsibilities and excessive paperwork that come with employees. I'm pretty darn hard on the one employee that I do have and even my wife refuses to work with me. Trust me, it is better this way.

I'll try to post a couple pics. . This is one of the reasons I can't leave millions of thorns everywhere, this is one race of three on Sunday. This area is more towards the front, very few Honey locusts, but I have about 8 miles of track. The area with the honey locusts is mostly in the 70 acres of bottomland in the middle. I cleared about a 4-5 acre area, but it took me several days and I have not burned or cleaned up yet. These pics were about 1/2 way done, pile is twice as big now. before after.

I’ll holler later, I could bring a big machine but with you piling them up to burn you couldn’t keep up. I’d throw a smaller machine on it and with those pics we could wipe it out pretty dang quick.

I probably wouldn't apply for a job with you really anyway @treemuncher but it'd be neat to see your machines in action!

Nice looking chunk of land @Ray450

Couple more pics, I need a close up of the base of a typical bunch, but don't have any right now. I'd say this is about average, but there's always 4-8 all bunched up and grown together, some much larger than this. . So whats the best, most cost effective tool for the job. Big excavator with thumb? Tree saw to cut and and me to pile? Mulcher to cut bottom, push over, me to run em to pile with grapple, then mulcher gets stumps a couple inches below ground? Dover or big track loader? Tree shear? One designed like this might be better able to take bites and work thru the bunch about 8" at a time, while not as H/D as the Dymax, it doesn't have the knuckle at the end that stops it from taking a smaller bite. Nuclear bomb?

I have a tree shear and they suck, I have a tree saw and they pretty much suck to, have a tree saw on a TB260, guess what it sucks to other than clearing around ponds. I have a multitude of things but in my experience for what your wanting and your willingness to put sweat equity into it then grinding them at the base and then the stump, haul tree to piles to burn without a root ball that won’t burn and holes to fill in, it’s a no brainer to me lol

kind of like attacking an aircraft carrier with a 2 pound hammer

My dad brunt the thorns off this tree and this is what growed back. Theres not alot of these on the farm but theres some.The evergreens are bad but they dont have thorns.

@Old Doug Holy crap! I thought mine were bad with just some here and there, that's insane! A good lesson has been learned!

Looks like a hare scrambles race... cool.