Best way to clear land

[sunnyside360]

Good dozer D5 - D6 with real root rake and experienced operator will leave you with a nice level field free of roots with a few nice clean burn piles. :thumbsup:

Ask the farmers around your area who clears land and who is the best in term of cost and quality of work.

Dozers have much higher productivity rate when the conditions are right. My father cleared land for over 30 years and there is definetly an art to it so get someone that does it a lot.

IMHO

Having learned the hard way, I agree 100%. The person running the machine can make all the difference in the world in terms of cost and quality of work.

 

[crazyal]

I think you need to clarify what you're trying to do. Is your only goal to clear the land, if so around here there are a couple of guys with some very large dozers that can clear it in no time. If your goal is to do the work yourself, or as much as possible, and time is not really that important then your options are vast.

For me I wanted to do it myself. I ended up buying a case dozer and backhoe and was able to do everything. I cleared about an acre of hardwoods much larger in size than your talking about. I went with a backhoe over an excavator because once I pulled the stumps I wanted to move them quite a distance away. Plus an excavator with the same break out force was much more expensive.

I have used excavators with blades and while they work they are not as good or as fast as a 6-way blade. Secondly excavators are just not designed to push with the same force as a dozer. In my opinion you really can't be limited to just one piece of machinery and expect to be happy but if you are a dozer is the way to go unless you have a lot of ledge (even in the hills of VT I would choose a dozer over an excavator). Of course of you have lots of ledge why would you want to clear the land?

 

[jenkinsph]

I thought the OP was clear in his post, he was interested in implemets AFTER the major work was done. That is why I quoted his initial post in my reply.

All the references to excavators and dozers were just added reading.

 

[catmanjerry]

Don't cut the trees, push them over with the backhoe after a little digging. Use the top of the tree as a lever. Stumps don't ever get shorter, when the weight of the tree is gone, it will rise a couple of inches over a short period.

 

[hr3]

Rusty.. I too am from Maine and have been doing what you want to do for the last 2 years.. I'v been cutting to make my lawn bigger and for the firewood.. You can use your bh for the stumps very easily then you will need some fill for the holes.. I use a box blade with good results..

I'v pulled some very big stumps with only 23 hp you with 40 should go like crazy..