There is no urgency for the purchase at my leisure. Budget is flexible, just concerned as I started at 19K now looking at around 30K+. Mostly hardwoods (oak, hickory, and some clusters of short and Virginia pine) and the short needled pine are the weakest and most prone to fall. The land used to be a tobacco farm about 50+ years ago. Picture below of what it looks like and what has fallen and would like to move.
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Don't feel pressured to escalate your budget. Stay with an amount you are comfortable with. A small 20hp CUT with appropriately light grapple and a chain saw to get stuff to a size it can handle will do most jobs. Going larger from there just means less cutting.
Small machines have a maneuverability advantage. Larger machines have a stability and ground clearance advantage. I've found these cancel each other out in the woods. I can get some paths with my 20hp where my 45 hp wont fit. I can go other routes with my 45 hp that the 20hp doesn't have the stability or ground clearance for. I've been able to get to anything I want to get to with either of them, although it may be with different approaches.
If you have any real big logs or rocks to move, you may need a grapple that opens wider, which will probably also be heavier, which means a larger machine.
I suggest you just go out and start looking at machines within a budget that you feel comfortable with. That may help you hone in on what you like. My 20 hp will do 90% of the jobs I do with my 45hp - just takes more of my time and energy. I'm sure 70hp UT would be that much faster. However, I never feel like I'm wanting for more with the 45HP tractor. I always wanted for more with the 20HP tractor. I skipped the 30 hp range because at the time I was shopping, the loader performance on the 40+hp tractors was much better than those in the 30hp range and I didn't want to buy a 30 something hp tractor and still want more.
Since this is your first tractor, it will be hard for you to know what would really work well for you on this property. As you get more experience with any tractor and with your property, you will come to know what you really want in a tractor (or other machine). For this reason, I think it really makes sense to to keep the budget reasonable and buy a used tractor with QA loader. This will give you the experience to know what you really want before you spend big money. If you buy and sell well, you won't loose much if anything on a used tractor.
