Alright gentleman, I need some advice. I just purchased 100 acres earlier this fall. It is mostly woods that has been select cut approximately 6 or 7 years ago. My biggest challenge now is that I would like to do some work on the land. My first priority would be getting some ATV trails cut throughout the property. I use the property for hunting, but would like to expand the use to ATV riding and hiking. As it stands now, I can't access the farthest half of the property to hunt because I can't get there unless by foot. So dragging a deer back to an area where I can access it by ATV would be a LONG drag. So I would at least like a trail to ring around the entire perimeter of the property as well as some trails that cut through the property is several places.
The woods are not very steep, more like gently rolling hills. I have tried using my brush hog, but trees that are about as big around as my ankle are too big to mow and I would eventually get to a point where I couldn't go any further due to the trees being slightly too big to mow. So I abandoned that idea. My next idea was just to take my ATV and a chain saw and start cutting myself a trail, but I expect that to be slow going. I started looking through Craiglist for some land clearing ads and found a guy that actually advertised cutting ATV trails. I has a heavy duty Catepillar skid steer with steel tracks, a grapple, and a Marshall Tree Saw. I watched a YouTube video of the Marshall saw and DANG that thing is legit. I emailed the guy and he said that his setup is IDEAL for cutting ATV trails with the Marshall tree saw. His rate is $100/hour.
Which got me thinking. Would I be better served by just hiring this job out or would I better off if I invested in the equipment so that I could do it myself and not have to worry about how long the job was taking and I could do a lot more for myself. Since the Marshall Tree Saw is a skid steer implement, I could likely upgrade my tractor to a skid steer quick attach version and get a Marshall saw and use it on a tractor instead of a skid steer. My current tractor is a 23hp LS J2023 that I also use around my house which is on 6 acres. I use it to pull a 72" finish mower to mow about 3 acres which is in the woods part of my house. It's too rough in the woods for me to use my zero turn mower. My tractor only has 160 hours so it's still practically new. But for $100/hour, I"m sure I could keep the guy busy for at least a whole weekend, maybe even more, just making a few trails. I'm going to call the guy later today and asks about how long it would take to cut a trail. My northern border is 1100 yards long, a little over 1/2 mile. So I'm just trying to see what would be the better option. Any advice would be appreciated.
