Burning bonfire piles hot and clear is the only respectable way to go, IMO. For your neighbors and for the environment overall. Feeding one ultra hot pile location with a tractor grapple is an excellent way to keep things contained and controlled, but also hot and efficient.
Not awesome when people leave them unattended to smolder and smoke for days. My neighbor used to like to try to burn wet, fresh cut brush too.... so smoky.
I was bad about this one time myself. I was burning brush that would have gone pretty hot and clear, but then my brother-in-law heard my plans and brought over a trailer load to burn up also. But his was fresh cut cedar branches full of pine needles. Each load of that stuff put on the fire erupted a THICK yellow cloud of nasty smoke, that promptly blew over to my neighbors house when they were trying to have a covid-friendly picnic with extended family. I swear its the only time the wind has blown in that specific direction, but I kinda filled the woods up with smoke that day. They came over and asked if I could put out the fire.... had to say, sorry, but no not really. I stopped adding extra bush, but the existing pile is going to burn until its done.
