Good luck with your project.
Cleaning up a half acre can be a tougher than it seems. I did ½ acre along my property line over the last year with my 18.000 LB excavator with Blade and thumb. & Kubota
L39 with bucket, hoe, & Grapple. I bet I have 150 hours total time.
I cleaned up a strip averaging 40' to 50' feet wide x 600' long.
I live in NH, lots of rocks, Terrain is hilly. Very, very dense growth. I removed all the pine, left a few nice firs. I also let stand left the larger oak, elm ash and maples that were not in the way of the +600 road thru the woods that I cut along my boundary line which runs next to a rock wall.
The amount of wood and brush in a half acre can be incredible. I burned three piles of stumps, logs limbs, and brush, each pile larger than a greyhound bus. The road turned out nice, as it allows access to the pasture without running equipment through the field and is also a scenic and fun ride for horses, the RTV 900 or dirt bikes.
A small dozer is great for grading and works quickly, but the excavator with blade and the box blade and york rake on a tractor did just fine.
A small dozer does not have the guts to push down and remove roots of average trees, and any dozer that can is sized to clear, not selectively clean up woods.
I have never seen a Mulcher in New Hampshire. Some machine heads are designed with carbide fails, etc, but the ledge and boulders arund here would mess them up fast. I imagine in other parts of the country, a mulcher is the best way to clear.
All in all land clearing can be a lot of work.