They sure are getting tougher to find, but you never know when you might get lucky and find one reasonable. Last fall, I got a 4 ft Brillion at a garage sale for $40. It had a couple broken wheels, but I was able to fix it up with some I took off of my old 8-footer (that was a little too wide for food plots anyway) and I had no problem at all selling it for $300 this spring. A couple weeks ago, I found another 8-footer with rotted out bearings and a broken frame for $50. All the wheels are good on that one, and it will make a nice winter project, welding up the frame and making new wood bearings. It is easy to make new wood bearings, which I did for my old 8-footer (now about a 7 footer), in a little over an hours time. Old cultipackers are simple to work on and they do make a big difference in how well a foodplot with small seeds (clover, brassicas, etc) germinates when compared to just dragging a log or sometin like that. I also like them for medium-sized seed like rye and wheat and using one on broadcast seed gives me nearly as good of results on these crops as when I used a grain drill in the old days. I also use mine for the final soil prep pass prior to planting large seeds like corn and soybeans. For that, I hook the cultipacker behind a drag, prior to using a row-planter which gives me a "cultimulcher". The row planter is still the best way to go with those larger seeds, as with those, germination that results from just broadcasting and cultipacking is not nearly as good. I would rate the cultipacker as my second most important food-plotting tool, behind only my JD 246, 2-row corn planter. 2-row corn planters are another item that has hit the stratosphere in prices in the last few years thanks to the increasing popularity of food plotting, especially if they have functioning fertilizer attachments as does my 246.
At first, the price seemed WAAAAYY high, but after you research the subject, my only alternative for an 8ft packer was to spend $1,400 - $1,800 for a new one or older used one!!
