Clearing Bush?

Question

How can we make it faster? We are clearing it for horses and we are living up many trees for them. How can we clear the shrub much faster? It is so hard to do...got any tips?

Answer 1

Unless you just don't won't to look at it, I would throw it to the side of the trail. This will define the trail a little more and possibly help keep the grow down on the side of the trail. If you just want it gone, you could tie a big, thick limb to a four wheeler and put the smaller stuff on top of that and then drag it all to your burn spot. What we do though is cut it up small enough to fit in the front end loader of the tractor and dump it when it gets full. Good luck.

Answer 2

I live where a chainsaw and skidder is how you clear the woods. Dragging the brush to the pile? Well for ages we have been doing it by hand. Pile up the brush on top of another and then grab some from below and drag! That's the way I know how to do it and my father and grandfather did it the same way. My great grandfather cleared this farm with a pair of Oxen and brute strength. I helped clear land all during my childhood and I'm still doing it! It is hard. Clearing the brush is slow, hot, dirty work, but it is the way fields have been cleared here anyway.

Cut the tree, de limb it and drag the brush off and cut the tree for firewood.

Answer 3

I rented a weed wacker with a steel blade.  It takes down the bushg real quick.

Watch your feet.

Answer 4

If you have a tractor and blade that works wonders.  It also makes a tighter brush pile that will burn better.  I have cleared many acres that way.  Another trick is to cut all the trees so their tops fall together and make that your brush pile.  Then all you have to do is pile the brush on the edges.

Another thing I do if the area is just shrubs and brush with few trees...I will cut everything down and burn it where it lays.  I push as much of it together as it falls as I can making lots of brush piles but burn it all at once after cutting a fire break all the way around it.

Answer 5

We always did it by hand too.

I do have 'fun' with it sometimes.  I ride western, and our horses are trained to drag things.  This goes with cow work...but anyways...

We wrap the rope around a mess of the brush, dally it around our saddle horns, and drag it to where we want it.  We dally and don't tie the rope to the saddle.  That way, if the horse spooks or there is a problem...we just let go of the rope, and the load falls away.

If this is an option for you...start with just a couple of small branches to 'desensitize' the horse to something 'following and chasing' the horse.

We also pile larger logs and stuff on a heavy tarp and drag it too with the horses.

Other than this idea of 'having fun' with a dirty, sweaty, hard, yet necessary job...moving it by hand is your other option.  Unless you want to pay someone else to do the labor.