The Consultant - 2018 - 38
FEATURE CASE STUDY Richland Township Woods, North Central Indiana BRUCE WAKELAND, ACF, CF T hirty-seven growing seasons ago, in January of 1980 and at 31 years of age, I purchased a 16-acre parcel that included a 4-acre cornfield and 12 acres of woods. My primary purpose was a long-term timber production investment. I also decided to track the growth of the timber and the cost and income from sales, so that someday I could write an article such as this. I paid $1,150 per acre for 16 acres. I planted the 4-acre cornfield to trees in the spring of 1981. Of the remaining 12 acres, 1.5 acres was a stand of young elm. I sold the elm as firewood and planted black walnut. These 5.5 acres of tree plantings are doing very well and will be a good topic for a future article; however, this article is about the productivity of the remaining 10.5 acres of woodland. This woodland is located on rolling glacial till sandy loam soils, making it a little better than the average timber producing site for northern Indiana. This woods has a small stream that has water flow only during wet periods and a log yarding area of about one-half acre within the woods and next to the county road. 38 Previous owners had high grade harvested the woods and had periodically grazed livestock there. This resulted in the overstory being dominated by hickory and low-quality oak. Hickory is a slow growing and lower value species, making it a poor tree to have as the main species in a timber investment woodland. The younger trees were much more encouraging and the main reason I bought the property. These younger trees were mostly eight to 12 inches DBH, and included many quality black walnut and black cherry. My 100 percent inventory of all merchantable trees 12" DBH and larger showed there to be 5,320 board feet per acre Doyle scale at the time of purchase. I appraised the 1981 beginning volume to have a stumpage timber value of $1,010 per acre. The beginning volume included 13 species, of which 35 percent was hickory. This woodland was producing well below its potential because of a poor species mix, low timber quality and a less than ideal stocking level among over story trees. My first step in the management of this woods was to have an improvement type timber sale in 1981. This sale included 66 trees, having 19,404 bd.ft. Thirty-five of them were over-mature hickory with the rest being largely defective oak. After the harvest, I did timber stand improvement (TSI) work to complete the harvest openings, kill cull trees, cut grapevines and to do some crop tree release among the pole sized trees. The income from the sale, after deducting consulting forester, timber sale and TSI cost, was $2,919, or $278/acre. I conducted my second timber sale in 1995. This was also an improvement type harvest including 99 trees, having 22,396 bd.ft. Doyle. Fifty of these trees were hickory and the other 49 were again mostly lower quality oak trees. I also did TSI after the harvest, completing regeneration openings and crop tree release. The income from this sale, after consulting forester, TSI and sale costs were deducted, was $3,934 or $375/acre. In 1997, after this second harvest was completed, I did my second 100 percent inventory of the merchantable timber and found 4,923 bd.ft./acre having a value of $2,277/acre. The beginning 1980 volume had been 5,320 bd.ft./acre with a value of $1,010/acre. That worked out to a growth rate of 224 board feet per acre per year, which is a volume growth rate of 3.5 percent per year. The value per acre was now 2.25 times greater than the beginning value. After 16 growing seasons and two timber harvests, I was just 400 bd.ft. per acre below my beginning timber volume, but my timber quality, species mix and timber value were now much better. In 2017 I did my third 100 percent inventory of all merchantable trees. It had been 20 growing seasons since the last inventory with no timber harvested in between. The timber volume went from 4,923 bd.ft. per acre in 1997 to 10,190 bd.ft. per acre in 2017. That works out to 263 bd.ft. per acre per year, for an improvement of nearly THE CONSULTANT 2018
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