Hi, recently got hunting land clear cut 6 years ago, filled with blackberry bushes, thorns. The land is hilly terrain. Can you Pease advise me on clearing land without chemicals?
Skipped most of this,
However, get or hire an excavator, dig stumps pile them and burn them, replant with desired stuff ASAP. 200 class excavators can be had for around 50k, bigger is not necessarily better, smaller will do to a point anything under a 12ton machine is just wasting fuel and time, bigger can tear a whole lot of stuff up in a hurry, but burns considerably more fuel, and makes a helluva mess in the wrong hands.
I'm sure folks mentioned using a dozer, don't if you plan on burning the slash, dozers are good at one thing only, pushing material, they can dig stumps, but its hard on them, and they are rather slow at it, and its very hard to get dirt out of the stumps and slash, dirt don't burn. oh, and they burn a **** load of fuel. Even with a root rake, you'll still get a bunch of dirt in the pile, and you'll need an excavator to burn anyways.
some other folks probably recommended a mulcher or some other form of chipping, this will essentially reseed with whatever is there already, or invite invasive stuff to flourish
