Business Risk

One of my landowners purchased this very nice white oak/red oak/ hickory woods when he was twenty-five years old. He is now fifty-seven, and we have done a couple light commercial thinnings and two non-commercial thinnings. We will be doing some burning in the next ten years to improve his advance regeneration, and he is planning on doing the final harvest of the current stand when he is seventy. The trees will be about 120 years old then. The tree you see with the ring around it is a hickory he has killed to make a little more room for his white oaks.

One of the summer storms that went through recently had a little twister that reached down and tagged one of his choice white oaks. We know it was tornado because the top that was ripped out is upwind of the tree it came from. This was a close call. One white oak damaged is not a real big deal, and he can leave it alone and accept the damage, or harvest it now.

As timber nears maturity you worry about it more, and after a storm front goes through, wise landowners go out to check for damage.