aerial spraying for cactus - does it work?

I have a place in Jones County. Looking to remove a lot of cactus. Has anyone had aerial spraying done before? I understand it takes a few years to kill the cactus. Can it penetrate the mesquite canopy that is often over the cactus in West Texas? Any idea on cost?

Any comments are appreciated.

Yes it works and I think the newer chemicals work faster. Not sure on costs but several guys on here will know.

Work's great! We sprayed 11 sections total and I think it ran about 15 to 16 thousand per section. Conoco sprayed a section next to my place and took out the cactus along my West fence line for about 100 yards inside the fence. It will knock the leaves of the mesquites but they bounce back, I'd do it after season when the leaves are off and everything is brown.

What does that sort of chemical do to desirable trees like oaks, etc.?

Tri cointy sprayers

Has to be sprayed when the leaves are off the trees. Best time to spray is late Jan till the leaves start coming out. Cost is about $30 per acre. I've had several pastures sprayed over the years by Northstar Heli spraying. What I like about them is I had one pasture that didn't get a very good kill (maybe 50%) they come back and sprayed for free the next year and killed it all.

Picloram is they use to kill the pear, good thing is it's a weed killer too. The next year you'll have the best pasture grass you will ever have. Picloram needs a rain on it in the first 40 days of spraying to be effective.

Picloram will burn the leaves off the Live Oaks but they will come back. Usually the pilot does his best not to spray the Live Oaks.

Our Landowner just had 550 acres of our lease sprayed in Feb, when there were no leaves on Mesquites, Post Oaks, etc. Cost was about what Stompy quoted, but he was able to get about 75% covered through a combination of NRCS funding and other programs. They used Picloram, and the chopper pilot must have been using GPS navigation because he was very precise. Pretty neat to watch him make his runs, landed on the tanker truck to refill between sweeps.

I was up in April, and can't see where it has taken much of an effect yet. Supposedly it can take up to a year for the kill.

You have to pull cattle off for min 90 days, and our biologist told us to make sure we keep free choice protein running full time as the forbs will be really knocked back the first spring as well.

Picloram (tordon 22k) will smoke pear. You can also mix it with remedy/reclaim or sendero to kill the mesquite as well. Just depends on what you want to do.

Yes it works very well. Our place has been sprayed twice in past 6 years and the pear is all but gone. Found a couple cowboy graves after all the pear died off that had been covered for decades I suppose. The Tardon/Reclaim combo will do the trick. Took a year to see a big difference and two years later I was amazed. At 4 years some of the pear was starting to come back so they hit it again and now there is very little pear on the place.

Yeah, I've sprayed Tordon, and it takes about 2 years to see it all. Good stuff, though.

Use a helicopter service and wait until February or early march. You will get a fantastic kill if the canopy is gone or not budded out. Graze the heck out of the pastures you want to spray so that the grass is thinner and the chemical can settle around the pear. Then hope for a little rain within a day or two after you spray.
Good helicopter sprayers can avoid your oaks better than a plane.

Call Mark Moon in Albany he handles brush and pear control all over the area and is as good as it gets.

I sprayed about 500 to 600 acres worth of land in the hill country last year using a tractor mounted PTO sprayer with Surmount. Mixing at 8 quarts per hundred with suffocant. It knocked the hell out of the pear on the ranch. Some stands of it were a quarter mile across and half as high as the rear wheels. The ranch manager new what he was having me do though because it worked well.