As you guys know we've moved to Oklahoma on 40 acers.
I'm sizing up tree removal and need to know which ones to keep and which ones to remove. There are deer and turkey on the place.

Keep list: oak trees
Dogwoods, and???

Remove list: cedar, and ???

Thanks for the help. Without my tractor I'd be sucking wind at this task.

Why are you removing them?

Too many and too thick and lots of underbrush.

Clear out the underbrush and smaller junkie trees.........leave the rest and prune em up.
Your place will be beautiful in no time

Shouldn't I take cedars out? I've always heard they drink a lot of water.

Keep any pecans or cottonwoods as the turkey's prefer to roost in open canopy trees like this.

Most trees are good and provide some benefit so there are few that are automatic removes, at least on our place. We do our best to grub all mesquite and remove most cedar as well. The deer do like the thermal protection an evergreen like a cedar provides so we keep some around the edges of bedding, but we do remove any true cedar thicket/breaks. We are heavy oak cover and will never have a forage issue from removing them so if we do remove them we tend to focus on the multitrunked regrowth.

A super helpful book I have found is "Range Plants of North Central Texas" by Ricky Linex. I am sure the species described overlap with y'alls land in OK.

Are you doing this for habitat management or property management? Two totally separate ideas and will generate totally different responses.

Tell us your goal for the property and we can help with the tree "issue"

Cedar and elms go bye bye

Plant and save white oaks!!!! Cotton candy for wild life

I hate cedars.

What you are wanting to do is called TSI or Timber stand improvement. It is also called Forest Stand improvement. You want a balance of different tree species at different ages. If you have two trees of the same species next to each other look at the structure of each one. If one is scraggly looking and one is straight, take out the bad one. Take out all the cedars though. They suck up a ton of water and shade out native grasses and forbs.

I certainly would...or at least the majority of them.

I consider them more brush than I do a tree I guess. lol

I don't mind a few but when they get so thick you cannot walk through them they are WORTHLESS.
And they do drink some water up but more importantly probably is that they can canopy out the ground and nothing grows under them worth a damn.

If you have any Chinese Tallow kill them twice!

And then curse the U.S Department of Agricultural for planting Chinese Tallows in the early 1900s, in Texas to study their commercial uses. More thousands of Tallows were also planted along the gulf in 1949 due to it's possibility of being an oil field crop.

I LOVE cedars especially when they are cut down and sunk in about 22-25 ft of water. Great habitat for big crappie!!! Daniel

Winner Winner, I hate cedars and Locust trees just about the same amount and Elms are as useless as breast implants on a dead squirrel. Cedars keep the good trees from growing as well as grass so they all get nuked without question.

Cedars gone. Elm gone. Shin oak gone. Not a great cover tree, but Oklahoma Redbuds bloom nicely in the Spring.

Short answer is "Hell Yes" take them out - I have owned a number of ranch properties - Cedars are whores - it is amazing once the Cedar is gone how the grass and other good plants grow

My goal is to manage for deer & turkey and clean up the junk trees. This is my first attempt and will not be moving at a break neck pace.
I want to select an area and clean that piece up then move to the next.
I'll post up some pics later in the week.
Thanks

Curious to hear some of the “elm gone” opinions.

Deer and livestock utilize the new growth and turkeys and small game consume the seeds in the fall. They are also a great riparian stabilizer. Seems like a tree to keep from everything that I have observed and read

OK, that clears up the purpose. Couple of things to consider:
1. deer and animals love successional growth as bedding, cover, fawning habitat, etc. Also great for food sources. It can take a couple of years to get successional growth going after a clear cut, so staging that part out would be helpful, meaning taking some large trees and cutting but leaving some of them and then allowing the understory to grow some as the bottom gets established. Leaving trees that provide abundant mast (oaks, pecans) can be good, but also prolific seeders can be helpful (black cherry, elm) as these trees will provide many young saplings which will be eaten by deer and never see big growth. So in the process of cutting, consider some of your bigger producers of mast and seed and keep them.
2. if you can find a solid oak stand, thinning out the weaker trees will help the others produce more. You don't even need to cut them down but simply scoring the trunk and applying herbicide can kill a tree and the structure can provide habitat for owls, small mammals, etc.
3. Deer and turkeys do not like woods. They like cover. A good rule of thumb in woods is if you take a basketball and heave it as far as you can, if you can still see the basketball the cover is too sparse. The top canopy is too dense. Opening up the canopy by either cutting or killing the non-mast producing top can really bring about some good ground cover growth. Turkeys do like some roosting trees though, so don't cut or kill all the big ones.

Thanks Buckeye.
Not planning on taking out any mast trees, but do want to get sunlight in the forest floor.
For now my main focus will be removing cedar and smaller trees around the house and trails to hunting area.

Some pics of my hunting area



Around the house.

Yeah I am too. I recently read where elm was one of the highest percentage forage in their diet.

I would go through that area and hinge cut 1/3 of the trees.