one day in January

One price of being a tenant is that you don't have control over your land....even then the thought that you have 'control' over any land is somewhat a lark. Nevertheless, the authority to decide when and where logging takes place does not rest with the tenant(unless written into the lease).   Leasing is the only way to get to hunt in this area anymore, unless you have family with land or the desire to brave the public hunting areas.

I went out to the land I lease with a select few to examine the effect/affect of a poorly announced timber thinning.

As a hunter I really do appreciate that the thinning is going to provide new habitat-particularly for small game...provided we can get the coyote population under control.

This is the kind of scene one would expect in a well managed quail plantation.  I can really see potential here. It makes me excited about the next few years on this land....if we can keep the lease.

The problem is that this is primarily a deer hunting lease. The land has been managed by the other leasee's for the expressed purpose of attracting and harvesting QDMA deer.  To that end food plots exist throughout the acreage.  Well planned food plots with soil tests, tons of lime, precise food distributions and visits by nationally acclaimed wildlife biologists.  All this effort requires the use of farm equipment that I neither have, nor have access to.  Some members actually have farm equipment for the sole reason that they can manage the food plots on the lease. 

The problem? When logging occurs it WRECKS those carefully prepared food plots.  I don't mean the killing of the green stuff-that is an ancillary and easily regenerated loss.  No, the problem is the heavy machinery running over the site compacting the soil, as well as the bark from the pines acidifying the soil.

I don't blame the loggers.

I don't blame the landowner.

I don't blame anyone really.  It's just one of those things that you live with when you don't 'own' the property.