Winter Storm Timber Damage

A historical winter storm ripped across the southeast in late January 2026, leveling some forest stands and severely damaging others. This is a pivotal point for these properties, as landowners must decide how to best manage stands after this catastrophe. Dr. Brady Self, an extension forestry professor for Mississippi State University, joins Bronson, Bonner, and Moriah on this episode to discuss the damage and parameters that should factor into these management decisions.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction & Ice Storm Overview
• 2:31 Damage Assessment by Tree Age & Type
• 7:40 Geographic Scope of Damage in Mississippi
• 9:12 Four Options for Damaged Stands
• 17:19 Salvage Logging: Market Realities & Challenges
• 23:58 Is Planting Pine Still a Good Investment?
• 34:25 Integrating Wildlife & Timber Goals
• 39:40 Cost Share Programs & Landowner Action Steps
• 43:01 Self-Assessment Guidelines for Landowners
• 49:18 Closing Thoughts & Contact Information

Transcript

Moriah Boggess: 0:01

Welcome to Wildlife Investments, where we discuss wildlife research, habitat, hunting, and land management with our panel of leading resource managers. Wildlife Investments, resource management by scientists.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 0:21

Today we are joined by Dr. Brady Self. Brady is an extension forester for Mississippi State University. And we had a devastating event that occurred in North Mississippi as well as adjacent states. And that's the the cold weather, the cold weather and the ice that we experienced a few weeks ago. And we wanted to visit with Brady. He's already been on the ground, countless properties he has visited over the past week or so. And we wanted to visit with Brady about what he's seeing and in terms of when the the damage is is too bad, what are going to be some options for people and and maybe end up with even though we had this really, really devastating event, and I think Brady can share that for some people life altering in in in terms of their plans for their property and what they wanted to do and monetize the timber and so forth, hopefully we can end up with some opportunities. So Brady, first of all, thank you for joining us. I know you have been a wide open, busy with phone calls and site visits, and people have been bombarding you recently with what are we gonna do? How bad is it? What are we gonna do? So first of all, thank you for thank you for joining us. We we appreciate your time. And maybe we can just start with kind of the environmental events. I mean, I b broadly just said, you know, cold temperatures and ice, but could you possibly, Brady, go through like what stands were most vulnerable? Was there a basal area? Was there an age class? What stands maybe could could grow out of this situation? Was there differentially effects with pine versus hardwood? Maybe just kind of a big big picture. Tell us about what what you're seeing and what stands were affected most.

Dr. Brady Self: 2:35

Sure. It's kind of interesting to be a hardwood guy and talking about pine so much right now, right? But it's it's the nature of the job. But for for the most part, I haven't seen a lot of damage in the hardwoods. You know, some of the the more brittle species, if you you know, for for lack of better terminology, the yes, gums and cottonwood and sycamore and stuff like that. And heaven forbid you had a sawtooth oak in your yard, or bread for pear. Some of those, you get a little bit of damage, a little bit of top breakage and splitting and stuff like that. But for the most part, we didn't get enough ice accumulated on most of our trees to really cause a lot of problem in the hardwood world. If you go back to the one in '94, you know, the ice storm that we had across the north part of the state, I was 14 or 15, and we had three inches of ice on our trees up in the northeast part of the state. That one broke up hardwoods. I mean, that one annihilated a lot of hardwoods out there. This one didn't have that kind of impact on hardwoods. That said, obviously, you know, the other category there is going to be pines, and that's where we saw the vast majority of the damage this time around. Now that said the one in 94, we didn't have all the pines to contend with that we do now either. So then Center programs and everything else in the mid-90s really, really started building that surplus of pine pine up across the north part of the state, across the state in general, but uh you know, especially in the north part with those low markets. Once you got into the pines this time around, you know, kind of very rough generalizations if I want to throw, throw numbers out. If it was just planted or maybe two or three years old, probably not a big deal on them. A lot of them bent to the ground. And I've got some pretty cool photos that I took the when did it, when did it end? The 26th of January, I think. It was that Monday, so the 26th of January, I went out and took some photos on my hunting club here south of south of Grenada. A lot of trees that were in that five or six year range and on up to maybe 10, they're bent over. Uh, some of them were literally touching the ground. I have a photo I took that I said I'm gonna put in my hardwood presentation to say, you know, as I walk by, the pines bow to me. I mean, every stinking pine was was bent over and touching the ground. And I went back Sunday afternoon, you know, this past Sunday afternoon, so roughly two weeks after, and every one of them is back up. They may not be perfectly vertical, but every one of them without, I can't think eight, I don't think I've saw one that was broke over in those younger age classes. Every one of them standing straight back up, maybe a little bit of bend, but by the by the time summer gets here, those are gonna be okay. So you move forward into that you know six to ten, twelve-year range like that. A lot of those are bent over, some breakage depending on how much ice accumulation you had. But as a whole, most of those are okay. Uh most of those will probably be all right. Most of them are gonna have a little bit of structural damage at the top. Maybe the maybe the terminals are snapped out, maybe some of the branches, you know, that kind of thing. It's once you get into the the next stage class, right? When you get into that 12, maybe on the bottom end, 15-year-old, up to about 25-year-old, where you get a lot of height growth, but you don't get that corresponding diameter growth until they mature, that's where you started seeing the damage, even in unthinned stands, where some of those stands are probably 30, 40% broken, not the average stand that I've looked at, but probably 30 to 40 percent would be the upper end of that, you know, of actual snapping, you know, breaking off of the tree, structural, you know, stem breakage. All I would say probably 10 to 15 percent would be more normal on those, unless they were thinned. And if you thin something in the last you know, five, six years, I've seen stands that were 99% broken off. I mean, I'm I'm talking, it looks like somebody ran a you know a bush hog over the top of those stands. They're they're horrible. Anywhere from five or six feet off the ground all the way up to 30, 35 feet and just the stem stapped, you know, snapped in half. Um we can talk later about salvage potential in a stand like that, but it's not pretty. Uh, and then you get into the older age class. Once you get into that 25, 30 year range or older than that, unless it had been thinned or it was just out in the open, you know, where it has lots and lots of uh foliage to collect that ice and accumulate, really didn't see as much damage there. Maybe you know, some top breakage here and there, down, you know, terminal break off the top five feet of the trees, you know, six, eight feet of the tree, something like that. Uh, and then some branches would break off. But as a whole, most of those stands did okay. They they didn't have the you know the devastating type breakage of large scale across a stand that you saw in those pulpwood-sized stands. That's rough numbers, you know, rough, and again, that's generalizations. There's always exceptions to that, but kind of what I'm seeing, and that's Yazoo County all the way up the buff into Panola County. And at Panola County, they kind of kind of the top. So Panola uh Tate County line, they kind of have a line where temperatures were cold enough that they got snow and ice instead of freezing rain. Below that, temperatures were high enough that they had just rain. So you get to there and above, you you kind of just had ice on the ground and you had snow and things like that. Bad on the infrastructure side, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of people up there with you know smashed tractor sheds and things like that, but trees not so much. Then you come across to going east in the state, it kind of runs out over around New Albany, Pontiac, you know, down so you uh Union and Pontiac counties. Not that much damage of you know of major consequence to the east. You go into the north part of the state, I'm told I haven't been up there, but Tishamingo County on the east side isn't too bad. On the west side and the north is pretty bad. So anything between there and Marshall, you you have some serious damage. Hadn't heard numbers from the Forestry Commission yet. I've tried. They just haven't got them yet. Yeah, they're they're working on it, but they they have not been able to get planes up and get a good handle on how much damage is there. But when those numbers are available, they're they're gonna make them public from uh from an acreage standpoint. A lot of damage. Whole lot of trees on the ground. And it is life-altering for a lot of people.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 9:12

So what are some options, Brady? We've got you you brought up the topic of uh salvage a moment ago. So I assume we're gonna have some situations where hey, you're you're taking a little bit of a loss, but the amount of loss is not gonna justify hitting the reset button. You're just gonna have to grow out of it. Maybe keep your fingers crossed when uh assume summer and fall with insect damage and and so forth. So let's not maybe talk about those. Let's talk about the the people that are going to have need some type of action. And then and then I guess ultimately that culminates in there's nothing we can do and you just have to walk away from it. Let's let's talk about that as well.

Dr. Brady Self: 9:58

Sure. They kind of go go reverse from where your brain takes you right with the worst of the best, go best of the worst, okay? Best stands didn't get any damage, right? That's pretty straightforward. If you're in those counties outside of the ones I mentioned there, you're you're probably sitting either in that category or real, real close to it. You start moving in, you know, from the, you know, you know, just say lateral across the state, you start moving into those regions, you get into some stands that were messed up, so to speak. You get the you know, the tops that are broken, you get the branches that were broken off, things like that. Those are probably manageable if you just from from whatever purpose you're wanting to manage them. You know, from a timber production standpoint or or whatever wildlife work you're wanting to do with you know manipulating those densities, good luck with thinning. And you know, we all know where that goes from a market standpoint, but uh especially with all the wood that's on the ground right now. But those stands are probably manageable, they're probably gonna live, assuming we don't have a bad beetle outbreak or something like that that comes along. Once you get into those that are 50% busted, you know, for you know, you get into those where you've got 50% of the trees on the ground or something like that, maybe even 35 or 40, depending on what you have and how much you know how much residual you you maintain. Those are the ones you really got to start thinking about what do I do? Where do I, what, where do I want to take this thing? And when you get into those situations, kind of a rule of thumb is about 50 square foot of basal area is what we're looking at for it to be manageable from a forestry standpoint. At that point, you're you're almost thinning it with the damage that happened. Again, assuming that you didn't you didn't wind up having something happen to you later on in the year, those stands are probably going to be manageable as you go forward too. If you can get it salvaged, which is very, very unlikely in a lot of cases, 50 square foot, 60 square foot, something like that will be enough for you to have a you know commercially viable stand moving into the future. Once you start getting lower than that, into that 40 uh range, that's where we we kind of start questioning whether it's going to be something that we are gonna be able to manage. Not necessarily that 40 square foot won't work from a forestry standpoint, and I know it's where you guys like to be on the on the deer side. It's that the residuals you don't have any, you we didn't pick it. You know, that stand took a lot of times it took the best trees because they had the most foliage, right? So you don't have the ability to pick your residual trees once you get into those lower basal areas, and there's even though they're they're there, they're technically going to live, and they're gonna have that subsequent lower value in saw timber. You're also gonna be looking at trees that are gonna be more susceptible to to all the other elements that are out there, whatever those may be. We can talk about those later. Once you get lower than that, you get into those stands that are you know 60, 70, 80, 90, 95% damage done. And like I said, I've seen some that you might have one tree in a hundred. Those are do-overs, absolutely do-overs. Uh probably from whatever aspect you look at it. Once you start looking at those stands, from a from a commercial standpoint, you know, commercial forester standpoint, there's really nothing there. So it's it's it's you hit that hit that reset button that you mentioned. You pull that, pull that lever, push whatever button it is, and do over. Now, that doesn't mean people are gonna do something over. Yeah, that doesn't mean that they're actually going to actively manage that stand moving forward as a timber stand or anything else. I I hate to say it, but I really and like we talked about before we started recording here, I really do think that a lot of those people are probably just gonna walk away. They were disgusted to begin with. They because of our timber markets, and and and we all, you know, we we don't need to beat that drum too much, but they're they weren't good before. They're really not gonna be good now. And without some incentive to replant it, and they don't see an incentive to replant it, they're probably gonna walk away. I I I hate to say that, but I really think that's probably gonna be the case. There's I like telling people there's four options, right? That that's one of them. One of them is, and we we touched on this a little bit too, is you somehow you ring it and you throw a match in it. That has all kind of logistical problems. How do you get how do you get a dozer to push through that? How do you get it, you get those lanes put in? And then not only that, but finding somebody that will take the liability of lighting that fire. And we've seen that with tornadoes, right? Tornadoes are similar. You probably get more damage where it's you know at the core, obviously, but more damage in a very concentrated place and where this is much, much wider spread. And in those situations, finding somebody that'll that'll light those stands on fire can be really, really tough because nobody wants to touch it. And and not to mention it's dangerous, right? You you can't you can't walk through that safely while you're trying to light a fire from an internal to the to the boundaries kind of uh thing. Uh so a lot of that's ringing it. You're just you're just putting a putting a big ring around that fire, uh around that property with fire, and you you light it on fire and stand back and watch the show. And the problem with that is is it's you know as you know, you don't have a lot of control when something's that big and you have that much fuel burning. So I think that'll probably happen some, but I don't think it's gonna happen wholesale. Then you have another option, which is, and of course, after that burning, you can replant or you can do whatever you want from a normal forestry perspective. You're still gonna have some cleanup, but at least you can interplant it, right?

Bonner Powell: 15:45

With that though, Brady, do you have a a recommended time interval that you'd wait before you try to move somebody in to burn it? Like obviously, if you burn it now, just like new piles after a logging, a logging operation, new piles rarely want to burn just because they still have a lot of moisture in them. Do you have kind of a rule of thumb for that?

Dr. Brady Self: 16:05

If you had enough fuel to burn it this spring, and a granted in a stand like that, you're gonna have all those down tops, so you're gonna have enough fuel, right? You're just not gonna burn up the the big logs. Oh and you could get somebody to do it. Probably would be better than waiting until the end of the summer, right? Until you get those logs and you know the larger material really burn really drying out. But I do, I think it all comes back to just finding somebody. Uh it's gonna be hard to find somebody uh to do it. But yeah, if you could somehow keep from having those fuels that are gonna stay on fire for a month, which would you know be earlier in the year here that we're talking about, uh yeah, that's probably not a bad idea. But everybody's shell-shocked. I mean, you need to be putting lanes in right now to do that. And a lot of those uh properties where you had thinning jobs and things like that that are more recent, they're kind of more highly managed properties anyway. A lot of those people burn, believe it or not. A lot of the one, well, a fair number of those burn that I've looked at. So they didn't have the fine fuels on the ground before this. So they're gonna have to give it some time to build those back up, and then we're right back at square one.

Moriah Boggess: 17:15

I don't know that that really answers your question, but Brady, you you touched on salvage cuts there and the difficulty, and obviously we had a lot of trouble with just getting thinning done to start with. But can you can you just speak to how this storm has changed the game with the market and just the amount of product and whether there are any kind of classes of trees that landed or might have that are down that might be able to be you know salvaged code? Sure, sure, sure.

Dr. Brady Self: 17:43

Oh, and a lot of that depends on your location, right? Uh so in my region over here in the northwest, you you really couldn't get anything done before and you're really, really not going to be able to do it now. But assuming you have markets for that wood to begin with, we don't have we don't have saw hands anymore. I mean, just call it what it is. So horizontal timber is a lot harder to get salvaged than vertical timber, just the way it is. You know, everything's designed, all the equipment to cut trees that are standing, not trees that are laying on their sides. So it gets it gets to be incredibly difficult in that you know in that scenario for you to be able to harvest pines, period. Pines that are small diameter stuff, you know, so pulp wood and small diameter saw logs, very, very, very unlikely you're gonna get much of that harvested, even if it isn't broken up. The other thing is is they want full-length logs, right? They don't want things that are broken in half. And then you get all kinds of issues going on down up and down the log with fractures and things like that in that in that wood, too. So standing trees that you're wanting to harvest, leaning trees, those are gonna be easier to salvage than something that's laying on the ground to begin with. The other thing that kind of plays into that is if you were already, and a lot of those loggers right now, we don't we don't know really know what the markets are doing. Stands, trees and they're gonna be flooding, but a lot of the loggers were in the woods. I mean, their equipment was in the woods, so they're having to cut their way out. I mean, my guess is a lot of those are out at this point. But if you have somebody there already set up on site, it's gonna be a heck of a lot easier than getting them to come back later on. So I've talked to a couple of people at this point that I mean, one literally just then a couple hundred acres, and they were they were sitting at the back. The logger had like 20 acres left. Logger called and said, Okay, do you want me to just clear cut it? And they absolutely cut it down. Now, they probably lost 50, 60 percent of the standing trees that were there that the logger had to leave because of the things I just mentioned, but they did harvest that stand because they had somebody there on site. Cost a lot of money for a logger to move in. And getting one to come back to a stand like that is gonna be not impossible, but it's gonna be incredibly difficult. Large saw timber, if there is a if of the right quality, standing trees, trees that just you lost the very top of the crowns, those are gonna be the ones that are gonna have more value than the stuff that's on the ground already, or the stuff that's snapped off halfway up the tree. A little bit of hardwood damage that was done out there, you you you probably get because it's more valuable, you're probably gonna be able to get somebody to take that over over the pine too.

Moriah Boggess: 20:27

Okay. So the the horizontal versus vertical issue, is that any different with hardwoods versus pineapple?

Dr. Brady Self: 20:33

No, realistically, not as much anymore. It's just you got a product that has a lot more value associated with it, so they're willing to go out and get somebody to do that kind of work. It comes down to insurance. They can't afford to keep a sawhand on deck anymore. And but at even at that rate, so you you if it's laying on its side, you have to you have to bucket on the ground and then and and limb it up and then haul it out. There are some that do that kind of work in hardwoods, finding them to do in pines, unless they already bought the pine, if the if the buyer already has money invested in it, it it's it's pretty tough. You had a question earlier, I heard before when we logged in too about longevity of stuff on the ground, and you're talking about hardwoods, but pines is much, much, much, much shorter. Technically, three or four months. Historically, you could say six months, but you know, technically three or four months before that wood becomes ehable, basically, for a timber buyer. And what it boils down to is everything's cut and hauled on the tonnage rating now instead of on the board feet. So it starts losing weight the second it hits the ground, and it's just not v valuable enough for them to take it after that period of time. Plus, blue stain, it's a fungus that sets up in that wood. There are mills that won't take wood that's more than a month old if you get right down to it, and it's just you you just can't sell it. Hardwood's not the same. Kind of considerations. You can get two or three years out of big logs if they're in the right environment out there on the ground. And what they'll do in that case is they'll just slab the rotting portion of the tree off. Now you're not going to get the same dollar amount per ton for hardwood logs that are on the ground that are two years old that you do for you know standing trees. But you'll you can still sell them and they'll just slab that that outside off and because they're still valuable wood on the inside. But uh it's you're looking at something that's two or three times the value of pine to begin with, and that's that's how they do that kind of work.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 22:33

Brady, you've mentioned the term two two or three times, saw hand. Chainsaw hand.

Dr. Brady Self: 22:39

Explain literally a guy that runs a chainsaw. That's what we're talking about. Used to be a you know a valued and necessary member of any logging operation that was out there, they don't exist anymore. And it all goes back to insurance. It was the most expensive position to insure on a logging crew. Loggers get a bad rep. They do. And obviously we can't do our work without them. And it gets hard to do wildlife work without them in a lot of cases. But the problem with that whole profession, and people really don't want to believe you. They go, uh, uh I see what they drive. Everything they own is owned by the bank, right? 1%. That's that's one to two percent is the normal profit margin for a for a logging operation. They don't make a lot of profit. So anything they do that makes them lose money, one bad job can can theoretically put one of them out of business. So they're very careful. And something like this, they couldn't make money on that pulp wood before. They really can't make money on now. You're you're just not gonna get them there. They're just not gonna cut. And again, that depends on on location, things like that. Other parts of the state, not as bad. And they're not gonna have that flood of wood either that they do here. It's just it's a bad, you know, perfect storm for landowners that are in those affected areas.

Bonner Powell: 24:01

How long will that flood of wood affect the markets in, let's say, just North Mississippi, Brady? And that's a good question.

Dr. Brady Self: 24:09

And that we've thrown that around amongst several of us in the past couple weeks. Uh again, in theory, a lot of that wood should be gone inside of six months, right? I'd say give it a year. I mean, that's rough numbers, and I can't prove that, but that's you know, talking with a couple of economists and and and foresters and people that are in the in the in the in the field doing that, you know, sit buying and selling. Their guess is probably a year, maybe a little bit more before you see prices kind of come back down. Now, obviously not regionally speaking, but on a local level, in theory, again, you should see higher prices at the end of it, right? You'd you lost a lot of wood. Who knows? You we can't predict tomorrow what our prices are going to be. But economists love doing that. But but I mean, realistically, it's it's very, very difficult to assign a value, you know, tomorrow. It's really hard to assign one next month and even almost impossible next year. So m theoretically, you should see prices come back in in a year or so, and that's that's what I'm told. But again, I'm not an economist.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 25:17

This may be more of an economist question than Brady, and uh you you you and I over the years we we joust academically about our professions and we have fun doing that. Uh but a a genuine question is you know, me coming through school in the the nineties, forestry at least as we understood it then, it was a darn good investment. It was very, very reliable. Pulp wood markets were really, really good. Uh of course, saw timber as always. But but I'm really struggling now to if you owned a piece of property, so let's say, Brady, you become the long lost uncle leaves you a great amount of money or gifts you a property. Not happening. Just keep going. Hypothetical. Hypothetical. How reliable is uh planting and investing in timber nowadays? So and I and I think you've got two paths right there. One may be I'm never gonna step foot on the property, I live two states away. This is totally an investment, and we'll see where we stand 30 years from now. The other would be a recreationally, I want to enjoy this property, and you know, maybe we'll realize some income from it. But it's like the the three of us, what we see more often now, and and of course, I'm very biased with what I'm about to say. We're working with people, their number one motivation is is wildlife, and then on down the priority list might be realizing some some income for timber. The timber has become a liability. It is literally because of the markets and and all these various reasons, it's I don't want that timber on my property, or I want to reduce the quantity of it by a minimum of 50%, and I can't do anything with it. So very big picture question there. But what kind of guidance can we provide people on is this something you need to do? Do you need to plant trees going forward?

Dr. Brady Self: 27:34

See, you gotta see how you painted me into a corner there and threw some broken glass on the ground after he stole my shoes, right? I I don't totally disagree with the premise of what you're saying there, but again, a lot of that goes back to goals of ownership, right? It's not a, and a lot of this is location specific, but it's also crop specific. So, I mean, forestry is just uh it's it's a long-term agriculture, is all it is, right? From an active forestry management standpoint. When you start talking about hardwoods, obviously we still got value. We still have a lot of value there. That that's never been a question. You just got a lot longer rotation. So it's an invest, it's a multi-generational investment almost when you're planting hardwoods. But you know, staying focused on pines, it's not worthless. And that that's the that's a little bit of a misconception that people have. It's it still has value. It does not have the value it once did. If you go back and you look at you know a lot of my predecessors that were here for the good old days, you know the the glory days, the golden era of pine silviculture in the in the Mississippi, uh a lot of that wood that, I mean, I've personally sold wood too for 50, you know, good pine saw logs for uh 58, 60, 62 dollars a ton. That same wood now, just 20 years older, you're you're looking at 15, 16 bucks a ton in that same part of the world, right? It still has value. It's not totally worthless. They were operating on something like 30, 35% rate of return back then. I mean, it was it was a very solid investment. You know, the old, what's the old phrase that Tim Troget used to say, $150 an acre a year? Well, those days are gone, right? They've been gone for a long time. Uh if you pin an economist down and none of them want to go on record, they'll tell you it's still paying four or five percent, somewhere in that range. So there are other investments that pay more, sure, but there are investments like a savings account that don't. Okay. So it is still viable, it is still valid, it's just that it doesn't carry what it used to. The biggest problem with it is you have to get it past that thinning stage. That's the that's the kicker. That's the bottleneck where everything starts to fall apart. So there are strategies to get around that if it's something you wanted to do, and it comes down to planting lower densities, better genetics, lower densities. Now, the whole genetics thing has gotten us in trouble because it got a lot of trees real big real quick, right? But there, but it is it is a a viable option to plant some of the higher, for lack of, again, lack of better terminology, some of the higher quality seedlings that are out there that allow you to plant a much, much, much lower density on the ground, you know, wider spacings, and you get that tree to small saw log status before you actually come in and quote unquote thin. You still have to thin, and there's always going to be something that's pulpwood size. It doesn't matter what stand or what genes you you have in those trees, you're always gonna have something that's, you know, trash, I guess you should say, for for again, for lack, lack of better phrasing, out of those stands, but you're you're hoping to get things to a saw log status, small saw log, used to be chippin' saw, right? Nobody even says chipping saw for the most part now. Now it's just small diameter saw logs. You're you're trying to get it to that stage before you have to do something to that stand. And it's working. It is working with the proper genetics behind those trees. And I don't want to get on the genetics you know kick here, but but it you have to have both. You have to have the lower spacing and the better genes. It also lends into your world more, that wider space, and you're maintaining green stuff on the ground for a lot longer period of time. Now, when you start talking about prioritization of goals, when I went through forestry school, and I'm starting to date myself here, you know, we're talking in the early 2000s. Yeah, and the guys that taught me and the guys that I work with that have been in the business for a long time, it was all about timber, timber, timber, timber. That's not the case anymore, even uh outside of industry. Yeah, outside of industry that's growing timber for profit. I think any forester would be remiss to not admit, at least that maybe they maybe they don't promote, but but at least admit that wildlife and and you know the recreational benefits and things like that is at least as important, in a lot of cases a lot more important to the land, you know, actual landowner that you're working for than the actual timber value. And that's absolutely fair. I work in the Delta region, right? I work in the in the Delta and in the hills and you know in the Northwest. I don't pitch forestry for commercial purposes. I pitch forestry as a way to pay for your wildlife, you know, wildlife efforts, buy, you know, buy a truck for your grandkid to go to college in, have a nest egg for retirement. I mean, there's other benefits that go along with it, but the vast majority of people that I work with at least equal to the forest management uh side of it and the commercial forest side of it. Wildlife, wildlife habitat's definitely on there. Absolutely. And as a as a landowner, I can tell you right now, hands down, my my little chunk of ground, I'm thinking about hunting it. I'm thinking about uh doing things out there on the property more than I undervalue the hardwoods that are growing on it. And that's just the reality of it. That's you have to adapt. So our field has changed. And because it's changed, because a lot of those changes in perception of what's out there and what you can do with it, we've we are I don't want to say we've been forced. To a certain extent, we probably have, but we've we've adapted. We've moved, or most foresters have, to to something that's centric around wildlife and forestry at the same time. And that's just the way it is. That's anybody tells you in there, they're they're not telling you the truth. That's just the way it is, and at least in my region up here. Nothing wrong with wildlife, even if I do pick at you about it. Nothing wrong with timber either.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 33:42

Wildlife tastes good, man. It's it sure does. Yeah. See if this is still accurate, uh, Brady. You know, we did some research with uh James Henderson Good Grief. I I find myself saying, Oh, it's five or six years ago. And then I start doing like it's kind of a gun, I was like 15 years ago. And there was a lot of conclusions from it, but the one of the big takeaways for me was in areas if if you have an interest in both I want some timber as an investment, but I also want wildlife habitat. And so when we add in that issue of we are going to plant some timber on this property, where we ended with that uh research, and again the economics of it was that you are far better doing it in the areas that are gonna have the greatest site index and areas where you're gonna be able to logistically harvest that timber. In other words, planting timber in the sub-optimal areas and then trying to manage for it, you were not getting a return on investment, you know, nearly as much on the timber management. And so we ended up with a good equal ground for let's plant timber where it's gonna grow well and where we can manage it and where we can harvest it, and and all those areas where it's not gonna grow well, don't even waste your time putting putting pine on the ground planting it, let's manage that for wildlife habitat. And that economically ended up to be the best solution relative to the objectives of how do we improve wildlife habitat and simultaneously how do we manage our timber financially? Does that still hold in this day and age?

Dr. Brady Self: 35:40

You just remember you're you're treading dangerously on the heels of stand conversion there when you start talking that, right? Cut the tops of the ridge and plant pines. Like I can definitely times I've heard that in some of the old literature. But you know, on a serious, you know, serious side of that, I I think so. I I think so. You once you get into planting anything in a suboptimal uh setting. So hardwoods and places they're not supposed to be, pines and places they're not supposed to be, you run into trouble down the road. Maybe not every time, but you run into it enough that Mother Nature reminds you of why you shouldn't have. And if she doesn't, the you know, the the markets dang sure will at some point. So I think that holds true to a certain extent. And it's also I'll further that a little a step further. When you start looking at investments in in those optimal areas, that's where you put the most money. Not just a matter of you put trees there, but you put not only trees, but you that's where you sock all of that that management money. That's where you put the best genetics, that's where you do the best chemical work, that's where you do make sure your site prep's done in the right way. Because over, and again, I'm not an economist, but over and over and over, uh, their research shows you that that's where your your bang for your buck is in maximizing the growth on that particular acreage. Once you drop off into the others, if you are doing it from a forest management standpoint, you you can't afford to sink as much money in. But from a pure forestry standpoint, that that pretty much holds true still. Not that everybody does it, but but it, you know, you may not have the ground too that that's capable of being or are uh categorized as being you know optimal. So if you want trees on it, you're gonna be planting trees on something that's not. I mean, you know, we get hung up in that landscape size uh arena, but you know, for the guy with 40 acres doesn't always have that that option at hand.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 37:42

Yeah, it it can also be, and you know, s some people may find it shocking that the the three of us would would recommend some of these things about yeah, let's make a a a closed canopy scenario. Let's have this area and let's grow grow timber. But we we can actually use that to to our advantage. And and what I mean by that is something we have to be concerned about on the deer side primarily is access. How are we gonna enter certain areas and exit certain areas without disturbing or minimizing the disturbance? And what we will see time and time again is there will be a primary access to a stand or to a hunting area where you're driving right through your cover.

Dr. Brady Self: 38:30

Yeah.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 38:31

Or you got to go right by a food plot to get a, you know, so we can actually use things like a a dense canopy of trees or even a pasture, things like that to where there are areas on the property where we do not want deer bedded or feeding, and we're gonna use that for humans, you know, to to access the the property and different hunting areas. So that that's an opportunity that we can use in that regard.

Dr. Brady Self: 39:00

And I don't think of things quite like that from a hunting strategy standpoint, but I mean that's sound. That makes sense. I think about it as if if you're wanting to do wildlife work, and I'm telling you, I've already said it, this is how I pitch it. If you're wanting to do that wildlife work, here's a way to make enough money to pay for it. Most people don't like coming out of pocket. You guys deal with the ones that do, right? It's a recreation. I don't. Most of the ones that I deal with, yeah, it they want to be able to pay for it somehow, and that's that's an easy way to do it. Uh you you're doing that work while you're being paid to do it. You know, it's they they go hand in hand, they work pretty well together. But yeah. There's lots of things that could be said about that.

Bonner Powell: 39:41

While we're speaking about money for just a second, Brady, let's jump back to kind of the ice damage and everything really quick. And just is there anything that landowners need to be doing? Like, do they need to get anybody out on their property to look at damage or or can they, you know, they they take note of damage either for tax purposes or for some kind of cost share in the future to to repair stands or to replant or anything like that. Is there anything that landowners need to be doing now? Yes.

Dr. Brady Self: 40:13

And I I am not the guy to give a casualty loss talk at all, right? Or tax implications. Like I'm not even gonna go there. But yes, there there are reasons to do that type of work now. And I mean, five minutes. I didn't tell you this guy's this, but I mean, my internet crashed like five minutes before I got on here to record a while ago. And while I was reading an email that came from MFA where the it went down on me, but I so I didn't get all the details, but they have uh USDA has approved some cost share money now. So EFR, yeah, EFRP. Yeah. Emergency forest restoration program has been reapproved to do that. And then there's some other things that have been approved too that are you know the the ag side of things. But along with some of that program money that's gonna come out, you're gonna need to be able to prove that you had damage. You're gonna be able you're gonna need to go through some steps to be able to enter into those into those programs and to be eligible for some of that money. So I don't know what all those are. I mean, I literally saw it five minutes before we got on here to talk. They just came down with that that ruling or you know, that issuance of information. But I know in the past with that program in particular, it wasn't eligible for yard owners, residential stuff. It had to be a a forestry venture that that had been on the ground before, and you had to jump through steps to get that, to get it, you know, get into that program. From a tax standpoint and a casualty loss standpoint, to be able to deduct those things and do all that kind of work, yes, you're you have to establish value. So it's one of those things of getting somebody on the ground and getting them there quick and and getting good pictures and things like that. I'm not I'm not familiar with how all that stuff works, and I'll be blunt right there. But it is. There's some steps to take. Some of those steps don't don't knee-jerk it, right? Don't don't make just some assumption you walk out and you look and your stand looks rough, so it's gonna die. That's not necessarily the case because of some of the things we already talked about. There's some things that that may or may not happen on the ground out there. And you know, you you wait six months, we may have a huge beetle outbreak, and everything we're talking about here is off the you know, off the off the the reality table. Uh that's possible. But don't knee-jerk it right now. It's possible that something is going to be okay. Okay. If it's if it looks like a bush hog went over the top, obviously it's done. But those that are in between, they might be okay. So don't overact. Get a forester out there, get somebody to look at it, explore the possibilities of some of the help money, you know, the aid, the federal aid that comes down, and then you know, stay informed. And that's the biggest thing I can tell anybody right now. If it's salvageable, or you think it's salvageable, or somebody told you it might be salvageable, you really need to get on that. And you need to do it yesterday because loggers already had long job books that got real long, even longer, uh, real, real long, real quick with this for just damaged timber. One of the things, if you're getting close to winding this thing up, one of the things that would like to point out to folks that they have that that damage on their ground are kind of some generalities. And I actually made a cheat sheet over here with the numbers because there's there's several some generalities if if you're looking at timber on the ground. So instead of being able to get somebody there, which is going to be difficult, some things you can look at. As a landowner to assess it yourself and see. We already talked about the amount of breakage and things like that that's up there in the top of those crowns, but I didn't really talk about the bending and things like that. So if you have a stand that has a lot of bending, rule of thumb, you think about analog clock, you know, from one to three, or I guess 12 to 9, you know, if you if you went to the other side. Once trees get into that one o'clock position, anything below one o'clock, you're you're probably okay. You get into that 130 kind of range there about 45%, that's where you start really having to worry about it, okay? Once you get to two o'clock, you probably are done. You're probably you're into that severe category, you're not going to be able to do anything with it. And once you get above about 30% actual breakage, that's where you need to start really thinking about do I need to continue managing this? Once you get in that 50% range, that's where you're probably potentially looking at a do-over, right? 60-70 is done. So that's just some rough numbers for people to kind of look at. Branch dieback isn't as big of a deal as people think, or branch loss, I guess, isn't as big of a deal as a lot of people think it is. You can you can take about 40, 50 percent branch, you know, breakage in a in a pine tree before it becomes something that's probably gonna kill the tree. You get past about 50% on an individual tree, you're you're gonna run into some issues. Top breakage, once you get above three or four inches in diameter on a big tree, and of course it varies depending on the size of the tree, but on a big tree, a mature tree, once you get above maybe maybe five inches or so in diameter, you probably need to start thinking about doing something with those. One thing we didn't talk about at all was coming from the leaning, some of the structural things that can happen inside the tree, things like ring shake, where the thing about growth rings will actually separate and slide against each other. So even though that tree, if it was bent over, even though that tree looks it looks sound a lot of times more in in wind storms than than with ice, but even in ice storms, that if that tree leaned over and those rings separated out, you can get some problems when you put it on the on the saw. When you put it on that gang, it'll it'll actually come apart, it'll fray out on you. And then as you manage those stands into the future, one of the things that not a lot of folks are thinking about is compression wood and tension wood. So on the on the leaned side, you know, on the downside of the lean, uh inside the elbow, so to speak, you'll get uh compression wood. That has a totally different wood property than normal wood. Same thing with tension wood, but once you get into compression wood, uh and tension wood being on the outside of the elbow, once you get into compression wood, it does some really bad stuff when they try to put it into pulp wood and things like that. So those are just general considerations. Uh I know I may have jumped jumped around on you there, but those I wanted to make sure to mention those.

Bonner Powell: 46:57

Just for my own peace of mind. Will you go over the other two options when when we were talking about, you know, 20 minutes ago, the options. You said you had four options for most of the stands. We went over the first two. The first one being just walking away from the stand, and the second one being you got fired to enter the stand. Just for my own peace of mind, so I can sleep tonight without calling you. What's the other two? There you go.

Dr. Brady Self: 47:22

The the other two, so so uh the burning, the burning scenario, you can come back and plant, or you can spray, you can do your other normal forestry stuff. You probably are still gonna have a lot of fuel sitting on the ground. Big fuel, heavy fuel, down woody material, whatever you want to call it. This the third option is you spray it, and I've seen this a lot with tornado damage. You you just come over the top, spray it, and interplant underneath it. I've I could show you several places down in Carroll County, Montgomery County, things like that, or places like that after the big storm we had back in 2021, 2022, whatever it was when the big tornado blew through and knocked a lot of that ground off. A lot of a lot of those trees on the ground. There were quite a few people, I could think of five or six off the top of my head anyway, that had a herbicide applicator go over the top, spray them, and they went back in and just replanted. So it's not the normal that we expect to do. You've got a lot of dead trees standing up. You've got almost a two-aged stand in some cases if they had anything that was still alive, but you have a lot of snags and things like that. Make bronson happy woodpeck woodpecker habitat, right? You got a lot of that kind of stuff sitting there and then and then trees growing up underneath it. That's the third option. And then the fourth option, which there are some people that do it, but it it and you know where we're going with this, it gets into pushing it up with a dozer and burning it and then starting over from that that side of the world. And that's unbelievably expensive. You know, low, low, low, low end, fifteen, eighteen hundred bucks an acre, all the way up to four or five thousand bucks an acre, and you just can't afford to do it. But there are people that by George, we're gonna we're gonna get this back, you know, it's gonna be planted back. And I've I've dealt with a few of those. It's incredibly expensive. Unless you own a dozer yourself and are willing to do it at nights on the weekends, it's gonna be outrageously expensive. Those are those are very, very fast paraphrased, right?

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 49:19

Thank you, Brady. Well, Brady, thank you for spending time with us and educating us on the the issue and and the things that that people can do. I guess from my perspective, I would and and again recognize recognizing the bias here and who are the people we're interacting with the most and what their objectives are. I would say, and it may really, really stinks that your hand may be forced with Mother Nature and and what happened here. But I don't know if this is a positive outcome, but I guess an outcome would be maybe use this time to reassess truly what your objectives are. And this may be an opportunity to reset and forecast the next two or three decades. And, you know, so you may have been in a situation where, hey, whatn't really what I thought I signed up for, you know, managing for timber, but we're halfway through the process, or we're 90%, you know, through the process. So we're gonna ride it out and monetize this opportunity. So maybe that opportunity has been taken away, and for you to envision, you know, what you want to do for your land or that portion of your land going forward. So I don't know if that's a positive at all, but it is an opportunity to, I guess, think about the future and and what you want out of your property. So, Brady, thank you. And for for people that aren't familiar, Brady is the co-host of a podcast called Timber University, and it is part of the the Natural Resources University Podcast Network. So a wealth of information there, both with Timber University, Deer University, and and many, many others. So a great resource for people to to get this this type of information. Thank you, Brady, for for what you do, and we really appreciate your your service to to Mississippi and to landowners. And and any closing thoughts for you, Brady, or how people can can get a hold of you?

Dr. Brady Self: 51:27

Oh, well, you can get a hold of me probably right now, especially the the easiest way is to email, and that'd be Brady B R A D Y dot self S E L F at Ms State1Word2S dot edu. Or you can call the the phone here at 1662-226-6000, and you you can get me. I promise you, I will get back with you. I don't have a secretary here anymore, it's just me. So there are times where I'm on the road for three or four days, especially right now. But I will. I'll get back with anybody that that calls, I promise. Oh outside of that, it's kind of like I said on our episode of TU the other day. It's I feel for a lot of people out there, it it's bad. And just going back to exactly what you said, you know, it may I I think it will force. I don't think it may. I think it will force people to reassess what they really want to do with some of that ground. And to be honest, there were people doing that to begin with anyway. Oh, I think this just gonna uh this is going to provide a little bit more of a flash in in you know, jump starting those people to do that kind of work if they were affected in this part of the world. So do feel feel really, really bad for a lot of people that are out there. A lot of people lost retirement uh funds, places they had planted with their granddad, you know, things like that. So it's bad. We feel for you. And some of us are in the same boat, what comes down to.

Dr. Bronson Strickland: 52:54

Heartbreaking for for a lot of people. No, no question about it. Real stories, real lives, and and a lot of hurt going on in that area. But thank you, Brady. We we appreciate your time and we'll we'll do it again sometime. All right.

Moriah Boggess: 53:10

Thanks for listening to the Wildlife Investments Podcast. For more information on these topics, or to see some of the projects our team is working on, follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Wildlife Investments, or visit wildlifeinvestments.com.