DmansPadge said:
I have been waying the options of getting a mid sized hoe and I would love to hear from anyone with personal experience... I don't have much desire to cut them down then dig out the stump. So if anyone has experience with what I mentioned... I'd love to hear your take on it.
Thanks.
I have taken out mopre than a dozen larger scrub oaks, and several dozen smaller trees of various species with a JD 110.
I think Walt has it just about right. In wet soil (has to be wet enough to be soft, but dry enough to give traction) I can push over smaller trees, say up to 4-5".
I have very rocky soil, and the tree roots just love to intertwine around the rocks.
Up to about 15-18' tall, I can frequently, but not always, push on the tree with the side of the 4-n-1 bucket & by turning & using one brake, get the tree into the open bucket, and clamp down on it, which allows me to pull up on it & uproot it.
Up to 6-8" in diameter, if I cut the tree down at chest height, I can often take the stump out with the 4-n-1.
If conditions are just right, I can sometimes pull over a tree as large as 12-14" with a chain. Make sure the chain is long enough and attach it as high as possible, around 10' or more above ground level for leverage. Pull in reverse both to prevent overturns, and to see what is happening.
Somewhere up in that 12-14" range I get into the situation where it is a cut it down & dig out the stump operation.
One of the things to think about with pushing over larger trees is that a small TLB is not big enough to move the tree once it is pushed over. and you are going to have to break out the chainsaw to get it into managable pieces.
I had a guy with a Case (don't know the number, but he said 100+ horsepower) backhoe put in my septic field, which involved pushing over 15-20 trees. He did that in a day, while I would have spent more than a week, and maybe more than 2 weeks to accomplish the same thing.
He left me a burn pile, which the Case would handle easily, but which is going to be a 2 week project all by itself for my 110 & chainsaw.