Rake grapple able to pull brush out of the ground?

[PeteN]

I'm cleaning out fence lines with a lot of smaller brush including buckthorn and want to find a easier and faster way to clear it out. Can a rake grapple have the gripping capacity to pull the brush out from the top or do you need to dig in the ground to pull it out by the roots?

 

[ericm979]

I can pull out brush if I can grab the top part of the plant hard enough. The brush has to be pretty large diameter and the trunk grow somewhat horizontal for that to work. That does not happen often enough to be worth doing. If it's only an inch or two and straight, it's difficult to grab hard enough to pull out. My brush is different species than yours. So maybe it will work but chances are good that it won't.

The grapple is pretty useful for moving piles of brush that I have cut with a saw. Tree slash too. I use it to move the stuff to a better location for chipping.

 

[airbiscuit]

People seem to like the ratchet rake.

 

[dlctcg]

@PeteN - I agree with ericm979 that you might be able to pull some brush with a grapple... but I believe you will be more frustrated & it will not be anywhere near as productive as you want or think it will be. We pretty much use the grapple for moving brush pipes, log & rocks not really for pulling.

As airbiscuit mentioned a lot of people like the Ratchet Rake, we almost purchased one (& may still one day). Some use Wicked Tooth Bar or a Piranha Tooth Bar with good results also, but these are usually left on the bucket; whereas the Ratchet Rack comes on & off pretty easily.

We pull a lot of small brush & saplings & were lucky enough to get an incredible deal on a tree / post puller. What a difference in having it... Ours is definitely a light duty one which is OK for our uses & the size of our tractor. For small stuff we just put it on the FEL & are aware of our limits, for the tuff stuff we have a 3PT to Quick Attach Adapter to be able to use it on the 3PT hitch.

 

[bearthebruce]

I will give my vote for the ratchet rake - does a great job of grabbing and pulling all sorts of brush... Used ours to clear a bunch of thorn bushes in March. Then I snagged a hydraulic line. Next trip I will get the loader fixed.

 

[Waynebob126]

I have a FEL root rake grapple and a rachet rake. The grapple is great for picking up, what I’ve gathered with the racket rake, then drop into the burn pile.

The grapple is too frustrating to try and grab small brunch with. The times are spaced so far apart. I usually use a chain saw disc on my gas weed eater to knock down the small stuff then use the rachet rake on the bucket to drag stuff to a pile then switch to the grapple for picking up and transporting to the burn pile. It does get to be a hassle sometimes, switching out components but I’m only working for myself so….

 

[ROUSTABOUT]

I did all mine with machete, axe, Kaiser blade, chain saw, garden loppers, all in a wheel barrow. Low overhead that way. I finally bought a solid wheel barrow tire so there's not much stopping me now.

 

[2manyrocks]

The difficulty with using any tractor or skid loader for this is you can tear up the fence trying to get the brush off it. FELs don't have surgical precision. Then the brush probably has wrapped itself all through the fence so you'd be pulling up the fence, too.

Would be easier if you could spray it and kill it first. If you could leave it until it becomes brittle, it would be that much easier.

Chain tooth saw blades for gas powered trimmers cut through small brush and saplings well, but throw debris and would slice through a fence or a leg in a nanosecond.

 

[Vigo327]

I think there are a decent amount of FEL mount 'tree shears' or 'tree pullers' which would sneak under the bottom wire of a barb wire fence and cut or rip whatever you grabbed. Technically a tree puller is a sort of brush grapple of its own since you can still grab what you cut, just a bunch less at a time. So maybe a tree shear or tree puller?

 

[BackRoad]

Getting the roots out is an important step to eliminate the need to repeat doing it again next year.

The root grapple works well for digging and disturbing the soil 3 to 4 inches, then grappling the brush and pulling it out...including the roots.

You can also back drag with the top tines to pull brush and rake sticks and debris out of the soil.

Originally this...now looks like this...