Hunting Land, Trails & Food Plots in Fort Smith, AR
Fort Smith Mulching is a forestry service cutting shooting lanes, ATV and access trails, food plot openings, stand access, and property line clearing on hunting leases, deer camps, timber tracts, and recreational acreage around Fort Smith, Booneville, Charleston, Lavaca, Greenwood, Mountainburg, Alma, Van Buren, and Barling. We run these jobs across Sebastian, Crawford, Franklin, Logan, and Scott counties, Arkansas.
Hunting ground rewards a machine that fits between trees. Our carriers are high flow track loaders in the Bobcat and Takeuchi class, narrow enough to thread an oak stand without barking the trees you are paying to keep. The head is a Loftness Battle Ax, which leaves a chip fine enough that a trail looks finished the day it is cut rather than covered in slash. Selective work is what this machine does that nothing else does. The operator takes the cedar, the sweetgum, and the greenbrier and leaves a white oak standing over the cut. He cuts the lane and every mast tree along it stays. A dozer clearing the same tract gives you a scraped strip, a berm of pushed timber to see around, and root ball holes to walk your ATV through in the dark. Nothing on this list is a comment on any crew. It is what the two methods physically do.
Lanes That Actually Shoot
A lane is cut from the stand outward, not from the field inward. We start under your stand, sight the line you want, and take the machine down it. Because there are no stumps left standing and no pile at the far end, the sight picture from twenty feet up is the same picture the operator had at ground level.
Trails and Access
Trails do more than move you around. A quiet approach route to a stand keeps you from walking through bedding cover on the way in, and that is worth more than the trail itself. The oak and hickory uplands south of the river carry steep sidehills, so we lay trails along the contour where we can and take the grade at an angle where we cannot. Tracked carriers work ground that wheels will not, and the operator still walks a steep face before he puts the machine on it.
What Grows Back
On hunting land regrowth is not always the enemy. Sprouts off blackberry, locust, and sumac make browse and low cover, and many owners want exactly that along a plot edge. In a lane or on a trail you do not, so plan a maintenance cut in the second year to keep the opening open. Cedar you take out stays out. Call (479) 555-0163 before your season planning, not during it.
How wide should a shooting lane be?
Most hunters want somewhere between eight and fifteen feet. Narrow lanes keep deer relaxed and give you a clean window without turning the cut into a road. Wider lanes suit a crossbow or a long sit where you want time on the animal. Length matters more than width for most stands. Tell us where the stand sits and where you want the shot, and the operator cuts it from that line.
When should this work get done?
Late winter through spring, so the ground has a full growing season to settle and green up before opening day. Cutting in August pushes fresh disturbance and machine scent into the middle of your pattern. Dormant season also lets the operator see terrain, funnels, and property boundaries that disappear once the leaves come out.
Will the trails leave stumps or ruts?
No stumps. The head cuts at grade, so a side by side rolls the trail without dodging anything. The chip layer left behind actually helps a trail hold up, since it takes the impact of tires and rain. Ruts only come from working saturated ground, and we do not run trails through a wet draw during a rainy stretch.
Can you open a food plot without killing the cover around it?
Yes, and the edges are the part worth planning. We open the plot itself to bare ground, then feather the border by thinning the brush gradually instead of cutting a hard wall. A feathered edge gives deer a place to stage before they step out, which is exactly what you want in front of a stand. Bedding cover behind the plot stays untouched.