Regardless of how many times you visited pre purchase, showing up the first time as the land owner is pretty awesome. Take it in. Hopefully its refreshing and not anxiety provoking. Some parcels are so big you may have only explored a small percentage of the land. During our first exploration we installed some trail cams (more on that in a later post) and walked the perimeter. Pulling out your OnX Hunt app is helpful as it will mark your steps and you can also geotag on the map where things are such as trail cams, boundary markers, old tree stands and more.
Tree Hugger……Meeting Some good size trees
If you have a fair number of trees, asking a forester to meet you at the property is an educational experience and free. We didn’t learn about it until after the purchase but imagine we could have arranged prior to purchase. Typically the State Department of Natural Resources or the Soil and Water Conservation District will have a Forrester. The Forrester can provide several services, even assisting in a plan for timbering. We wanted to gain addition insight to our land, need for selective timbering or ecologic concerns/issues. During our hike we marked some trees on the proposed drive that we didn’t want to disrupt. The forester attempted to educate us on the ways to identify trees. With more than 100 species of trees this was a challenge. Here are some good tree references in Ohio (similar state DNR resources should be out there).
https://www.athensswcd.org/uploads/3/0/1/0/30105193/ohiotreesbooklet.pdf
https://woodlandstewards.osu.edu/sites/woodlands/files/d6/files/pubfiles/b899-leaf%20key.pdf
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Exciting adventure! Thanks for sharing!