M2HB is correct. You don't know what you actually have until a survey is completed. Also, timber companies generally won't bid on small tracts because it is so expensive to move equipment to the job site. It's like moving a circus. It has been my experience that they prefer to move from job site to job site rather than transporting equipment back to the yard and then to the next job site.
In 2016 I bought a tract which had been clear cut some years prior and the owner never replanted but left it to grow wild. I paid to have a survey done and the property boundaries plainly marked, paid to have a heavy equipment operator cut a fire break around the entire property, paid to have almost the entire property sprayed with herbicide by a helicopter, paid to have a controlled burn conducted and paid to have somewhere between 31,00 or 32,00 pine seedlings planted. The planting was in February of 2018. Expensive but the results made the effort and expense worthwhile. The timber is growing amazingly fast and the food plots are productive each year. It's an investment.
Where I am going with this is pine is a crop to be managed and harvested. If I had a tract with hardwood trees such as oak and hickory, I wouldn't cut it but pine is different. That is why, in my opinion, clear cutting is common in South Carolina. The crop is being harvested.
I bought another tract in late 2022 and I just paid a survey company to return to the tract and clearly mark the property boundaries in preparation for a thinning. Not a clear cut but a thinning. I wouldn't sign a contract with a timber broker if the property was not properly surveyed and marked, since in South Carolina, the owner of the illegally timbered wood can get three times damages. Or he can sue you.
What frosts me are land owners that have timber cut and don't retain some of the earnings to properly replant.
My experience in timber tracts is limited to South Carolina and I don't have an idea what goes on in other states.
Maine Guy - Good luck. You are wise to have a quality survey completed.
