Unethical timber buyers and their loggers have more tricks up their sleeves than just making low-ball offers to unsophisticated landowners and applying pressure tactics.

They often try to high-grade your timber stand.  This is the sleazy practice of taking only the very best, and most valuable mature White Oak and Black Walnut trees in a stand — and not taking down other trees that need to go in order to open up the canopy for new growth and rejuvenation.  If this happens to your stand, you may not be able to harvest timber there again for another 30 years, if ever.

Timber buyers and loggers are also notorious for aggressive over-harvesting.  This type of abuse is the opposite of high-grading, where they take far too many trees for a prudent harvest, including young trees that are years away from maturity.  This will also wreck your timber stand for decades if not permanently.  And it’s very detrimental to wildlife populations too.

Another way that we often see loggers abuse landowners is by not respecting property lines. they will cut down valuable trees that border your land but are actually on a neighbor’s property. This frequently results in disputes, expensive lawsuits and restitution for restitution in Ohio is triple damages.  Meanwhile, the logger is long gone with your neighbor’s trees and you’ll have to pay those damages yourself.