SanAntoneAg said:

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The 2011 drought and then a freeze killed some, but not enough, of the ash junipers in the hill country. You can still see the dead trees across the countryside today.

Could be what has happened to other species of cedar/junpier in other places more recently.

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You can bet there's a million little berries just waiting for their chance to germinate cause future problems

jja79 said:

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Does anyone chain them anymore? My dad bought 900 acres in Coryell County 60 years ago and had a lot of it chained. Made for some fun rainy weather bonfires when I was a kid.

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Went to a turkey workshop at Kerr WMA a few years back and they showed the difference in recovery between an area that was chained vs areas cleared other ways. It was clear that chaining set things way back relative to other methods and the land was very slow to recover from it.

What does "chained " mean?

I had to google it.

Maybe. The chains disturbed the soil and we went behind it with native grass seed.

Yep. It literally tears everything out of the ground.

That's really badass. Now come do my Mesquites!

Yep and creates a seed bed.

jja79 said:

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Yep and creates a seed bed.

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Some areas of the state it does that. Other area of the state it disturbs the shallow topsoil and leaves behind a rocky mess that takes a long time for anything to grow in.

jja79 said:

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Does anyone chain them anymore? My dad bought 900 acres in Coryell County 60 years ago and had a lot of it chained. Made for some fun rainy weather bonfires when I was a kid.

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Tim Sohns in The Grove uses a chain sometimes.

Depends on what you want to do with the land and where the land is. If you are doing it strictly for brush and tree control and going to plant grazing grasses in good soil areas ok.
If you're managing for wildlife and deer and in the Edward's Plateau or hill country or west toward Ozona, Sonora. It's the worst tool ever used.
Lots of that area was chained during the late 50's and 60's. The devastation to the land is still evident all these years later. Plus it was found to have greatly accelerated the spread of *****ly pear, pencil cactuses, and non desirable brush species and ash juniper all across that region.
That's why it seldom used as a range management tool now in many regions.

This. More areas than not. An old range management practice that was realized as a really bad mistake years later.
There are still some large ranches out by Sonora and San Angelo that still look like an artillery bombing field in WWII. Craters and hills of dirt and rock that are still so bad you have to have a monster truck to drive through them!

This was in 1963. He bought the place he grew up on in Coryell County but we lived in Fort Stockton so all the areas you mention are very familiar. I was a 1st grader so I thought it was amazing to watch. Seeded native grasses and then followed it up with Angora goats, then mostly cattle.

Yes sir. Lots of those areas in the hill country and Edward's Plateau region were sheep and goated to death.

Especially in Ozona and Sonora. That's red berry juniper country, and it's a crown/root sprouting nightmare. When it comes to mesquite, unless it's a good size mesquite that a chain will pop the crown bud up out of the ground, you've created a multi stem mess with the added mess of scattered and planted *****ly pear.

The last place I was involved with chaining on was in NE Medina County (Phil Graham's place, as I recall), and it was 90% regrowth, 10'+ multi stem cedar. They chained it two ways then stacked. It was ROUGH after those cedar popped out of the ground with their surrounding rock, but worked well. A chain will do little to small cedar.