I spent years telling people that leasing from a timber company was the smart rural workaround — low cost, big acreage, access to real hollow country. And I still believe that, mostly. But I completely changed my mind about one thing: I used to assume the herbicide spraying schedule would be posted or communicated in advance. It isn't. Not reliably, anyway.
I lost a significant stand of ramps along a creek bench because a spray crew came through in April with no notice. That hollow had been producing for thirty years. One season gone.
If you are buying land with any existing timber lease attached, or considering land where a neighboring timber operation could drift spray onto your boundary, get herbicide notification rights written into the deed or lease addendum explicitly. Most buyers never think to ask. Most sellers won't volunteer it.
Conventional land-buying advice treats timber leases as a financial footnote. In the Ozarks, that lease clause can determine whether your land has a functioning wild pantry or a monoculture of nothing.
Has anyone actually succeeded in negotiating spray buffer language with a major timber company?