Woodland Understory Condition Tells You More Than Timber Cruise Reports

I paid good money for a professional timber cruise before buying my current hollow property. That report told me board-feet, species distribution, merchantable volume — solid numbers on paper. What it didn't tell me was that the understory had been virtually wiped out by years of high-density deer pressure combined with past ATV trail abuse through the draws. No ramps. No bloodroot colonies. No spicebush. No trillium. Just bare leaf litter and a few invasive privet shrubs creeping up from the creek edge. A recovering understory can take thirty-plus years to reestablish meaningful plant communities. I bought what looked like productive woodland and got a biological desert with nice big trees overhead. The timber value was real. The ecological value I cared about — the foraging corridors, the medicinal plant habitat, the watershed function — was essentially gone. Now I walk any wooded parcel for understory diversity before I look at a single timber report. Bloodroot patches and native ferns tell me more about a woodland's true health than any cruise. Has anyone else found that standard due diligence completely misses what actually matters to how you intend to use the land?