Brush Grubber BG-11 Xtreme Brush and Tree Stump Puller - Heavy Duty Removal Tool with Non-Slip Gripping Teeth, Rotating Grip Pads & Ergonomic Handles for Landscaping, Yard Cleanup & Forestry Work

My wife's family owns a small hobby farm in western Michigan. Several of the fields have not been worked in over 30 years and the pines that surround the farm have gone to seed with hundreds of small scrub pines and spruce trees. They had tried to bush hog them down but most just sprang back up with two trunks instead of one. The tap roots had continued to grow in spite of the short tree above ground. There was no good way to get them out, that is until this beast came along. We tried hooking it up to one of our four wheelers but it did not have the mass to pull out three foot deep tap roots so we attached a logging chain to the back of our F350. Most of the trees came out with the truck idling out. Only a few required a little gas to remove them. One of the best things is that the roots came out of the ground and left most of the dirt so their were only a few times we had a small hole to deal with. In three days we removed between 500-600 trees. Believe it or not we still had about another 150 to go to clear the field but my father-in-law got a cold and he was the driver for the truck so we had to cut it a day short. That leads to one thing to consider, you really need a minimum of two people to use this thing. One to drive the vehicle and the other to attach to the tree.Some other things to consider, first in spite of the directions telling you to keep the spring down, I don't recommend that. It will drag the spring in the dirt and will get it full of debris. We always had it face up and it kept it much cleaner and worked just fine. Some have posted that the spring comes loose and will be hard to find. After three days and the afore mentioned number of trees, our spring never came loose. Secondly, make sure you put the grubber as close to the ground as possible. That helped keep the device from sliding loose.The BG-11 is next to the biggest one they make and for that it is a little heavy and the spring is pretty tight. If you only have some small trees, you may want to get a smaller one. Having said that, it works just fine on small trees, as little as 1/2 in in diameter came out without any trouble. If you think you will need the 5 inch spread, by all means get this one. It works fine with the small trees as well.The handles on the side made placing the BG-11 much easier. The smaller units don't have these.All in all, this is a very tough piece of equipment. I would go as far as to say it is industrial/professional grade. Pulling over 500 trees over three days had the BG-11 working just as well as when we started. Other than some of the paint scraping off after dragging it in the dirt for three days, it was like brand new. This beast exceeded my expectations and I really don't know of ANYTHING that would have done the job at all let alone as well. My father-in-law, who grew on that farm, agreed. We were more than impressed!