Had a pair of Beibers make their way to the pond, taking out some mature White-oaks, stave log quality oaks, they should've stuck with some trash wood. ]
Those white oaks are valuable. I just had several hauled out from the wind storm damage three years ago. They still wanted the white oaks. They’re as valuable as the walnuts. That stave company in Lebanon has Missouri white oak prices up there. So far, I haven’t seen and beavers. But way more than my share of those cute otters.. Agh!!
I'm guessing y'all have a different strain of white oaks. Most of our TX white oaks are called post oaks, and are used by almost all BBQ restaurants and serious home BBQ cookers. I'm guessing your white oaks have straighter healthier trunks, and are used for planks. On our farm, we have red oaks, white oaks, pin oaks, and water oaks. Punky older water oaks get burned, and healthy reds and whites get split and used for my big smoker.
We do have some decent white oaks here in MO, we are right on the northern end of what is considered the Ozarks, actually some claim it starts right here in Boone County. My BIL saws barrel staves for a few whiskey barrel manufacturing companies, a yr ago he was doing some remodeling and upgrading on his mill and had a big pile of stave logs piled up waiting on them. He estimated he had around 400,000. board ft at 2 bucks per bd ft, in the log. thats what he was paying for them, think they even more now. I know when I was clearing for my pond in "18" i sold about 20 K worth of logs from the pond area, about 15 acres, and a percentage of those were stave logs, that was the fastest money. my share of the money came up to almost 9k I believe.
All the really good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
