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Logan Land Company
 In the early 1950s, when I first started hunting deer in southwest and south Alabama, the areas along the major river systems historically housed the most deer, turkey and other wildlife. Greene County, Alabama, in the west/central part of the state, along the Tombigbee River, always was and has been a rural farming and agricultural county with a long history of managing timber and wildlife. “My dad started a timber-consulting business in the 1960s,” Jim Logan of Eutaw, Alabama, a real-estate broker for Mossy Oak Properties’ Logan Land Company, says. “In 2001, my brother and I took over the business. Today, we operate Mossy Oak Properties’ Logan Land Company in Eutaw, Alabama. We sell forest-recreation land, timberland and farmlands from the middle to the southern part of Alabama and in southeast Mississippi.” There’s been a dramatic change in forestlands and agricultural lands in this part of the country in the last 50 or 60 years. This section of Alabama was timber country with the land primarily being bought for the hardwood timber found throughout the region. As the hardwoods were cut, they were planted with large sections of pine trees that were new to the area. During the 1960s and the 1970s, small farms were bought and turned into large farms for soybean and catfish production. In those days, a good deer and turkey lease would cost $0.10 to $0.15 an acre. By the early 1970s, top-quality hunting land was being leased for $0.25 to $0.50 an acre, which many thought was an outrageous price.
Big companies like Weyerhauser, Gulf States and American Can, owned most of the large timber holdings that weren’t owned by private families. During this time, the deer herds exploded, and many hunters reported seeing 50 to 100 deer a day in the river-bottom swamps. In those days, no one planted green fields, there was little rifle hunting, and the most-popular deer weapon was a .12 gauge, 2-3/4-inch, shooting either a No.1 or a No. 00 buckshot. Today this area of the state has changed dramatically. Most of the soybean fields have disappeared, and many of the large tracts have been sold. According to Logan, “Most of the property we’re selling now is recreational property. In the 1980s, most of our customers were looking at forest property for its timber-growing potential. Today, the timber harvest is an incidental component in a customer’s buying decision. Most of our clients want some type of return on their timber, but the main reason they buy property in our region is to grow a big buck. Water on the land is also a major selling point. If the property has a creek running through it, a river as a boundary or ponds for fishing, the water component becomes a selling factor.
For more information on Mossy Oak Properties Logan Land Company in Eutaw, Alabama, call Jim Logan at (205) 372-9800, or email him at jlogan@mossyoakproperties.com.
To learn more about Mossy Oak Properties, click here.
Tomorrow: Buying the Country
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