Mesquite Grubbing in Garza County, Texas

What we have done here

Private Ranch — Garza County

320 acres · 2024 · Mesquite grubbing

This pasture had been anchor chained decades earlier, leaving very large mesquite root structures beneath an intense, heavy canopy. We ran Cat 330 excavators and a skid steer over roughly a year.

About 240 acres were completed through an EQIP cost-share, grubbed in a deliberate grid pattern, and another 80 acres were done on the same property outside the EQIP scope.

The pasture has shown an incredible grass response, recovered much of its quail use and gained substantially more grazing potential for cattle.

All project records

Private Ranch Reservoir — Garza County

25-acre reservoir · 2023 · Pond, dam & watershed work

A preexisting pond and dam had lost capacity to accumulated silt. The landowner needed more dependable livestock water, enough depth to hold through drought and a reservoir designed for recreational fishing.

We completed watershed analysis, enlarged the existing dam and removed the silt with Cat 650 loaders and Cat 730 haul trucks. John Deere 9R tractors pulling 22-yard Humdinger scrapers cut the reservoir and more than three miles of watershed channels.

The finished 25-acre reservoir includes varied shelving and fish structure, with watershed channels shaped to move more runoff into the impoundment.

All project records

Breaks, flats and draws are three different jobs

Up on the flats, grubbing runs steady and the machine finds a rhythm. In the breaks, rock and caliche set the pace — not tree size. In the draws, the trees get big and the root structure gets tangled, and that is 330 work.

If somebody gives you one flat per-acre price for a place with caprock on it, he has not looked at it. We bid those separately because they are separate work.

Water is the other half of the business here

We run 22-yard Humdinger scrapers and we site tanks and dams off the drainage rather than where it happens to be convenient. Stacking dirt work onto a grubbing job is the cheapest dirt work you will ever buy, because the move-in is already paid for. If you have been meaning to get a tank cleaned out or a new one put in, put it on the same trip.

What we run

• Cat 323 and Cat 330 excavators with grubbing attachments
• Cat dozers and skid steers for stacking and cleanup
• 22-yard Humdinger scrapers for tanks, dams and reclamation

Owned, not rented. When we give you a date we can hold it.

Why grubbing and not shredding

Mesquite carries its regenerative buds in a band at the root crown, at and just below the soil line. Shredding and dozing cut above that band, which releases those buds — and an established tree has the root system to push that regrowth hard. Three years later you have a thicket where you had trees, and a thicket costs more to deal with than what you started with.

Grubbing lifts the crown out from under the bud zone. It costs more on the day, and done right it is the version of this job you buy once. What size machine it takes, and how deep the root has to come out.

Every acre is mapped

Your job goes in as a shapefile before a machine moves, and the plan loads into the cab. The excavators run GPS over Starlink, so what gets grubbed is recorded as it is grubbed. When we finish you get the map — every acre treated and what was left standing — not just an invoice. That record is also what makes a cost-share file straightforward instead of a chore.

See what that record looks like on The Record.

We grub for habitat, not just for pasture

Texas Grubbing grew out of Quail Safe, a wild bobwhite recovery company. That is why we grub in patterns — taking the mesquite that is stealing your water and your grass, leaving the mottes, the draws and the edge that hold quail, deer and turkey. If you want it scraped clean we will do it, and we will tell you first what it costs you in birds.