DR PRO XL 30 Brush Mower

A brush mower handles what a lawn tractor cannot: saplings, thick briar, cattails, goldenrod, and grass that has gone to seed and fallen over. If you have looked at a corner of your property and thought “that needs a bulldozer,” it probably needs one of these instead.

This is the big one. The PRO XL 30 runs a 20 hp Briggs V-twin behind a 30 inch deck and takes down saplings up to 3 inches thick. That is a genuinely different machine from the 11 and 14 hp walk-behinds most rental yards carry - it does not bog down and stall every time the grass gets thick, which is the difference between finishing an acre and giving up on it.

Power steering is why a 325 lb machine is still workable on a slope or in a tight turn, and electric start means you are not yanking a rope on a hot afternoon.

It earns its keep in the fall. Hunters use it for shooting lanes and food plot edges; landowners use it to reclaim a fence line before it becomes a tree line.

What people use it for

• Reclaiming overgrown lots, pastures and fence lines
• Shooting lanes, trail edges and food plot prep
• Knocking down a season’s growth before it turns woody
• Clearing standing brush ahead of a build or a fence run
• First pass on ground that will eventually be mowed normally

Worth knowing

At 32.5 inches wide it fits through most gates, and the deck pivots to follow uneven ground rather than scalping the high spots. Walk the ground before you cut - a hidden stump or a length of old fence wire is what turns a good afternoon into a repair bill.