Harvest volume against realized price by year is the right test, and the data exists in the operating supplements the listed owners publish by segment. Look at tons harvested by product class and average realized price per ton in the same table, then see whether volumes actually fall in the weak price years. Some of them do flex, some hold volume flat because a REIT has to distribute and distributions come from cash.
That distribution requirement is the structural piece your question runs into. A REIT that has committed shareholders to a dividend level has a cash need every quarter whether stumpage cooperates or not. It can meet that from land sales, from HBU dispositions, from the wood products manufacturing segment where one exists, or from harvesting. So the deferral option isn't eliminated, it's shared with a payout obligation you don't control. In a private tract with no debt, that obligation is zero, which is why the option is cleanest there.
A middle path some people at your size use is fractional or club ownership of a single tract with a consulting forester managing it. That preserves the deferral decision, and it introduces partner risk, which is worse than it sounds when the whole thesis is a 15 year hold and one partner needs liquidity in year 6. Whatever the operating agreement says about forced sale and buyout valuation is the document that matters, and it needs a lawyer in the relevant state.
The other thing your framing assumes is that deferral is worth a lot right now. It's worth most when the stand is young enough that biological growth into sawtimber is still adding volume value each year. On a stand already past that inflection, waiting mostly costs you tax and management with less compounding underneath, and the option is thinner than the pitch suggests.
