The house I live in has a small yard with a large maple. We had a ring of poor-looking hedges ringing the yard, and last year, cut them down. What we discovered is that about half of the hedges had been taken over by maple saplings without us knowing. So now we have a ring of scraggly maple saplings, with 1"-2" trunks, that I've been trimming down and want to get rid of.

If I keep trimming the leaves off, will they die? I'd like to pull them up but the roots are quite deep -- it's too much for men with shovels & picks. Some people have advised me to tie them to my car bumper & pull them out. How else can I get rid of these small trees?