Your statement would almost certainly be true. Writing in his wonderful book Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South, Grady McWhiney describes how yeomen farmers throughout the South replicated farming methods practiced by their ancestors for generations. Normally Scots-Irish settlers preferred well-drained land near a reliable source of water with a few acres that could be cleared and tilled easily. Livestock - particularly hogs - could roam at will in the woods.

Based on the Agricultural Census Schedule of 1860, ninety percent of the acreage in Southern states remained uncultivated. In counties like Winston the percentage was even higher, ninety-six percent, as I recall. See McWhiney's chapter III titled "Herding," pp. 51-79.