Some buddies and I purchased a section of land just west of Robert Lee in Coke County (between San Angelo and Abiline). We don't have any surface water like stock tanks or ponds. But we do have good quantity of deer. I am not sure just how far our deer have to travel to get to the nearest water source. My question is just how important is water?

Very important, they can go longer without food than they can without water.

If your not sure how far your deer have to go for water, you can download googl earth (its free). That will give you fairly current satellite photos of your place and bordering ranches. That should help.

I was under the impression that whitetails don't require that much water. Our place doesn't have any place that holds water, that I know about and we seem to have a fair amount of deer. I was thinking the occasional rains and dew off the plants or grass was enought to sustain them.

Look at the lower spots for small springs. There is probably a windmill nearby with a trough. That is pretty wild country you will have a blast hunting that place.

A few years back, on a hunt down at the TP&W's Chaparral WMA in Dimmitt and LaSalle counties, the biologists told us that they discovered that the deer in that area get almost 50% of their required moisture from Prickly Pear cactus pads.

Out on the ranch where I do the javelina hunts, the javelina and mule deer get a good bit of their moisture from lechuguilla, a plant that is a member of the agave family and native to the Chihuahuan Desert.

We have killed several deer that had a snout full of cactus thorns in them. Man, I would hate to be a deer!

As this year keeps getting drier and drier you will find that the cactus pads get thinner and thinner. Many critters eat cactus and yes lots of them get moisture from the plants, but if you are feeding (or thinking about) protein, you will find you get better results if there is water at least within a half mile or so.

Even if you did have troughs you would see that after a rain every puddle on the place will have critter tracks in it. It seems to me they will drink from a puddle even if a trough is 5 feet away.

If you can't add water to your place for some reason, see if you can get a tractor with a front end loader and at places that would attract run-off from a rain just let the bucket dig a small depression to collect rain. IE: width of the bucket by about 5 feet or so maybe 3 or 4 inches deep. This helps everything on the place from mammals to birds.

Anything you can do to provide more water for your deer will pay you big dividends. JMO

Since they have bought the property, one thing they could check into is building some water guzzlers.

They have had really great success with those out at Elephant Mountain WMA for the Desert Bighorn Sheep and Mule Deer basically, they are a corrugated tin roof loafing shed with a guuter on the down hill side, with a catch basin for the water.

It is produced by the condensation on the tin each morning.

TP&W and the Texas Bighorn Society have all kinds of information on how to build the things.

I had a pond which held water when i first purchased the property, but since then its pretty bare unless I get a good rain and then it only lasts for a while. When it held water we would get alot of game, and tracks. I would see some huge tracks I'm guessing it was a big deer. We decided to fix the water well this year hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

You might want to check with one of the local dozer services to see what it would cost to have them come in and scrape the bottom clean and then have some Bentonite or similar sealant spread over the bottom.

Are you going to put the well on electricity or a windmill?

You could always run a pipe from the well to the pond if it isn't to far and keep water in the pond that way. Just a suggestion.

Thats the plan to just run water from an electric well at all times. You think if I run water to it at all times it will hold?

It will be hard to tell if the supply of water going in is constant.

You would need to put up some form of measuring stick, pump water in for say 48 hours and then stop for 48 hours and see how much the water level drops.

I would set the measuring stick up prior to filling the pond, then I would wait for aa few days after the pond reached the level you want so the ground will be saturated.

If there is a seep in the bottom of the pond you will need some kind of sealant.

If after the pond is full, and you shut the water going into it off, the only loss should be thru evaporation. JMO.

I ran a garden hose off the windmill that fills our big stock tank to a dirt tank and it kept enough water to call dove in by the hundreds. I dug it out with a backhoe first and packed the bottom with the wheels. You only need a couple inches of water and it will call in all kinds of animals. In your area you probably have sand / gravely clay. You can dig out the sand and gravel to the clay and spread it and roll it. Clay will seal if you keep it wet and is cheaper than bentanite.
I can hook you up with the backhoe and or dozer work. PM me if you would like me to take a look