When we are resting the 11 acre wetlands that we hunt five miles North, we will sometimes hunt a small couple acre dawg training pond here on the home property. It's about 400 yards from the house and when I close the valves to flood it in the fall, it expands to a little under 10 acres that will remain 12-18" deep through December. I planted it with millet and buckwheat back in September and it's looking pretty good after the recent rains. The long drives before sunrise are tough on an old man.

nice back up plan

yea it is

Long drives? You old SOB! I wish I only had to drive 5 miles. LOL, nice looking plan B.

5 miles IS long for us. But I was talking about the 400 yarder! And by the way ... that's EACH direction too, ya know!

lol, that would be a nice welcome for a change.

Nice looking area you've put together there.

You've got it hard Cappy.

will you adopt me

Thats what i call a Fowl Paradise! Good stuff brother!

Good looking place.

Yeap...Gotta love those 400 yard away places to hunt!

Jim, your place is lookin' "Prime"

as is most ponds in North Texas!!!

Gonna be a good year boys!

J.J.

pretty sweet!

I don't think you'll get any ducks in there.

Wow that's gorgeous!!

<---------Jealous


Heck of a place you have there.

Doesn't look very "Ducky" to me either. Wouldn't bother hunting it this yr if i were you. j/k i wish i had your "problems"

Looking good cappy, that millet will save the day.

ha this looks better than my number one plan

Great lookin place

I have a place up in OK that I've been wanting to do the same thing with. What type of valves/dam arrangement do you have to "valve it off"?

Well ... it's a very long story but in a much condensed version ...

I bought this property in 2004 to build our retirement home. I wanted a couple dawg training ponds so, with a transit, found the three lowest spots on the 56 acres that would maximum natural surface flow to hold as much water as possible. Staked them out and began designing "aspects" that are considered "tecnnical" for serious trainers. This was what one of them looked like on paper.



All of the dirt excavated from there was used to build the berm around three sides of the new holding area as shown on the drawing. The opening is to the West which serves as a natural pverflow when the pond reaches maximum and the surrounding area floods to 18' deep.

There are two 8" PVC pipes going through the berms to the South and each has an 8" butterfly valve on the outboard side of the berm. I open them to drain the wetlands down to the excavated pond, and close it to fill it back up with rain.

Look carefully at the "S Curves" in these excavation pics below ...





And then compare that to the same S-curves and a TON of sweat 4-1/2 years later ...



Here's the pond side of the outlet piping following draw down ...



And the outboard side as it dumps into a ditch ...



The next to the last pic where Im standing next to the Jeep on the berm road will give you and idea of how high that berm is over the water level when full. It's up about 4 feet and almost 15' wide.