Ponds up high in hill country

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BigHills BuckHunter
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Ponds up high in hill country

Unread postby BigHills BuckHunter » Thu Dec 12, 2013 3:14 pm

I wanted to put a pond in this year but never got around to it...we have several manmade ponds and they work great for attracting deer including big bucks.

However the ponds are low elevation which means swirling wind.

I want one up high and use it as part of a Beast style hunt.

Just wondering about others that have put in ponds up high...

How did you put it in? What size?

What factors did you consider?

Like I said I want to put the pond up high just within the woods of a foodplot or a bunch of white oak.

BHBH


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Stanley
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Re: Ponds up high in hill country

Unread postby Stanley » Thu Dec 12, 2013 5:26 pm

Ponds up high have to have the proper run off to them or they become craters. Friend of mine put a pond in 4 years ago it is still dry as a bone.
You can fool some of the bucks, all of the time, and fool all of the bucks, some of the time, however you certainly can't fool all of the bucks, all of the time.
BassBoysLLP
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Re: Ponds up high in hill country

Unread postby BassBoysLLP » Thu Dec 12, 2013 8:58 pm

Agree with Stan. You'll want to position the pond/liner to take advantage of any natural drainage. Also consider the fill yourself option. You can get a lot of life out of larger ponds taking this approach. Bigger is better if you have a good way of filling it.

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Re: Ponds up high in hill country

Unread postby dan » Thu Dec 12, 2013 9:45 pm

Positioning of a pond is huge in many regards... If you want it to be a kill location, They need to be the right distance from bedding, they need to have security cover from bedding to the water, they need to be near the draw, but not so close that flooding washes out the berm.
In this position in a lot of cases there is a clay base to the soil, you dig and hope, if its not, yopu need to either add clay, or buy a liner.
The best way to put them in is to use a bull dozer. Push the hole and create a berm behind. The berm should be V shaped and catch all the water going down the hill in that area and lead it to the pond. Its very important that the pond stay full on its own and that your not up there scenting up the area filling it.

It needs to be deep, it will fill in with leaves and dirt over time and the deeper it is the longer it will last.

A blockade near the pond separating your main stand position / entrance and the deer and deer trails will allow you to hunt it a little less detected.

Just like any staging area, over hunting it will kill the spot.
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Re: Ponds up high in hill country

Unread postby dreaming bucks » Fri Dec 13, 2013 12:54 am

Bhb...... here is a link to when I built one last year..... It worked great, held water all year, and it was not super big. I bought one of these pond liners you can get from Menards. I believe it was like a 15 by 20 foot liner..... They are probably around $120. We dug it into the ground about 20 yards down off the ridge. I put the pond about half way between two major ridge points on our land.... I would say the points are equally about 100 yards to this pond.... I had a couple of real nice encounters with bucks this year at the waterhole, but I was looking for something a little bigger.....

I checked it a couple times throughout the summer just to make sure the first year it was holding water... and it always had water in it. Usually about 8" to 9" deep.

Here is the link.....
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16960


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