Thought some of you might be interested in this. I'll try to update the progress as we go. It's been a dream of mine to buy some land and develop a wetland after I watched a really good friend of mine do it. He wanted to build another one, so we decided to partner up and started looking for land 3 years ago. Closed on our property a year and a month ago.

During the process of looking, I learned a lot. It's not as simple as finding a piece of ground you can afford and jumping in feet first. There's a lot of leg work into looking at soil maps, topo maps, drainage/runoff basins, water rights, etc, etc. During the time we were looking the market on land was obscenely hot. Stuff was selling almost as soon as it hit the market, so doing any due diligence was almost impossible. The piece of ground we ended up buying had a contract on it within 3 days of getting listed. I won't go into the details, but the buyer got extremely frustrated with the seller. Having a good agent that knew what was going on gave us the time to do our homework before the property was ready to sell. We were able to shoot elevations to confirm the topo map as well as a few soil samples to verify clay content. We were still a little apprehensive about the soil going in, but decided to buy the property anyway since we were buying under market at the time. We felt like we could get back out of the property what we put in if the final analysis by the state came back negative.

So first step find a property that has primary recreational water rights, is flat, and has soils with a high enough clay content to hold water. Easy right? Only took us 3 years of looking.

Property:


Immediately after closing we filed the paper work thru the state for our water rights since this takes over a year. Next we got in line to have the state expert come out and run soil analysis for us to confirm our clay content. It was free and the guy has been doing this for 40 years. Once we triple checked out elevations for our pools, it was time to come up with the wetland design. Ultimately we decided on a two pool design. The East pool will have 18 acres of corn and be mostly open farm ground with a finger of timber in the pool to hide our blind. Approximately 22 acres total flooded. The west pool with have 5 acres of corn and approximately 15 acres total flooded. We decided to open up a hole in the timber between the two small fields of corn to build a blind.

Pool layouts:



These were our initial designs. I don't have the final. The pool layout for the West Pool is close, but the elevation of the East Pool will run further north to get more of the tillable ground in the pool and hopefully we can get the contractor to selectively borrow dirt from the east of the pool to lower the elevation to put more pool to the East of the tree line where we plan on building the blind.

To be continued..........

dont forget my she shed!!!

Super cool. A dream of mine as well, looking forward to seeing the progress on it. Did you buy in Tx or Ok?

Next up was trying to improve the land and get broke back into farm ground. Even though the satellite images show tillable farm ground it hadn't been planted in a couple of years. The farmer had been running cattle on it and turned it into grazing. We wanted to pull all the trees out of the 3 main fields you see in the first aerial photo as well as pull trees in the West pool to create two smaller fields for corn in the wetland. Simply amazed at what you can get done with a skidsteer.





Once we had the fields cleaned up the farmer came in sprayed to kill weeds/grass before we no tilled beans.



At this point we had about done as much as we could do without levee permits approved. The state had changed it rules on the permitting and wouldn't let us file the paperwork and plans. That make you go thru a licensed engineering firm that does all the levee plans as well as hydrology and 100 year flood studies. They also want all elevations in the plans tied to USGS geological data which means a licensed surveyor. These guys were both backed up for months. We went back and forth with them about doing the survey during the winter while the leaves were off the trees. All we got was the surveyor was backed up and couldn't get to us until the summer. This presented an issue with the tree canopy since our south level went thru a pretty significant track of timber. Rather than push project time line we went at risk of having the timber cleared with an excavator before our permits were approved.





While the contractor was in there we had him clear out out some bigger trees in the two fields of the West pool we couldn't pull with the skid-steers as well as some timber between the two pools.





To be continued........

Love these projects. On my 3rd one, which has been the best wetland yet. Hopefully you did your “flyway” research as well. If your not in a good area, doesn’t matter what you plant or do, your duck population will be skinny the majority of the hunting season.

Good luck

dont forget my she shed!!!

Looking forward to more updates. I would love to do something like this one day.

Anyone know how to report someone for trolling?



Ended up in KS. The land prices in TX for smaller tracts was more than I was wanting to spend. Plus I think the migration due to less and less agriculture in TX has moved North unless the weather is really nasty. However as soon as the weather weakens I've noticed more and more of reverse migration. I really wanted land in OK. Prices are very reasonable, but with the variables I mentioned above all the ground I found in OK to check those boxes were too sandy. It just wouldn't hold water and the places I did find with enough water I wasn't willing to pay the type of money needed to overcome the seepage in the wetland.



Something tells me we will be alright.

After the contractor was done clearing trees there were a lot of roots, limbs, etc to clean up as well holes left by the root balls. You can see that in the pictures I posted above. Lots of hours in the skid steers cleaning that up and trying to make it level for the surveyor to come in and do his work. Didn't get any pictures of the clean up work or the surveyor, but was interesting to see how he used his equipment. He said his elevations were accurate up to 1/32". He did a lot finer grid of the property, but our elevations ended up being within an inch of his data. No surprises which was good. Now to wait on the engineering firm to do the levee design and flood studies to submit to the state.

Aerial view of the wetland after the trees were removed and before we burned the brush piles. Can finally see it taking shape.




By this point we were in the middle of hunting season. We picked a weekend after some rain to burn the majority of the brush piles.





Most of the piles burned down pretty well. We only got the piles on the West pool burnt. Going out this weekend to burn the piles on the east pool and sift thru the piles we already burnt to add un-burnt wood to the east piles and remove the ash from the West Pool field for planting this spring. Definitely never a lack of something to do when developing or maintaining a wetland.

Cool project and yes you are correct; skidsteers are handy as a pocket on a shirt. How long of a commute is it from the metromess?

I'll just put this out there, you will want more than corn. Get you a buffet.
If you run straight corn, there's a strong possibility that birds will feed in it at night, and go elsewhere to hang out in the day.
Just something to consider before you plant for the year.

Looks great - agree on variety. Look at all big duck clubs, the most successful ones have some hot crops and moist soil. Keep more birds throughout the season

Barney get yo pen out.

Why is that? Is corn a mallard mid-night snack and something else (say millet) a more mallard breakfast type meal?

smartweed, no maintenance needed and it will bring in birds.

corn is a pig magnet, we did 2 areas on 2 of our lakes, didn't go as planned.

planted milo and millet on 2 other lakes but it didn't head out in time, was planted late.

going back to mostly smartweed, works best imo

He needs to class that place up with a chessie though.

No, those mallards will just feed all night, then go to more open water about 10 minutes before shooting light. Or they might not ever leave the corn since it also provides thermal cover.
Any manager that knows what's up will always take moist soil over hot crop.

Raise your hand if you shot your first duck during the trump administration

Maybe don't run so much corn, just enough so they run out by sun down.

What does that comment have to do with this post? You just trying to be your typical bully self?


Also Guy, I got a good chuckle from your last comment.

So how many wetland properties have you built in KS?

this is Barney’s third in 12 years, the others he helped and hunts, this one is his.

Look back at the pictures he had posted over the years.

All the bullies got banned about a decade ago, you wouldn’t have liked them at all. I was just pointing out that maybe sometimes it’s best to sit back and listen rather than try and tell an experienced waterfowler what you heard on a podcast