I just bought some property for hunting and would like to get some kind of water available for the wildlife.
Drilling a well or making a pond is not an option for another 2 years or so.
So I need some help in figuring out a way to get water for the deer and to bring in the turkey and dove on a budget.
Does anyone have any ideas or experience on this?
A friend of mine tried using one of those big white liquid totes raised up with a float valve running into a water trough
and he said he had lots of algae problems and evaporation problems. I sure could use some help or ideas on what to do.
Thanks for any help !

Look up wildlife guzzler.

Paint the tank black. Don't have the water supply any larger than necessary. Put something above the water supply to keep the sun off it.

great points!
the LO at our Ozona place had lots of issues with algae at their cabin until they replaced their tank with a black one. Can always add a little Chlorine or bleach to help cut it back as well.

I've seen the 330 gallon totes set up painted black with a sheet metal roof draining to a gutter system that channeled any rain water / dew into the tote, then piped a very short distance to a small trough on a float. Of course the set up was penned or the hogs would tear up the set up. Coons can also tear things up as well.

I live off rainwater capture and cisterns. Everyone should be doing the same. The water is there for you.

100 square feet of roof, 1 inch of rain = 63 gallons of water.

Wildlife Guzzlers work. I've seen them in Brewster County. Steel frame and R-panel roof, gutter, plumbed into a black poly tank, tank plumbed into a water trough with a mechanical float.

We have 6 water guzzlers on our ranch in Atascosa County. We built a 2x4 framed roof with 12' long tin slanted towards the back 6' high to 5' high off the ground with 4x4 posts. The lower part has a gutter that feeds down into a 55 gallon, blue plastic barrel. The barrel is under the roof and is off the ground on cinder blocks about 2 foot. The gutter feeds into the back side (top) of the barrel which is laid over. We cut a perfect notch into the barrel so the gutter fits snuggly. The barrel has two lids that can have a faucet tapped into it. A five foot water hose connects to the barrel on one end and a mechanical float that sits in a black tub on the ground for the deer to drink out of. Just have to pray for rain to refill it or bring water yourself to refill it.

I painted white tote black, built a slanted tin roof, added gutter to flow into tank, plumbed short hose to a float valve mounted on a 1/2 cut black barrel for water trough buried in ground with about 2" above ground. Added large rocks into trough to take up volume space. Works just fine. Tank on outside of pen sitting on 4 x 4 but trough inside pen. So far no hog destruction

Simple gravity feed setup with a float switch. We drop a pool chlorine tablet in the tote each time we fill it to keep the algae out.

Amazon sells a cheap cover that stops sunlight. Works great. just search 275 gal tote cover