55 Gal. Heck, let's double it..

looking for a cheaper option

Howdy fellas, been a while.

BarneyWho- Awesome project and very enjoyable thread. Thanks for taking the time to document it so well. Please keep the updates coming and best of luck with your "home made honey hole!"

Very impressive, sir. This is awesome!

Looks freaking awesome!!!! Thanks for sharing the progress!

Any updates?

They were finished blinds builds last week. They got bathroom and commercial kitchen installed.

Pretty sure they are about to flood their 280 bushel corn…..

Lots of changes since last year. I’ll try to get an update done by this weekend.

Prob about time to flood the almost 300 bushels O corn

He probably insured it for 460 so he has to wait on FSA office

As best I can tell I left off right as we started pumping water. As luck would have it the weather turned really cold as we were pumping and froze the wetland almost solid before the birds had a chance to find it. 3 of us and dog were able to walk out to the skid blind on the ice. The water you see is from the pump putting warm creek water in top of the ice.






Eventually there will be a permanent blind with ice eaters in a thermostat to combat the ice similar to the next two pictures that were taken the same weekend as the pics above.





Makes for a quick hunt where the only open water is in front of the blind!

Eventually the weather warmed and the wetland unfroze. We keep pumping to secure our water rights and the birds did find the wetland. Seem to be in a pretty good flight path from what I could tell. We had some geese and around 2000 mallards using the wetland before we pulled the plug at the end of February. Even had a couple of swans stop by.

At some point during pumping we noticed a substantial leak under the discharge to our East pool. The pipe from the pump runs to the East pool where there’s a T with mechanical joint fittings and continues to the discharge for our West pool. When we want to pump one or the other we just cap the pipe to divert flow. We figured the mechanical joint fitting was installed incorrectly causing the leak erosion under the discharge to our East pool. So we had the contractor come back out with this mini ex to play in the mud and the cold.

Just a few feathers against the South levee from the North wind.

Bam bam… did you get any night time feeding pictures?

Mega wads at night. We went to thermals on our subgauges!!!

Once the season was over we cleaned up some more brush piles while the ground was wet and lowest chance of it spreading.







Always impressed with how much work you can get done with a skid steer and how versatile they are. I think this was the same weekend we pulled our pump to send in for warranty work. We noticed when pumping the pump would trip its thermal cut off and stop at significantly lower amperage than it was rated for from the factory. Our gut told us something was wrong with the motor. So, we pulled it and sent it back to the manufacturer. We were right and the motor was serviced under warranty.

Motor back and ready to be reinstalled.

Wetlands during draw down and emptied:





While lifting the flap gates to drain the wetland we lifted the posts holding the wind out of the ground. The contractor had them 8-10’ in the ground which he thought was enough, but we found out it wasn’t. I didn’t get any pictures, but resetting the winch posts with concrete was on the “to do” list for the off season.

During the spring we got significant flooding around the wetland. I went back to check the levees and see if our seeing the winter before stopped erosion. The farmer had also worked the ground in our wetland, so I wanted to see how well the wetland drained and if there were and spots holding water that needed to be addressed before planting and growing season.

All seemed good for growth in the levees except for one spot on our spillway. Also noticed that our guard around the double flap gates needed the panel reinforced during the off season. Another thing added to the “to do” list.

Come clean...who shot the Susie?

This is one of if not the best hunting thread I've followed along. Eagerly awaiting to hear about the 2024-25 season!

TTT

Where is the guy who kept saying they only fed in the corn at night?