In the summer of 2022, My Dad and I built a duck hole on our 300 acre farm in east Mississippi. While we are not in a flyway for bigger ducks, we tend to attract some stray mallards, gadwall, pintail, and teal during the colder parts of the year. This duck hole is also located 5 miles north of a huge reservoir with creeks all throughout and an actual duck impoundment built by the arm core of engineers. While we may not see many "big" ducks, this will still attract the local wood ducks.
link to build video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CD7FKrhjg0
I have always had a passion for duck hunting. So, when I saw this naturally flooded section of oaks not being used for deer and turkey, it spurred this idea into my head.
To give you a better idea of the location, this particular section sits at the bottom of a pine ridge and adjacent to a 20 acre field we strategically planted oak trees 24 feet apart. The hills on the outside and natural flowing springs created a low land flood zone. We thought if we could stop the flow and plant millet, we could have a bangin duck hole. Below is the finish results.
We first laser measured the slope. The area already had a natural slope to a low point in a pretty decent spot. No adjustments were made. So really the first thing to do was to open the space up. Among the big, red and water, oaks were sweet gums and some ash/maples that did not serve a purpose. We used our Kubota KX057 with a tree shear to cut these down. We put a log grapple on the rear of one of our Kubota MX6000s to haul them out. After that, we took a Diamond Disc Mulcher on our Kubota 95 Skid Steer to smooth out the remaining stumps and shrubs. Below is the aftermath.
The next thing to do was to find dirt to build a dam. We used our Kubota KX057 to scratch the ground where the dam would be then started to pile on good clay on top. You cannot see it in these pictures but we used our excavator to dig a near by ditch. This ditch had a good later of clay we could use. The reason for scratching the ground first was to remove the top layer of soil that could decay and cause a leak. In theory we wanted the solid dirt and new clay to merge together.
After the dam was established, we installed a 12 inch culvert attached to a water gate. We picked up some Japanese and Brown Top Millet from our local CO-OP. We planted around August 7th 2022, perfect time. At that point the duck hole was ready. All we needed was rain and time. Here is a picture two months later in October.
From September-November we hardly got any rain. Mid November a huge thunderstorm rolled through producing a flood through this bottom. With little amounts of rain to help solidify and one huge burst at once, the dam could not hold. It busted and washed away a ton of seed into the field next to it. A couple days after we actually got the skid steer in to repair the hole with more clay but wouldn't you know it. A week later, another flood hit and destroyed the same section.
So to sum this thing up, we put a lot of time and effort into this. It sucks it did not go the way we planned it. We scratched the duck hole for 2022.
Butttt, 2023 we came back and made the duck hole bigger and better! There will be another blog post on the 2023 build! Here is a sneak peak pic!
Thanks for reading, Hunter. Jan. 2024.