I'd like to make one.
If you have any pics of deer using your home built water troughs please post them. Would love to see and hear advice on how you built them and if they work well. I want to put one by my protein feeder.

We are using chemical tanks at our place. We have one at every blind and some scattered around for quail as well. Just need to reduce down from the tank outlet to a standard water hose fitting. Using a washing machine connection hose that runs to a livestock float valve. Partially buried a 3 gallon rubber bowl that you can find at any feed store. They work great for us and can never have too much water available

Pretty cool!

Curious how long they last, assuming low water availability?

I'm also asssuming y'all have a spare at camp or near a water source y'all hall back and forth to fill these up with?

We do the same but put a couple of sheets of tin over the top sloped to a gutter that drains into the tote. Two sheets of tin will give you roughly 40 gallons per inch of rainfall. It keeps water available even when there isn't enough rainfall to put runoff into the stock tanks. I will look for some pictures and if I can't find any I will go take a few in the morning to post.

My buddy has the container and also covers with tin to drain rain into it. I'll take a pic next time at his place.

I'd like to see those pics with the tin on top

We have 3 windmills on the North, middle and South ends of the ranch. During the summer evaporation seems to drain them faster than the animals in the STX heat. Meaux92 built a supply wagon this year that has a 350g tank and jagger pump on it. Takes longer to drive to one of the windmills than it does to fill or empty the tank

I'd like to see the tin set up as well. Was looking at some of the manufactured water containers that has the slopes to catch rainfall and trying to figure out how to rig one up

That's good stuff! The crazy things and work we'll do for deer... I love it.

The only photos I have are on my work laptop. I will take a few pictures tomorrow morning and post them up.

I 'think' I will be at my buddy's land this week but next couple for sure. We pig hunt pretty hard January and will posts some pics

I was on a lease where the landowner applied for some sort of wildlife grant for this purpose. The State supplied a solar powered water pump, solar panels, and I think paid for a good chunk of drilling a hole. He had the water collected in a plastic kiddie pool but it worked fine.

txags92 said:

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We do the same but put a couple of sheets of tin over the top sloped to a gutter that drains into the tote. Two sheets of tin will give you roughly 40 gallons per inch of rainfall. It keeps water available even when there isn't enough rainfall to put runoff into the stock tanks. I will look for some pictures and if I can't find any I will go take a few in the morning to post.

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This guy knows. They use these in west Texas. The condensation builds at night and the water draina down into the tank. You'll almost always have water

Bigger the tin sheets and number of sheets = more water. they have a name. Get someone from west Texas on here they'll know in a second. This is absolutely the best way imo. Lasts forever and really works. Easy to build too. Drip tank. Something like that. Can't remember.

Water Guzzler

Guzzler.

The tote isn't quote as unlevel as it appears. The ground is slightly sloped. But we also have something that has burrowed under the tote and it has settled a bit. The frame on top is more complicated on this one than it needs to be because we sank the posts too deep to have enough drop to the tank underneath. The last pic shows all the grass matted down where deer are bedding down nearby. We have both axis and whitetails on game cam going between the guzzler and a feeder nearby. There is a stock tank about 150 yds away, but there is no cover around it and both the deer and turkey seem to prefer using the guzzler.

I don't have any shots of deer actually using the guzzler because I have never set up a game cam directly facing it. These pics are from a cam located about 40 yds away between the guzzler and a feeder. The deer going left are headed to the guzzler, the ones headed right are coming towards the feeder from the guzzler. They have worn a path between the two in the grass.

Leave it to Aggies to build some cool stuff.

Guzzlers are widely utilized west of the 100th meridian for all manners of critters, including birds. I like the idea of a secondary catch tank like that, but most of them that you see will be built very short & low to the ground to shade the water underneath from the summer sun. Instead of a 3 gallon rubber tub, most will have an old bathtub (but no chemical tank, so it holds more water than a rubber tub, but doesn't have a 2ndary reservoir like the one above.

Also, and this is important, make sure you put a small ladder structure in the tub (just a section of hog fence/cattle panel), touching the bottom and sticking out over the side. This will allow birds, and small critters to get OUT of the water if they fall in preventing a bunch of dead animals from polluting up your water source.

92 pics are similar to my guys

Sean98 said:

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Guzzlers are widely utilized west of the 100th meridian for all manners of critters, including birds. I like the idea of a secondary catch tank like that, but most of them that you see will be built very short & low to the ground to shade the water underneath from the summer sun. Instead of a 3 gallon rubber tub, most will have an old bathtub (but no chemical tank, so it holds more water than a rubber tub, but doesn't have a 2ndary reservoir like the one above.

Also, and this is important, make sure you put a small ladder structure in the tub (just a section of hog fence/cattle panel), touching the bottom and sticking out over the side. This will allow birds, and small critters to get OUT of the water if they fall in preventing a bunch of dead animals from polluting up your water source.

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Yep, you can't see it in the pics, but there are a couple of rocks in that tub up against the edge to allow small critters to get out if they fall in. And the one thing we did to minimize evaporation loss is set the water bowl on the north side of the tank under the edge of the tin, and place the guzzler just east of a line of trees. That minimizes sun exposure in the hottest part of the day. Don't put it too close to the trees though or you will forever be cleaning leaves out of the gutter.

OnlyForNow said:

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The Leave it to Aggies to build some cool stuff.

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That project had two generations of Aggies involved in the construction. We had a CE, an architect, a geologist and a geophysicist. We clearly had too many disciplines involved...

Obviously no WFSC, or they woulda told you varmints gonna be rooting up under that thing and making all cock-eyed!

All the offsite guidance came from my WFSC sister. We knew stuff would burrow under it. The tote is mounted on a pallet and there is rock about 6" down, so things out there find burrow space where they can.

Only other thing you coulda done is dug some post holes and attached some landscape timbers to the corners of the pallet (2 feet should be enough) and roll the tub over while empty and get the legs in the holes.