Tags
Coues deer, mule deer
The portable water hole: for years I searched and searched for a water hole that would produce a nice coues deer but every time I found a hole that had good sign I found other hunters as well. Being fed up I decided I needed to find away to have my own water hole. Well I did just that I created my own portable water hole. I got a 25 gallon plastic water bladder and a plastic masonry tub I affixed a flip and float water valve to the tub, attached a hose from the water supply to the valve and bam! I had a automatic watering station. Now the problem with this is 25 gals of water is very heavy, so once I found the bedding cover I was looking for I set the apparatus up empty and packed in, in several trips with 2)5 gallon water jugs one in each hand to fill up my 25 gallon tank. I would pack in 5 gallons every week to refill what was lost to evaporation and to consumption. It didn’t take long before deer were hitting it regularly and my 5gallon became a 10 gallon a week trip. Yes it was a lot of work and I don’t use this very often because of the amount of time and work but I shot my first pope and young Coues deer off that hole and a nice desert muley as well. It can be very effective for you if you have the ability to atv in the water to make it less work or pack in by horse or something. One thing you have to remember to clean up after you are done nobody like a litter bug, unless you plan to keep it up and going all year round to help out your herd get through droughts etc. I don’t know if this is something you can do on public land you would have to check with local laws. I was fortunate enough to have a friend that had raw land in the middle of nowhere to test this out.