It’s not news that water sustains life.
While we may think of watering holes as being important only in dry habitats such as the African savanna, water is important for every creature, big and small, and white-tailed deer are no exception.
Like all creatures, deer’s basic needs include food, shelter, and water. If you provide these features on your property, or improve them, you boost the odds of deer spending more time on your land as well as the odds of seeing them while hunting.
Even with small properties, water is a good draw to help hold deer on your hunting grounds.
If there is no natural water source available, hunters can create their own watering hole, adding to the land’s appeal. It can be a relatively simple project that can pay dividends, and once it is made, requires very little effort to maintain. Unless there are extended dry periods, Mother Nature will often keep it full for you.
Digging a watering hole
For this project, you are only limited by your equipment and motivation. The hole doesn’t need to be large, and can be created easily with just a shovel.
Just dig a hole and simply fill it, or let rainwater fill it. Adding a liner will reduce leakage. An unlined water hole may hold water in some conditions, but if you are going through the effort, it is worth using some sort of liner. Here are a few liner options:
Use a pond-liner material, or even layers of heavy plastic or tarp. I recently made one, laying down heavy landscape cloth and then covering it with a heavy-duty tarp.
Another solid option is burying a water trough, small rigid pond liner, or even a heavy-duty plastic tub. These will be fairly rugged, and should last.
A cheap option is using a small plastic kiddie pool. For any of the above, dig the hole to fit, ensuring the bottom is level and supported, and bury the container level with the ground. Whether you line it with a pond liner, tarp, or plastic container of some sort, it is wise to backfill it with dirt, sloping it down from the sides to the bottom. This protects the liner from being punctured, keeps it more natural and prevents deer from slipping on the plastic bottom of a pool. This may be more challenging with a steeper-sided water trough but works well with a shallow pool or plastic-lined hole.
Clay offers alternative
A more natural alternative that takes more work is to line your watering hole with bentonite clay. This natural material is relatively inexpensive, and for a small water hole will not be too labour-intensive. It’s more work than a liner but is natural and should last well. There are plenty of resources online on how to line a pond with bentonite clay.
Picking a spot
Choose a location close to cover, where deer will feel comfortable visiting in daylight. Ensure that deer have decent visibility at the site. If they have a water hole tucked away behind a berm, or the terrain significantly limits their view, they may not be comfortable staying for long. Having it at a stand site is ideal, as that draw may be just what you need to put that deer in front of you. If you have an active stand site already established where this will work, all the better.
It is also ideal if there is a lower-lying area nearby that often has standing water or is damp most of the year. In such a spot your water hole should fill itself without the need for hauling water and a liner to contain it. Without being lucky enough to find these conditions where you want your water hole, you can still create one, adding water in the absence of ground water. Try and slope the ground into your water hole, so that runoff from rain will help fill it.
Access helpful
If your spot is dry, make sure you can access the water hole by truck or ATV/UTV for easy filling.
You might have to fill it once, and then top it up as required. In a perfect world, Mother Nature will look after it for you, but you may need to supplement rainwater in dry periods.
Lastly, once your water hole is complete, leave a log of some sort in it to allow small creatures to escape. While a water hole may not be the magic answer and may not attract deer to your property, it will certainly help keep them there and could be just the ticket to that perfect shot this fall.
Originally published in the July 2023 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS
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