I didnt want to mutter up his thread so I started my own.
I went and look at the 10 acres I have my eye on today. Its 10 acres, $3950/ acre. Owner financed at $395down/$395 mo till paid off. About 8 years. Total price is $39.500. Nothing else built in, hidden fees. My sister and her 1st husband bought 4 acres from the same company years and years ago before they split. And they were happy with the real estate co at the time.

Anyway. We walked around a bit. The land across the street is cleared with a nice big house on it. May be a hay farm, cotton, etc. Im not sure, but it was nice looking.
I have 2 reservations about the lot I want.
There is a pond on it, which means water snakes. I have a dog and want to get more. This kinda worries me about them getting on a cotton mouth. And even walking around we saw a black racer. So I know snakes are out there.
The other things is its dense, and I mean jungle dense. There was one semi improvised trail probably from the local kids Id guess. But I wonder how that much land could get cleared, and at what cost.
Ideally Id like a driveway 100ft or so in, to the house/trailer.
And Id like a shooting lane cleared with the underbrush pushed up at the end for a back stop. There is nothing behind it for miles and miles.
Miles.

Id be able to pull my camper up there and live in it till I can build a house, or buy a trailer outright. Id like to pay cash for as much as possible.
I have cash to do the power, water, sewer for the camper now. About $30K at my disposal.
Id like to be off the grid as much as possible though. Imma start looking into a solar setup instead of getting on a meter. And I know I can do septic for the camper, although it wont be "legal."

The property sounds nice. Your reservations are noted but actually not that bad. A pond can be great for many things depending on its size. In fact, that's one thing I wish I looked for when buying property. I've met several people throughout the years that have paid good money to legally have a pond placed on their property. As far as lot clearing is concerned, this is also something that's not as bad as you may think. Often times depending on the quality and quantity of wood, clearing your lot can cost you little to nothing. Many logging companies require a minimum acreage amount before setting up shop, but if they like what's growing on your property, you may not even have to dish out a dime. If you're opting to do it yourself, this is also reasonable in cost. I just cleared an acre of my property to extend my lawn. I rented an excavator for a weekend and a bull dozer for another weekend. This is was about $2,500. I sold the wood to miscellaneous people for firewood and some for lumber and recouped $1,500.
As you eluded to in your post, make sure you take note of what's around your property. This is priority to me. Know where your property line are and just envision developments going up on whatever abuts your property. A good friend of mine bought a few acres surrounding by 300 acres of farmland. The owner swore it would never be sold and it would stay in the family for years to come. That lasted 6 years before it was sold off to commercial units and began to be built up significantly in just a year or two.

I doubt logging would want much. Its just underbrush. Not many trees.
And as far as development, thats a good one. Ill be closer to go shopping in AL, than in FL.
Its so far out, itd take 100 years to be developed.
Ill IM you the ad so you can see the land.

Yeah, they thought Walt was crazy for buying up so much swamp around Orlando. Never say never.



 

Snakes stink.  I mean, they SMELL.  Dogs learn to avoid them.

My Rott mix has been bitten a couple times by copperheads or other snakes.

The snake venom is not as reactive for a dog as it is for a human.  Some swelling, some tenderness, some drooling.  nothing that a few ibuprofen an a couple day's healing can't fix.

TRG

Thats good news.

I have a catfish pond and "hunt" turtles and snakes daily..turtles will kill a pond and a snake could kill me.

2 copper heads in 5 years, about 2 dozen turtles..bottom of the pond is littered with turtle shells..
only seen one snake skin up near the house/cabin/barn area in 8 years.2 dogs, one has the run of the place
the other's a house dog, terrior mix who thinks he's a Mastiff.
if you're a prepper,,you're going to want water. ponds are good things if maintained.

check state and county laws on shooting on 10 acres..Texas is restricted by population of the county.

This is an example of the land. Its very dense.
Again, this may not be the exact lot as there are several in a string.
These pics are just from the ad.

Following.   Looks like you are way ahead of me! Good luck? Are you in the burbs now?

Not really. We are far out of town in peanut country of FL.
But I am on my moms property. I want my own.
This 10 acres is about an hour from here, straight east.

Look up Crestview FL. The property is straight north, about 5 miles from the AL line.

I had not heard that about turtles. What do they do?

I've never heard about a pond becoming completely destroyed by turtles, but they can cause havoc on your fish population and plant life.

If you have common snapping turtles, don't shoot them.
You may be able to get a permit to trap and sell them.
Guy at work does this with his son just to make a little bit of "toy" money.
I guess they sell them overseas for meat.

You're just south of me. I'm in Dothan about 15 minutes from the line. My wife works in Graceville, FL. Those pics look like my backyard, lots of laural scrub and hardwoods.

I just wanted to add we have a meandering creek behind us and while we have snakes and killed some doozies our 2 dogs, GSDs, don't bother with the snakes. We had an outdoor cat that would bring us baby copperheads and cottonmouths all the time. Mice are a big problem when the weather cools off. But it aint nothing a few mousetraps loaded w/ pecans can't fix. Coyotes are becoming much more of a problem though. They have been in our backyard and my wife swears they have been on our porch at night. The dogs go apeshit.

Thanks man.
My main was worry my dog with the snakes, but I guess its not that big of a deal

The other day when I went and looked at it, I saw dog prints in the sand with no people prints around it. I figured it was a stray, but very well may have been a coyote. It was way down the trail, and very sandy. I would have seen some people prints on the way in and way out, and there was nothing.

I'd leave a snapper but these are your basic red ear turtles,,they'll eat your baby fish, eat what the fish eat, have a bunch of little turtles each year and destroy your good vegetation leaving slime for the most part, neighbor let turtles take his pond over and in 5 years its a mess,,black water, mold, and turtles..100's of turtles.

A pond is its own ecosystem.



I had a place with an old farm pond and when a neighbor dug a pond on his I added a 2nd pond to my place.



We got lucky in most stuff but we also were active about things we did not like.



We were near a creek so turtles came walking through the field to play in the pond.



Egrets and other stuff liked the little fish as well.  Learning what birds are protected or have hunting seasons is required.



I no longer own the place, have not been there for a decade.



A few snakes and turtles is just wild life.  If there is nothing to eat the turtle eggs or the baby turtles and you do nothing, sure the turtles will get out of hand.  Too shallow might lead to a ton of weed moss stuff.



Over time a pond will silt up a lot, depends on what we are talking for size.  I can't stand the people around here talking about how their pond is a foot or two deep.  Have a shallow end but get some depth on the far end so the sucker won't all freeze up and I just think it should have the depth anyway since it is a lot more water and wildlife.



I usually shot things I did not want in my pond but a snapping turtle walking through the yard would usually get half a 55 gallon drum dropped over them.  Then a call to a neighbor would start his phone tree if he did not want it to cook and before long someone came looking for the turtle I did not want.  Was amusing with the larger turtles to watch the 55 gallon drum slowly move around the gravel driveway, easiest place to notice the turtle crossing through.  If mowing the field they were as likely to be mowed over as noticed.



I had feral cats, wild dogs, coyotes, stupid neighbor "pets" that were half wild but someone would try to claim em if they found out they got shot for attacking my pets.



There are a lot of websites on ponds as well as a lot of books and stuff on them.



You will have to figure out what you have and go from there.  Some people want something that is dang near impossable to make.



I wanted a deep body of water, 20ft is deep for a pond in my opinion, and I had it spring fed as well as catching a ton of water running through from the hillsides.



Being near a creek meant lots of wild life.  Neighbor fella did some construction for a hatchery and had all the little fishies for stocking it.



My old farm pond had the dam blowing out and it had huge fish in it that were underweight because of the small pond and they had been in it so long.  Moved big fishies to other ponds bit by bit and away things went.



Frogs and other stuff found their own way but now and then someone would want to go frog gigging so that kept those numbers reasonable.



In today's world the epa would probably cuff me and shackle me with my own hardware and let me shuffle on down the road to a cement pond I could not mess with too much and bother them about.

The pond is natural, and has been there for as long as time probably.
I'm not going to clear around it as its at the front of the property. So it'll just keep on keeping on.
As long as the snakes stay in their part of the land, I'm good.

I had a red-eared turtle as a pet.  Damn those things can pack away food!  You would think they would have a difficult time catching small fish, but they don't.  They're extremely aggressive.

As far as the snappers, I've caught and eaten two of them.  The meat is delicious.  The neck is more a white color and the legs/body is beefy red.  

How big is your pond?  How many catfish and what kind?  Channel catfish?

I have an aquaponics system in my backyard and I'm preparing it now to put fish in it hopefully in 2 to 3 weeks.  I have 12 Channel catfish that I started growing 1 1/2 years ago.  I had more but lost some due to disease.

After about 6 months:



Now:

Were you feeding them?  What you describe is my dream pond.  I'm still looking for property with a pond, even if all I do is use it to raise fish.  What kind of fish did you have in it?

I bought the place with the pond already there for decades.



Had catfish, bluegill, and big and small mouth bass.  Plenty of other odds and ends but that was the best of it.  Had a couple carp that were 3ft or so in size but they do best at eating vegatation when small and growing, once big they don't eat as much.



Now and then I would let folks camping on other properties swing by for some fishing and what not, generally it was that they were out for a weekend and I was not working at the time so I knew nothing would get out of hand.



Many were reasonably serious fish folks with the little scales and all sorts of stuff.  One dude said the bass he pulled out was underweight by several lbs for how long it was.  



The blue gill were man made, forget the proper and simple name for it, and could not reproduce but they were big suckers.  Could catch a bluegill and cook it for lunch and needed a 12 inch skillet for it to work well.  Being out of work I sometimes did this just because it was my pond and what not.



Generally with others fishing I did not want to get into a fish fry setup due to the potential for it to go crazy, had some odd neighbors and I sure the heck fit that description at times as well.



Muskrats and previous owner of place packing junk on back of pond let water work its way out.  I kept up on shooting the muskrats decently but the other pond was needed or the original pond would have had to be totally redone at some point.  Cheaper to do the new one.



Having that pond spoiled me on getting a fishing license and playing around with rules and what not.  I enjoy playing on boats here in east tn, lots of water here.  But that pond absolutely spoiled me and I did not realize how nice I had it till many years later.



Basically the fish were hungry, hit on anything most times, were huge for that part of ohio and probably many other places, and as long as folks did not make a mess I did not mind them fishing.

I especially like largemouth, bluegill and catfish.  I'd like a pond some day.  I'm actively looking for property to actually buy one.