I'll save the you back story of the greedy farmer and the last minute scramble to find a place to hunt. Short story is this pit went in the ground in October and wasn't anchored properly. My Dad arrived on Friday night to reset decoys and found one end out of the ground. Details. 14ft steel pit with straight vertical sides. When I dug is up it had iron pipe at the base on both ends and 2x12 wings. When they put it in the new location they did not use wings. Just the pipes at each end.
Pit is actually on a road bed between two fields so water only on the front. Ground at the back and part of ends is solid at least for North LA clay field roads. We pulled 6 inches of board Saturday so that should pull the water back a little. Current plan is to use sump pump to get as much water in the pit as possible for weight and carefully dig out a little and then attempt to push the end back in the ground with a backhoe/loader. Backhoe is 4wd, wide tired so access won't be the issue. If I can get is down then we'll attempt to use cable and anchors on the one end and keep some water in the bottom.
Am I insane for thinking this will work?? Field is good and we actually killed a bunch of birds this weekend even with the pit four ft. high on one end. If we can get the pit remotely level we'll tough it out and regroup for next year.
Alternate is to just dig the whole thing up, move it and hunt it like a skid blind sitting on top of the ground. Not looking forward to hunting the rest of the year out of a layout if I can help it and looking for ideas.
Thanks,
J
