Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Starting from scratch

We bought this 33.5 acres in Kansas over the last couple years. I am an avid waterfowl hunter and fisherman. There is a 10k acre lake 1 mile south of the house, and after last May's record rain the eastern 1/3 of my property was under water due to a major tributary of that lake being just off the property. When the dirt work was done for our house I asked one of the contractors about digging a pond out there while the equipment was there. Nobody will give me a straight answer on price. I have a ditch that bisects on property on the south end. The outbuildings shown in the picture are no longer there. New house is in the NW corner and there is a tiny pond that never holds water in the NC part of the property. Basically I want a pond for waterfowl hunting (the property sits in a flyway) and fishing. Can somebody give me some pointers on how to get started?

I, too, have been enjoying some duck hunting on our pond. My Australian shepherd is more than eager to go get some each time I look out the front door of the house.
Recently, with ice covering most of the water, I do my best to drop the birds on land or on the ice. She's eager to go into the ice water though if necessary.
Yesterday a greenhead fell out on the ice and made it to open water before she could race to the other side of the thawed hole and grab it. What followed was a 10 minute circus of her swimming up close to it and having it dive out of sight.
Once she wore it out and was able to retrieve it, she was pretty well soaked. That certainly didn't slow her down. She wasn't having any of my suggestions that we walk the 75 feet to the house and dry off.
"Ducks are still coming in Dad! I'm not quitting now! What ARE you thinking?!"
She's one focused hunter. I'm not complaining.

Long time no see. Anyway we got our drought and enlarged the pond in May 2021. It did not fill until Xmas eve 2023. Instead of being like a bath tub it now has some shallow habitat, rock piles, rocky shorline in parts, etc. Even shot some ducks off of it the other day. Pond size effectively doubled.

If we all had the heart of a good "working dog", then I think each of us would live to be at least 100 years old!

I've got the ice eater running down there. Its struggling as it is 2 degrees out currently. I intend to run electricity down there this summer. Then I will aerate the pond, and run an ice eater in conditions like this to chase the ducks. We also set a big snow goose spread on the pond and decoy some in every year.