Boomer, I faced the same problem. In 1999 I bought a place covered in Mesquite with a couple of sorry, shallow ponds. After getting some bids I found that I could buy a used crawler and pay a guy with a scraper to get the work done for the same cost as the bids. Long story short, bought a 1976 JD555 crawler, used it for 5 years, sold it to a neighbor, bought it back 4 years ago after buying another place, and still own it. They require constant maintenance and break down with some regularity, so if you don't like fixing the easy problems yourself(radiator hoses, leaking gaskets, ruptured hydralic hoses, welding broken metal parts) or paying someone to replace undercarriages,fix transmission problems, replace engines pumps: then don't do it!!
