Wasden Waterfowl Retreat

Wasden Waterfowl Retreat's 2-acre duck pond is planted, irrigated, and fully floodable, anchored by an 18-person Arkansas-style blind — Now in its fifth year of management, it is an established pond drawing 40 dozen birds in its first season with 16 different species of duck harvested. This 68-Acre Sporting Estate hunts like a property three times its size. A built pond. A proven season. A finished property that's turnkey, and ready to hunt. Wrapped in 100,000+ acres of conservation land. Sixty-eight acres on the Atlantic Flyway, buffered by protected land on every side — beside the delta Georgia DNR calls the state's premier waterfowl area. You can't manufacture a location like this. Duck, deer, and turkey — one property. Oak hammocks, planted pine, and wetlands each pull their own game, with a Boone and Crockett-class buck harvested on the adjoining 1857-acre timber tract and $140K in merchantable timber underwriting it all. Wasden Waterfowl Retreat McIntosh County, Georgia · 67.61± Acres · $875,000 A turnkey coastal-Georgia waterfowl property on the Atlantic Flyway The Place There is a stretch of the Georgia coast where the land is plentiful with oak hammocks, planted pine, freshwater swamp, and hardwood bottom that fold into the great tidal sweep of the Altamaha River Delta. This is the Conservation Coast, and it is one of the richest waterfowl landscapes in the Southeast. Wasden Waterfowl Retreat sits inside it: sixty-seven and a half acres in McIntosh County, gated and quiet, surrounded on every side by more than one hundred thousand acres (100K) of conservation land and protected open space providing a home to over 17 different duck species. This 68-Acre Sporting Estate hunts like a property three times its size. An unusually complete one by every measure that matters to a waterfowler. At its heart is a two-acre planted, irrigated, flood-able duck pond — built, not found — fed by new wells and buried irrigation, controlled by a flashboard riser system that harnesses the land's own watersheds. Planted in irrigated corn and chuwappa millet. Power has been brought in. A homesite has been cleared on high ground. And the hunt itself has been set quietly into the landscape, down to duck blinds painted and buried so they do not break the line of the cypress swamp. The property takes its name from George Wasden — the conservationist and lifelong outdoorsman who built it. It is named, plainly and rightly, for the man who shaped it, and a property like this does not come together by accident. It comes from a particular kind of person, working a particular piece of ground with a lifetime of knowledge in his hands. To understand Wasden Waterfowl Retreat, you have to begin with him. A Word About the Land Steward Every property carries the imprint of the hands that kept it. Wasden Waterfowl Retreat carries the imprint of George Wasden — and that is the first thing a buyer should understand about this place. George is a conservationist by heart, a man with a logger's working knowledge of land and a deep passion for the outdoors. He has taken this ground on the coast of Georgia and, drawing on a lifetime of understanding how land works, shaped it into something rare here: a premier Arkansas-style duck hunt experience, built where the Altamaha Delta already makes the coast of Georgia one of the great waterfowl landscapes in the Southeast. Wasden Pond is not George Wasden's first rodeo. Wasden Waterfowl Retreat is the fourth property George has stewarded — and, as with the three before it, he leaves it better than he found it. Before this, George's career rehabbing and improving waterfowl land moved from tract to tract across Georgia. It began near Herndon, with a 300-acre duck tract where he created ten duck holes before selling it on to fellow waterfowler Skip Newman. Then came the 800-acre, 16-impoundment duck property on the Geechee River — a property of such quality that it was purchased by the owner of RecTeq, the grill company out of Augusta, Georgia. After that came the 2,100-acre tract near Millen, in Jenkins County; George rehabbed that land, and it was ultimately placed under a permanent Wetland Reserve Easement (WRE) with the State of Georgia — the kind of protection the State actively seeks, and the kind of legacy a true steward leaves behind. It is the truest measure of a steward's work: land cared for so well that its protection becomes its future. For George, this retreat has been a labor of love — wells drilled, power brought in, irrigation buried to feed the duck pond, a homesite cleared, duck blinds set quietly into the landscape and the crown jewel is the Arkansas style 18-person duck blind complete with a kitchen to cook breakfast while you hunt. These are not improvements made to a property to sell it, but improvements made to a property because that is simply how George Wasden keeps land. His passion runs to one thing in particular: building duck habitat on the Georgia coast, taking ordinary low ground and teaching it to hold water, grow feed, and draw birds the way the great delta marshes do. The next owner of Wasden Waterfowl Retreat inherits more than acreage and infrastructure. They inherit a place already loved, already shaped with care, already pointed toward its best life — and the quiet responsibility of carrying that forward. Because here, as in all the work we do, preserving the legacy begins with stewardship. The Arkansas-Style Duck Blind Wasden Waterfowl Retreat is the next chapter, and its centerpiece is a true Arkansas-style duck blind built for eighteen — sixteen shooters and two guides — the genuine article, built from the experience of George's days guiding duck hunts in Arkansas. The blind is served by underground electricity and outfitted for the long, cold mornings of a Georgia waterfowl season: a refrigerator and freezer, a Blackstone grill, a Camp Chef oven, and space heaters to keep the chill off while the biscuits, bacon, eggs and grits are cooking. Three sets of stairs leading to water give easy access for dogs to retrieve ducks. A covered platform underneath the blind is perfectly suited to park your duck boat and walk up back steps into blind area. Around the pond, the hunt is set quietly into the land — three two-man buried pit blinds, each one placed in its own separate 1-acre planted duck hole, camouflaged and painted, designed to face both north and south so hunters can work the wind from a single position. Painted duck boxes are placed throughout the property; even the refrigeration is finished in army green so nothing breaks the line of the landscape. This is a property shaped by someone who knows what a duck hunt should feel like — and who built it to last. The Water, the Habitat & the Hunt The working heart of Wasden Waterfowl Retreat is its 2 - acre duck pond — planted, irrigated, and fully floodable along with three additional 1-acre planted ponds with buried 2-man pit blinds in each giving you (4) different options to sit in blinds and hunt. All ponds are planted in corn and flooded through a flashboard riser system that harnesses the property's natural watersheds, so water levels can be set and held with precision through the season. The property has two wells: one feeds the flooding of the duck pond, the other serves the cleared homesite. Buried irrigation waters the planted corn before the pond is flooded, ensuring a strong yield. Across the wider tract, roughly 43 of the 67.61 acres carry surface water — abundant freshwater swamp habitat that holds and rests birds. The results are already on the books. In its first full hunting season, the pond yielded approximately 40 dozen birds, with the December migration bringing a strong influx down the Atlantic Flyway. Waterfowl harvested on Wasden Pond include (16) different species - wood ducks, teal, lesser scaup, mottled duck, ring-necked duck, gadwall, American widgeon, blue-winged teal, redhead, American black duck, bufflehead, green-winged teal, northern pintail, hooded merganser, Northern shoveler and black-bellied whistling duck — a genuinely broad species mix for a single coastal pond. Note: Mallards have been seen on game camera but no mallards have been harvested yet. Away from the water, the property is a deliberate mix of habitats — oak hammocks, planted 18-year old pines, and wetland areas — each doing its own work. The oak hammocks drop hard mast that pulls deer and turkey; the planted pine gives cover and bedding; the creek wetlands that flow through the property hold and feed the ducks. Multiple navigable interior roads are packed with bedrock and built over a culvert system that keeps them passable even when the swamp is flooded at the peak of duck season, and winter rye is planted along the road systems. The hunting infrastructure is in place and ready: three 1,000-pound corn feeders, one 600-pound corn feeder, three box blinds, a tower blind, three ladder blinds, and the three two-man buried pit blinds at the (3) 1-acre planted ponds. It is, in the fullest sense, a turnkey duck, deer, and turkey property. Should a new landowner desire, there is a place to create a dove field in the interior area of pines. The deer hunting is no afterthought, and the genetics of this landscape speak for themselves: “The genetics of this landscape are exceptional. Just two years ago, a Boone and Crockett-class whitetail was taken on the adjoining 1857 -acre timber property — a measure of the caliber of deer the region’s habitat and natural wildlife corridors produce. The same oak hammocks, planted pines, and wetland flow that draw ducks to Wasden Pond move deer and turkey through this property year-round.” — Lori Bembry Weldon, Broker, Jon Kohler & Associates The Surrounding Conservation Coast McIntosh County is known as Georgia's “Conservation Coast,” and Wasden Waterfowl Retreat sits in the middle of it — buffered on every side by more than 100,000 acres of conservation l