Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting How much labor would you charge to build this?

$40-50 per man hour.

Little boys left, got legs on the damn thang

Leveled feet with an old Leitz builders level, squared it after tacking bottom pieces, tacked braces on a 45. I’m off to the races now, add the rest of the braces, build the ladder, then paint the damn thing.

Stand hunters.

Sheesh.

Hold into the corn pile.

We do the best we can Roy, most of the country here is so thick you can’t see 50 yards. On top of that, it might get down to 50 degrees, we can’t take it getting that cold!!😎. I hunted one place in far West Texas a hunter could sit on a hillside, use binoculars to glass a good bit of country and hunt. It was a lot more fun than sitting in a stand. A stand has merit when it raining.

Some guys might could slip around and "still hunt" here in some places, but like Hanco says, when it is thick cover, it's far more effective to find a traveled spot with a bit of a view and wait on the game. This is especially true when hunting a smaller property.

My wife was asking about why baiting is a thing in our area (many folks use corn and rice bran). I explained that while we've really only had a decent deer population since the early 1970's and much of our country was then in open fields and older mixed timber. You hunted buck sign, timber changes, and acorn trees. This state is almost 90% private land, and as pine plantations began to replace many of the open fields through the 70's and 80's, we started to have more and more relatively large blocks of homogenous forest (lots of timber company land), still mixed with some older stands of timber. If your hunting property was one of these blocks of pine plantation, you often needed something to entice the deer to pass through, so you put out corn, mainly to draw the does, which then drew the bucks. I think in 34 years of deer hunting here I have maybe seen two mature bucks eating corn or rice bran in the daytime, but they come around for the does.

I’ve had good luck planting wheat, rye, and oats if I have a place in the pines that runs east-west, gets some sun.

Yep. The three best bucks I've taken on our place were pausing for a nibble of food plot grass as they were walking across a lane.

Best east Texas buck was eating on a strip of oats I planted. I went up there to hunt one afternoon during the week. He was out there at 3:00 PM when I walked up.

Got bracing on lower part done, 18 hours in so far, gonna be 30 hours to complete it probably. I’m kinda leery of this thing being so tall and 5x6. I know the box he is building will be heavy.

Got the damn thang on the ground





my mouse clicker

Got the damn thang painted and on the trailer. I got to build ladder, paint platform and ladder. I’ll be done then, except for helping put it up.

Built the ladder this AM, I’m done with welding on this thang. I gotta paint the ladder, load and tie it all down.
Then clean up the big mess I’ve made

When are you putting it all up? 1/2" or 5/8" rebar on the ladder?

5/8. I hope to get this out of my life this coming Saturday. I have crap of my own to do, got a stand to get up at the place I hunt in Newton county over in East Texas. Not bad for east Texas

I like rebar for the grip on the steps. All thread rod isn’t bad either.

My boy can’t go, so it will be me and Bob putting it up. My boy has done this a lot, my friend has never done it before. He thinks he knows everything, so this will try my patience I’m sure.

Got it tied down, don’t think it will come off, 10’6” height at highest point. The ladder is built long, will cut to fit when we get it pulled up.

Got it put up

Very nice, real talent!

I appreciate that, thankful it’s done!!