Deck: 5X7' Height: 8' Cost: under $400 so far. Lumber cost $250. The Elevator brackets were $80/4. View: 250 yards to the south and east, 150 yards to the north and west, 42 yards to the opposing treeline. Distance from my front door: approximately 500 yards.
I don't like mine with a deck that big. I find 4"x4" to be perfect. I put a swivel boat seat in the center and can use the rails on every side as a rest. miles
Normally, I would have gone smaller, but this is going to be a grandfather/granddaughter buddy stand. Little Mooselette, currently 5, is going to hopefully take her first deer from there. Secondly, both myself and her daddy, Mister Moose, are walking landforms, so it's a good idea to build a bit large.
Mooselette and I have already had a couple of "deer hunts" together. She goes out and sits with me and watches for deer. Unlike her father, she does not fall asleep and snore. Early on, she fidgetted, but as soon as a buck came out, ZAP! She was transfixed. She's definitively got the gene. Ever since, they've been finding her in her bed with the covers over her head using her tablet to watch Youtube hunting videos. You'll hear her whispering, "Shoot it! Shoot it!"
Shaman, SO neat to have a youngster to mentor and bring along to vicariously enjoy the hunt through their eyes. I knew that my son Andrew definitely got his mother's hunting gene when I heard such things as "Wake me up when you see one dad" or "Why don't the deer move around more in the daylight?" Sawing the checkering on his new rifle's forearm back and forth on the edge of the blind because it made a neat noise was the last straw. The kid would have been happier with a new X-Box than that rifle. You can lead them to water... His mother referred to Gander Mountain as "The dumb old gun store".
My other auto is a .45
The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory
I hear ya Windfall. I've got one son like that. He loves coming to deer camp, but won't go hunting. The other two have the bug, and there's little that will keep them out of the woods.
Pappy: It's already on order. I'm going to use 2 12' lengths of burlap on a clothesline arrangement all the way around the blind. It'll be up at the corner post's height, and there will be just enough slack so you can rest a rifle on the rail and the line will dip a little to accommodate it.
Here's a couple we just put up. Sorry for the sideways image. The first one took much more time to build as it was my first one to construct. I learned a lot and my next one will be modular.
Nice stand and beautiful shooting lane! I hope your grand daughter enjoys it as much as you do. Another thing to consider is that you might want to put some carpet on the floor to deaden the sound your boots will make on the floor. Good luck!
Wag more, bark less.
The freedoms we surrender today will be the freedoms our grandchildren will never know existed.
The men who wrote the Second Amendment didn't just finish a hunting trip, they just finished liberating a nation.
Here's a couple we just put up. Sorry for the sideways image. The first one took much more time to build as it was my first one to construct. I learned a lot and my next one will be modular.
Don't know why you went to all that trouble building that camo one when you already had that fine one behind it on site.
[quote=devnull]Here's a couple we just put up. Sorry for the sideways image. The first one took much more time to build as it was my first one to construct. I learned a lot and my next one will be modular.
Don't know why you went to all that trouble building that camo one when you already had that fine one behind it on site.
Pappy, Good eyes. The one behind it was ran into by my father-in-law with the bucket on the tractor. It in turn became unusable and hasn't been used for some years.
Nice Shaman, and it should do you well. Best wishes with raising little canrviours. It can be a lot of fun and frustrating by turns. Cute little lady.
An unemployed Jester, is nobody's Fool.
the only real difference between a good tracker and a bad tracker, is observation. all the same data is present for both. The rest, is understanding what you're seeing.
I admit that the design is a bit out of the ordinary-- no roof and all. However, I have three blinds already that have all that and if it gets inclement, I'm about 300 yards from my luxury box at Midway.
What I'm envisioning in "Hollywood" -- that's what I'm calling it-- is a treestand without the tree. I've been using a lot of those 2-man buddy stands over the years. In fact, we pulled 4 out of the trees this year that had passed their expiration date. The problem with the venue was that there was no way to get a good shot to the left and right as long as you were tied to a tree. This treeline extends for the length of my property, and it has pastures on both sides. It's actually the remains of an old road that ran between two towns, one of which no longer exists. The old road is lined with massive White and Chinkapin Oak. Holllywood sits at a slight bend. Between the shape of the pasture and the various dips and folds this one spot sees more of the pasture than anywhere else.
So why not sides and a roof? Look, I have spent a good part of the last 8 seasons at Midway. See pic:
It's nice, it's comfortable. It keeps me dry and out of the elements, but it's a box. Hollywood was built for warmer afternoons when I just don't feel like being cooped up. We've gone 16 seasons now with only two dustings of snow. If it rains? That's what stainless steel and Goretex were made for.
The idea for Hollywood started several years ago. A big leaner had finally fallen over, and a really cool spot had finally opened up at a place we call Hammond North. Hammond North was and still is the absolute ideal hunting venue. It sits on a knoll about 250 yards from Hollywood. The road makes a big bend to go around this hillock, but try as I might, I could not find a good place to put a stand. I spent 5 years running ladders up trees and standing on the back of the truck. For as beautiful as this spot is, you'd need to do some serious terraforming to get a shot past 50 yards. Meanwhile, I found that I was running into a lot of deer just up the way a bit. A couple of years ago, I busted a herd of 12 out in the pasture on my way to Midway right where Hollywood now stands. I got to thinking: why not move my idea for a stand at Hammond North a few hundred yards closer to the house? I took time this spring scouting for the best spot. Hollywood is kind of Hammond North Lite. What makes it unique is that 25 yards to either side, the folds of the land make it such that you can't see more than 75 yards. This one spot-- for a quarter mile in each direction is the one location where you can really see the down a considerable length of pasture and the spot is dead-flat too! That, in and of itself, is a rarity in Kentucky.