Back around February, I started a thread looking for ideas on a new deer stand.

Deer Stand Ideas


Well, here is what has come of all of it:




Here are the details and lots more pictures:

The Weblog

Thanks all for your input.

Here's some stats on "Hollywood."

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've attached a view from the deck.

Cool

I wish I had a spot that justified a stand like that. Very nice sir.

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

Meant to add that other than that I like it. 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!"

My granddaughter and I hunt out of a 4x4. She sits in nice office chair. I sit on a stool. My ass gets sore after 3 hours of that.

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".

Good Grandpa!

Get some camo netting to conceal the movements of that little wiggler.

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.

Nice stand, too open though.

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!

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.

Great looking stand, beautiful grand daughter. I bet she got her looks from her mothers side!

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.

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:

[img]http://genesis9.angzva.com/wp-content/uploads/wppa/153.jpg?ver=1[/img]

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.

Looks good, Shaman! Handsome young grandgirl, too! Hope you have many years of health and good hunting to build memories with her.

When I think about the ones we used to climb into in the bad old days, it makes my blood run cold. Most were totally made from saplings cut on-site, nailed together. Doubt if the Tree Stand Police would approve.

My generation started carting in pre-cut plywood platforms and eventually 2x4 supports and steps, but it was considered a bit radical and certainly wasteful by the oldsters. The last one I built, here in WV used those galvanized braces they sell for building decks. Very cozy and strong, but almost as pricey as discounted ladder stands.

Better staple the bottom or your bloomers will be flapping in the wind. I used some of that in my two-person ladder last season, tied to the shooting rail. Kept my foot on it on windy days.

Got a couple collapsable screen setups to use with folding chairs this year for days when the wind's not right or I just don't feel like strapping in 17 feet up.

I tried hunting from a duck blind many years ago, couldn't take the sitting! But now I'm old and thinking a nice blind with an easy chair and cooler might be a good idea! :-)

Copy that, Pappy!

Starting about 10 years ago, I seriously started working on what was the best way to put a camo skirt on a shooting rail. Burlap? Die-cut? What I found was the best bang for the buck was Camo Burlap with black landscape fabric backing. The latter was there to keep the sun from back-lighting you.

So there I was with my new-found knowledge, sitting in a buddy ladderstand on the Opener, a big buck popped out at 400 yards and took one look my way and VOOOOM! He lit the afterburners and ran. All he could have seen was the top of my head-- at 400 yards it would be a flyspeck. Then I looked down and the burlap was blowing in the breeze! He'd picked up on the movement. SInce then, I've made sure to tie-off the burlap to the back of the stand with electrical ties.

BTW: That's how I put my skirts on a buddy stand. I first put round pipe insulation all the way around the shooting rail, afixed with electrical ties and then use the burlap and landscaping fabric over that. The pipe insulation acts as a padded rifle rest.

Probably a whole lot safer then the Baker Tree stands I used in the day..I went for a few elevator rides and thankfully remained intact.

Thats as good as it gets ..nice job

Like others have mentioned, a camo skirt and you are GTG

Staple that burlap, then take some foam pool floaties ( on sale everywhere now), split them down one side and fit them over the top rail for a rest. Dust them with spray paint, or not.

I tried resting my rifle over strands of barbed wire this summer while shooting groundhogs, and it was too bouncy. The padded shooting rail on my ladder stands is just right.

That's a great stand, I especially like the idea of the middle horizontal rail, you know just in case somebody goes to sleep and falls out of the chair they wouldn't go all the way to the ground.

"If you build it, they will come."

I now have trail cam footage from Hollywood. Last Sunday, I mounted the camera about 6 feet up the NW leg looking west. The video is a timelapse of the previous week. It takes over 9 minutes to run through, but there's a lot in there.



There are no monster bucks. However, I think you'll see why I was leaving puddles when I viewed the pics. I've analyzed some of the pics taken at night. There is a couple of hat racks mixed in, but they're known offenders-- younger 8 pointers that are part of a bachelor group we see on a regular basis.

T, W, and TH, the remnants of Irma blew over.

A spider built a nest in front of the lens, but it did not really affect the quality. However, that's the big black blob you occasionally see blotting out the sky.

It's funny, but after I placed the camera on the 10th I was having serious misgivings. You have to understand that we've spent 16 years treating this pasture as nothing more than an alternate way of getting back and forth to our campground. I have hunted it only a few times from the ground and every time I've been busted by a doe. The only real hint that there was something in this pasture was the afternoon of The Rifle Opener two years ago. I was late getting out to my blind and was passing this field an hour or so before sunset and interrupted a very large herd of deer having supper. I had not even mounted a camera at this site prior to this batch of pics. Building this tower was a mix of faith and guesswork.

put wheels on that thing,bunch of game has died around this one.



built a few for on the ground to.

Those are cool. I recognize some of the parts, but not all. Do you have any pictures of how you're constructing them?

Why not put a popup on it? Give the hunters some protection from the weather and hides movement.

Actually I've got one, and I've already thought out how to install it, but I kind of like it open for now. Once the camo skirt is on, as long as a fellow stays sitting, a deer will only see the top of his head. A good part of why I built this was to have a place to go that wasn't cooped up.

This is another update on the tower blind project.



Saturday, I was out putting up the camo skirt around the rails of the blind. Burlap alone was not enough to hide me, so I added 3' landscape fabric as backing.

Here are the details and more pics.

Hollywood is Done!

Looks nice, now you just need siding, a fireplace and satellite dish.

Needs a roof to keep rain off

Just some constructive criticism of the article on your website. You have a slideshow of photos of three different sizes. That means about once a second the text position changes as each new picture is rotated through. It's highly annoying and makes it near impossible to read the article. I would either remove the slideshow and just have static images, or reserve space for the largest image so the text doesn't constantly shift around.

The pictures of the stand look good though.

You're right. I gotta change that!
Thanks for the heads-up.

I have spent a lot of time building stands and feeders, money too.

Much better.

I built a whopper yrs ago, sections, put up by myself. Walls and not fence.
Was an ordeal then....no way to do that now.
It was great, killed deer out of it. Got to be known as the Cadillac stand.
My back gives me fits, so a big platform is nice to lay down.
Naps aint bad either

Now I just lay on the ground when my back bothers me, on a hill.
Got a camo sleeping bag for the cold days.

Old Caddy has been gone for years (property sold, stand disassembled before then due to age).

A good big stand will sure spoil a guy.

Azar: Many thanks for picking up the bug in my weblog.

I just now found a generalized fix for it, although I had to grow a bit as a Wordpress coder. I wrote a request for help on the Wordpress.org site. A guy in Germany picked up on it and then we realized he couldn't get into the site, because I was blocking all IP addresses from everywhere except USA and a few English speaking countries.

He then suggested modifications that only someone skilled in CSS, PHP, and all the other alphabet soup they use for web apps these days could understand. I explained I was an old COBOL hack, and he finally wrote me detailed instructions. It still took me a couple hours' work looking for the place to insert his custom code.

The slideshow feature now has a set height of 450 pixels. It causes a bit of a gap when I put up a skinny panorama shot, but it stops things from shifting. It also won't disappear the next time updates come out.

Sounds like you got the problem fixed!