Daver
PMA Member
My youngest son successfully pestered me enough this year to build a deer blind that I broke down and we went ahead and got 'er done this year. I had some old decking that I had saved and a few scraps here and there for starters, but we still managed to spend over $400 in materials on this baby. Enjoy the pictures...
We built it at home this summer with the idea that we would transport it to our farm in panels and do the final assembly there. This is my son Mark beginning to unload it. Believe it or not, my hillbilly contraption made the trip pretty safely and successfully. :grin:
I wanted to keep it off of the ground somewhat, so we used some old 4"x4"'s as skids and lagged them on the very bottom of it. We also painted the bottom to weatherize it a bit. Also part of my master plan...assemble the blind on my trailer that I would then use to transport the blind to its' final home. We assembled near the buildings since we had electricity there. This seemed like a good idea at the start, but by the time we were finished constructing this monstrosity it was quite a bit heavier than I was thinking and I began to worry about getting it off of the trailer. (More on that later...)
This is after the first three panels have been assembled and my son, who is very proud of all the work he put into this, is posing! This project was actually very enjoyable for the most part, I had my son do as much design and construction on it as he could and he did pretty well overall. I was very pleased with his work and he already wants to start another one. Yikes! :grin:
Almost done...
Almost ready for the ride up the hill...
Now...what was not shown here was the tricky trip through a field and up a twisty lane through the timber! I was glad that I used two big ratchet straps to hold it down on the trailer during final transport. But, getting it off of the trailer was not as easy as I was anticipating. Let's just say that some more hillbilly ingenuity came into play and thankfully no one got hurt and nothing got broken! :grin: Whew!
I thought we could pull it off with the ATV. NADDA, so we switched to the truck and rigged up a system that only let the trailer so far and believe it or not, we got it off there without a serious incident, but not without some replanning and tense moments. :grin:
This is a "post unload" view from a little ways out into the field. Notice that the field is pretty dead from a blast of roundup a few weeks earlier.
Ready for action...now we just need some dumb deer to show up out in front of it. The field visible there is mowed very short and is now planted with rye, so things should come along nicely there this fall.
This is existing clover that is essentially behind my truck in the picture above. This clover is actually in pretty good shape, thanks to all that I have learned from Dbltree!! It is quite weed free at this point, where it wasn't last year, that is from using Select this year. There is also a little pond in the picture that I had added a few years ago.
I'll be sure to post pictures of the "first blood", as my son is quite anxious to sit in it during the upcoming youth season.
We built it at home this summer with the idea that we would transport it to our farm in panels and do the final assembly there. This is my son Mark beginning to unload it. Believe it or not, my hillbilly contraption made the trip pretty safely and successfully. :grin:
I wanted to keep it off of the ground somewhat, so we used some old 4"x4"'s as skids and lagged them on the very bottom of it. We also painted the bottom to weatherize it a bit. Also part of my master plan...assemble the blind on my trailer that I would then use to transport the blind to its' final home. We assembled near the buildings since we had electricity there. This seemed like a good idea at the start, but by the time we were finished constructing this monstrosity it was quite a bit heavier than I was thinking and I began to worry about getting it off of the trailer. (More on that later...)
This is after the first three panels have been assembled and my son, who is very proud of all the work he put into this, is posing! This project was actually very enjoyable for the most part, I had my son do as much design and construction on it as he could and he did pretty well overall. I was very pleased with his work and he already wants to start another one. Yikes! :grin:
Almost done...
Almost ready for the ride up the hill...
Now...what was not shown here was the tricky trip through a field and up a twisty lane through the timber! I was glad that I used two big ratchet straps to hold it down on the trailer during final transport. But, getting it off of the trailer was not as easy as I was anticipating. Let's just say that some more hillbilly ingenuity came into play and thankfully no one got hurt and nothing got broken! :grin: Whew!
I thought we could pull it off with the ATV. NADDA, so we switched to the truck and rigged up a system that only let the trailer so far and believe it or not, we got it off there without a serious incident, but not without some replanning and tense moments. :grin:
This is a "post unload" view from a little ways out into the field. Notice that the field is pretty dead from a blast of roundup a few weeks earlier.
Ready for action...now we just need some dumb deer to show up out in front of it. The field visible there is mowed very short and is now planted with rye, so things should come along nicely there this fall.
This is existing clover that is essentially behind my truck in the picture above. This clover is actually in pretty good shape, thanks to all that I have learned from Dbltree!! It is quite weed free at this point, where it wasn't last year, that is from using Select this year. There is also a little pond in the picture that I had added a few years ago.
I'll be sure to post pictures of the "first blood", as my son is quite anxious to sit in it during the upcoming youth season.
