Saturday, November 7, 2015

Elevated Deer Stands

Good weather and Belladonna at home means little time for blogging.

I took a break when it started to rain.  My tools don't like getting wet.

In rough terms (and I put the "rough" in rough carpenter) the floor plan will be 6' by 8'.  The floor will be 10' above the ground.  The sill of the windows will be 33" above the floor.  I am agonizing over the size of the windows but will probably make them 48" wide by 24" tall.

Kubota wants me to make a peaked roof and use scissors trusses so he can use it during archery season.

I will ask one of my brothers or the Captain to give me a hand tipping the pre-fabs vertical.

Legal methods of take


Michigan was the last state in the Nation to allow elevated stands.  The DNR issued citations to hunters if they were sitting on a stump and the heels of their boots did not touch the ground.

One advantage of elevated stands is that hunters are shooting down, into the ground.  That makes them inherently safer than ground blinds.

I would love to have the DNR give serious consideration to
  1. Re-evaluate minimum distance between blinds and structures.
  2. Consider allowing the use of ANY CHAMBERING, even in current "shotgun only areas" as long as a "follower" or spacers have been installed in the magazine so-as to render it a "single-shot" firearm.
There is nothing inherently "more dangerous" about a .300 Winchester Magnum vis-a-vis a 12 gauge slug when the hunter is firing into the ground.  The risk is when the hunter's adrenaline spikes and he/she is shooting at a running deer, usually after the first shot. Emotions process faster than logic.  At those time, the hunter's thinking processes might not keep up with the demands placed upon it.   The hunter might not always make the best choice.

Degrading a repeating firearm to a "single shot" goes a long way towards mitigating this failure mode.  This is not technically difficult.  Benchrest shooters almost always use their firearms as "single-hots" and there are many aftermarket parts that convert repeating firearms into single shots.  Example.

2 comments:

  1. My dad would clamber 20-30-40 ft up into an oak or pine at the edge of a crop field or overlooking a wildlife food plot and build a 4x4 blind, with roof, walls with drop-down window slots, etc,
    Used to scare the crap out of me, having to climb that high going from limb to limb or strategically placed railroad spikes pounded into the trunk... sometimes entry into the house was even scarier... had one way up in a pine that you had to climb up above, then back down into...but you were certainly able to see a long way - often much farther than I'd feel comfortable taking a shot.
    I was not at all saddened, however, when he dropped back to building elevated stands similar to what you're building, on 8-10 ft tall base made of 4x4s. Not as exciting to get into, but just as productive.

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