Duck hunting jerk chain foot pedal

[Bill]

I'm leasing a blind in a club this season, hopefully an upgrade over only hunting public refuges. One thing I want to do was have a jerk line, to give a part of the spread some motion in the water.

In the past when we did this, one of the hunters had to pull the cord, and it's tough to shoot with a cord in your hand. I thought this project out, and got the grinder and mig welder out this am. Basically, it will stick in the ground in a stand-up blind, and the end of the cord will be tied to the 'step', and go over the 'roller' and out to the water. Then one shooter can step on the pipe and push it down, the bungie cord on the line pulls the step back up.

Here's materials, a detail of how I ground a galvanized coupling to make a roller, primed and final camo coat (not really needed). It would have been a lot easier to make out of PVC, but I wanted to try metal to hopefull never have to fix it.

Parts

Detail of roller after grinding it with chop saw

Finished, primed

Finished, in the ground. In the blind it will be pushed in until the bottom washers are on the ground.

I see dead ducks!

[bzzboyz]

Looks like it will work great, but I already got enough crap to carry out to the blind as it is. I don't need more.

[Bill]

I'm looking forward to hunting one pond for the season, and being able to leave lots of stuff there. I have an old pickup tool box I'm going to camo the top and put outside the stand up blind to be able to lock up stuff, not that it will stop a determined thief.

[bzzboyz]

Same pond all year? What, no resi's, no sweat lines, no 1:00 AM wake up calls? The same pond all year doesn't sound anything like the California duck hunting I've heard about.

[Bill]

You've obviously heard about our public waterfowl refuge system. The good news is that with the resy's, night before lotteries, and sweat-line for those who sign-in after the closing of the lottery, it puts some semblance of order in admitting hunters into public areas. Not perfect, but it gives somebody who needs to work M-F and equal chance of hunting as somebody who used to sign-in on Thursday night and sat in a camper or behind his pickup all day Friday in the parking lot to hunt on Saturday am.

With that said, for the opener I have resy applications in for 5 refuges in northern Cal (to hunt with my son if drawn), and 3 in for refuges near the club for the opening weekend. Lots of dumb, local ducks die on the opener. Only leaves the smart ones until the weather pushed new ducks south.

[bowhuntntxn]

bill, have you looked into getting a drum pedal from a local pawn shop, and rigging the lines into that? seems like it might work, and be easier to stopm. good luck on the ducks man

[Bill]

I brought it out for the opener, and it does not mount in the standup blind as-is. I need to cut the legs, weld a piece of angle iron across them, drill a hole and lag-bolt it to one of the 2x4s. Then it will be permanent. I may use it as-is in the 'other' pond and put it into the mud next to tulies. So I left it at the blind this week.

Here's the 'view' from my blind, looking west at the mountains on the horizon. Camera phone.