Floating Duck Blind

[johnpaul]

That might be the smallest duck dog i've ever seen!

Very nice work man!

[johnpaul]

[Texas Grown]

That pup = Greatness .

Nice work on the blind . I like to weave cane, when I can get it. Most folks will gladly let you cut them back for free. The early season green leaves work great. Plus, after they die off, the tan stalks work great weather the leaves are on or not. And take up lots of space in the grid. You can always weave reeds in between if you don't have enough cane.

[knighttime]

JP why the heck didn't you tell me last night I could follow your build on TBH?!?!?

[johnpaul]

That pup = Greatness .

Nice work on the blind . I like to weave cane, when I can get it. Most folks will gladly let you cut them back for free. The early season green leaves work great. Plus, after they die off, the tan stalks work great weather the leaves are on or not. And take up lots of space in the grid. You can always weave reeds in between if you don't have enough cane.

Oh we have miles of levees covered in cane but I am not a big fan of it.

We tried cane 2 years ago we didn't weave it in but just zip tied bundles of it and then zip tied it to the wire fence. The problem we had was when the cane dried up, it shrunk significantly and it would slip out of the zip ties. Weaving cane might work better but I can't see myself wanting to weave cane in 5 blinds this size. I like palmettos for several reasons. They cover a ton of area per leaf (1 big palmetto will cover a 3 foot circle completely). They do a great job of blocking the wind. And they also stay green a lot longer than cane or other similar plants used for cover. We take a weed eater with a brush cutter attachment and can load a 16 foot lowboy with enough palmettos to cover 5 blinds in about an hour.

[johnpaul]

JP why the heck didn't you tell me last night I could follow your build on TBH?!?!?

Haha, I figured you saw it on here Thomas. I'm bored at the office, I'll send you a picture of how to make the base and after that you can build the top however you'd like.

[Tmag]

Turned out real nice, great job JP.

[ajm2nac]

looks great. congrats

[Slew]

I used to wrap mine in brown paper mill felt leftover from the paper dryers before I added the reinforcement wire to hold the brush. Was an excellent wind block and kept us his good even when late season was there or a family of hungry nutria used the blind for a buffet! They eventually ate the dang barrels too.

[Statton48]

Let's see it floating

[johnpaul]

Here it is floating, that is about 430 pounds on that one end. We tried to rock it back and forth and roll it and didn't even come close.

[johnpaul]

I am going to start on the second one this weekend. I have 2 things I am going to change and see if y'all have any other suggestions.

1.) I am going to build the second one about 6 inches shorter in the front so my girlfriend will not have a problem shooting over it. This blind is the perfect height for someone 5'10 or taller. I will probably end up building a 6 inch tall box for short people to stand on.

2.) I am going to put a bench and shelf in the next blind. The reason I did not put a bench and shelf in this blind is because I planned on it being a dual sided blind where we could sit in a patch of reeds and hunt out of both sides if the wind switched. The more I thought about that, the more sense it did not make because of a couple reasons, first the water is too deep for us to move decoys mid hunt and second if we want to hunt facing a different direction we can just spin it after the hunt and face it the other direction for the next day.

If anyone had any doubt about how stable a blind like this would be, worry no more. We rocked it side to side, end to end, a jumped up and down and could not even come close to tipping it. As far as anchoring it goes I believe the thick reeds you can see behind the blind in the picture will hold it in place just fine.

Does anyone have any suggestion for the second blind?

[johnpaul]

Here is a video of us rocking it.

http://youtu.be/Msr76yyrxks

[gander]

Here are a few more from yesterday
Moving it down there

Setting it on the barrels


Sitting in the water

[RockTippedStick]

Awesome blinds. Two suggestions.
You could weld on short sections off tubing vertical on the corners and use smaller tubing in a long T shape like a push pole to put through the welded bracket for anchoring it where ever you want even if there isnt reeds. They can be used to push the blind around also.
Next cut a small cut out of the wire mesh like a dog door with a ramp out of the front. You can bungee it up where your dog can peek out from under and it keeps them in the blind with you.
Can't wait to see them brushed in and in use. Great project and good luck hunting.
Y'all coming to the BCSRC test this fall?