Ugliest Blind Contest

L

Larry Eckart

Well-known member
Good friends,
What's the weirdest or ugliest thing you've ever done for a duck blind?

I am currently without a true duck boat down here in SC. In the past I have had a custom made Pop Up blind for an 18' Starcraft (expensive and the lines on that blind are too straight), and a homemade blind for a 14' Starcraft that worked well. My Hoefgen didn't need much camo and the Busick layout boat was camo defined all by itself.

When I had a 13' Whaler I made a fairly nice homemade blind that worked well. But I sold that boat because that flat bow was cracking my back when the waves kicked up.

I bought a 15 foot Whaler this summer that is much too pretty to turn into a duck boat. What to do when young friend Ted Compher wanted to go duck hunting with me in SC given that the Whaler is WHITE?

Buffleheads are the primary duck in the salt marsh here. Actually they are about the only duck I see. Knowing that Buffleheads aren't too picky about camouflage, I rummaged around in my gear for a makeshift way to cover up my boat.

Here is what I ended up with (laughing is allowed!).

I took my grey (sort of) car cover for the front of the boat and my grey boat cover for the back of the boat. Of course these were completely different types of material!

After setting out a long line of buffies and a long line of bluebills, we covered the boat with those two covers and sat, sometimes on top, sometimes underneath of the covers.

I was glad that we were in an isolated spot and only a few boats came by to gaze upon this identity crisis of a duck blind. The car cover at times resembled a curtain blowing in the breeze. The boat cover looked like... well, like we forgot to take off the boat cover.

As we set the anchors, the marsh hens began cackling behind us as if calling all their buddies to come and see the jokers on the edge of Port Royal Sound.

Alas! The buffies didn't seem to mind. As usual, they flew in while we were setting the anchor. A few skirted us like they always do but others came in as if we had a thousand dollar cover blind.

The hunt was nothing to write home about given the 70 degree temps, but we did manage three birds. Drake buffies this time of the year are such handsome lads!

No, I do not have a photo to post. I refuse to give you that kind permanent evidence of my car cover boat blind.

I feel like I have returned to my earliest days of hunting when we had no money, our Red Ball waders leaked, and camo consisted of a Jones cap with a mallard feather in the brim.

If any other duck had been the quarry, I doubt we would have been successful.

What about you? What's the weirdest/ugliest contraption you ever used for a blind?

Larry
 
Hunted a spoil island near an inlet on Long islands south shore. Pack ice would wash up n the shore and we would rearrange the ice blocks into a blind. Sort of a half an igloo.
Today, jan. 2nd , I hunted with just a long sleeve shirt on under an uninsulated rain jacket.

For years, when I first started hunting ducks, we would go to Fire Island by Jeep. We would dig a "foot hole" in the marsh near the water. We could sit on the marsh with our feet in the hole. Break off a few branches from higher up the meadow and that was it.

Did paint an aluminum semi V gray, then painted scoter sillys on the side. Used it for fishing in the off season. That was even stranger. Shot a lot of scoter out of that boat.
 
Way way back, when I was a youngster hunting with my Dad down on the Mississippi backwaters, he knew that opening weekend was going to be very crowded. To sort of get away from the crowds, we would go to some far away spot and cut down small willow trees or branches. We would load these into the boat and head off to the landing. We had a 12' Alumnacraft (narrow beam) and would jam these braches and us and gear and head off. Had to be a funny as hell sight to see this boat going out to the hunting area. When we got to where we wanted to be, We would get the boat in a spot away from anyone else and start sticking the willow branches into the bottom of the slough and created our own private little island.


Seemed to work OK and we were never bothered by anyone. Looking back, I wonder about the legality of what we did but I never thought about it back then. Were visited a number of times by both Fed and State officers who never said anything. Maybe they were too busy laughing and felt sorry for us to give us a citation.


Mark W
 
I think of it as beautiful, not ugly.

I hunt a salt marsh spot where the best low-tide spot features a "blind" that is an eroded spot on a mud bank that has slumped. I sit on an 18 inch high block that has fallen out of the bank, with my back against the mud behind me. The slump is narrow, so I have mud and Spartina banks on both sides of me.

There is a channel 10 yards in front of me that stays wetted at even the very lowest tides, and spot is huntable for about half the rising tide cycle, until the rising tides comes up to about my knees.

You want good waterproof waders and a jacket, and everything you wear needs to be hosed down before coming back into the house.
 
We used to do an early season goose hunt that we used picnic tables and beach chairs as our blind. Very funny looking but for that particular spot was deadly.
 
Years ago I had a colleague who used a cut out of a cow He'd "graze" into a field with another guy. They would walk up to a goose flock that was used to grazing cattle. When the birds were in range theyd drop the cut out and proceed to shoot the flushing birds.

I've "hidden" as a stump, piling, rock or mud pile in plain sight many times in many places.
 
Worst blind, shallow pits in an exposed wet sand spit, covered with a piece of burlap. Joe Seelig and I would dig these to hunt mallards on the Bays de Noc. The more succesful the hunt, the more wet sand would accumulate on, and eventually, in everything including our guns.

Ugliest, a burlap"sock" I made to slide over my then unpainted aluminum Grumman Whitewater-15'. I stitched several bags together that I picked-up from a grain elevator and slathered them with spray paint. It obviously worked, on my first hunt I had a flight of redheads plop down twenty yards away as I just finished getting my decoys set.
 
Speaking of burlap...I guess I'm old. I remember going to the grain elevators in the thumb of Michigan and getting all the bags I wanted...for free. Sure some had tears or a hole, but they worked for my purpose...layout field hunting. Burlap, the memories and smells of an earlier life.
Louie
 
In a snow storm, used a dead fall with a white sheet to hunt mallards coming back from feed. The West end of the lake hsd, and I hate guessing at numbers like this, 10,000 geese and ducks.

We'd get the odd single to groups of 5 that thought 4 dozen cheaters were good enough. It was right at freeze up, and snowing a few inches an hour. Not the most ducks I've ever shot, but incredibly memorable.

Per the ugliest blind memory, I'll never forget how literally NON-white that sheet looked when I turned around from collecting a bird dead in the decoys. The white of the snow was brilliant against the heather gray sky and the black soil cliff we were tucked against.... and that sheet, seemingly bright white at my house, looked like an iodine stained gauze that had blown into a tree.
 
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