Larry and Merrill Dougherty
Preface: We had several goals in mind for our blind. Yours goals may differ, but ours are specific to our area, budgets, and comfort preferences. They are as follows:
- 3-4 person capacity, with only moderate protection from the elements
- Complete use of volume inside the boat when not in use
- Obstruction-free shooting from sitting position (trigger design)
- No interference during cripple chase / retrieve
- Reuse materials from previous blind whenever possible
- No drilling into any part of Larry's new boat!!!
So here's what we came up with:
Pic 1: The early season camo sceme is crude, but burlap rocks and grass will be hog ringed to the netting before the regular season. Pic 2: Don't be fooled by how narrow the gaps to shoot out of are, this blind has some pretty sweet features to address that. When "take em!" is called, a trigger releases the forward side and roof/rear side to the opposite side, leaving an unobstructed 360° field of view. The pics of the unpainted frame w/o netting give a good feel to how this works.
Pic 3: "SURPRISE!" in about a second, everything collapses and it's blastin' time! Field test have shown that this is a more effective surprise tactic than 3 guys standing up out of each of their respective hide-y-holes. Whether hit percentages are increased by shooter comfort or not has yet to be determined. The hypothesis that it does give the shooter an aim advantage. Larry to your left getting the raising greenhead and Merrill is getting a low flying bufflehead. Both shots are easy while sitting down!
Pic 4: You can see there is a lot of room inside. The roof is tan Gore-tex covered
with netting, rain and snow beware. Birds flying over the blind have a difficult time
picking up any movement. Again, no additional camo has been added to the netting yet so
sitting still was important this day.
