The Duck Blinds

The duck blind is a vital part of duck hunting.  It is the place where you sit and wait for the ducks to show up.  For the most part we cut bushes to hide ourselves.  This picture is taken of me in my duck blind on the 'back' cut.  Back here we don't need much cover.  We hunt from the bank of a bayou and it's not hard to blend into the background.  The other duck blinds we use are in ponds or lakes as shown above to the right.

That is the old lake blind.  This lake used to be a small pond where Joe and his bother Buck used to hunt Mallards.  Now it has become a large lake and we have since moved to better hunting locations.  We still dress this blind every year in case we need to use it.  Many times in the winter, the water is too low to make it into our other blinds so we are forced to hunt here.

Joe and I built this duck blind.  Although you can't see it because it's covered with brush, it is a custom made blind.  It has a bench seat and a shelf for holding shotgun shells.  It has a solid floor and hooks under the shelf to hold our shell buckets.  It has both a front and back door to enter with our pirogues.  It's a great blind.  It's set in a small pond and we've shot many ducks from this blind.  It's comfortable and protects us from harsh weather.

The pictures above were taken of the same blind during Teal Season 2001.  You can get an idea of the bench, floor & shelf in the picture on the right.  You can also see some new growth.  After Hurricane Georges in 1998, Joe & I had to move several large "floatons" of grass that were blocking the entrance to the pond.  A "floaton" is a piece of the marsh that floats and many were created by the hurricane breaking up the marshland.  While I held onto the floaton from within Joe's flatboat, he slowly pulled us close to the blind and we placed these floating pieces around the blind.  We had no idea that 3 years later, they would continue to grow and provide some natural cover to our duck blind.  In November, we will return to place bushes around the blind to make it as shown in the previous picture.  Only this year, it will look more natural because of the work we did back in 1998.  Cool!