One man's trash

One man's trash can be another man's pontoon boat duck blind. Yesterday was my wall fellas. I had no more gas for another round of greenheaded birds. My season ended with mallards and wooducks.

Now my brother has run a structural fab shop forever. He tries saving money, worse than me. So I told him to order light steel for the pontoon boat duck blind. When we took over the lease it was covered in trash. 6 trailer loads of junk steel went to a scrap guy plus 5 junk cars. We spent 12 weekends carrying, burning and hauling off trash. That is a whole other story. While poking around we found a ravine that was about 10 foot deep and 50 yards long. Yep, full of their discarded trash. We call it the dump.

So brother says "I saw something you can use at the dump". After the hunt we messed around and found everything we need so far as structural steel to complete the boat blind frame. Plus we will now be adding a swing arm off the front to hold the grill. For those nights we want to grill duck poppers. WE CAN
could also drag up a crab pot and grill crab and drank copious amounts of Shiner Bock before bed.

The long steel in the pic is from a garage door. The upright corners are from two old swing sets. Sanford and Son got
nothing on me.

I wrote this whoe thing up and my photobucket is on the fritz. I will load pics later.

Sounds good. Duck poppers, crab, and Shiner. I'm IN.

I thought this thread was gonna have a pic full of jacks...

Alrighty then. I have trashy pictures

Old timey garage door parts. THese could not be more perfect. They are galvenized and super strong. I bolted them to the floor of the boat which is 1 inch poly. I will be long gone and dead before that needs fixing.


The upright corners will be the pipes from two old swing sets. The grill will come off that frame and placed on a swing arm to swing it off of the front porch for grilling at night while waiting for morning. The wire will go on the exterior for a pplace to tie on the bushes for camo.

More metal


Another angle

The best part of all that is I found all the steel I will need for the frame. I didn't spend a dime, it helps clean up the rancher's place of some DBer with no respect and I just love the fact I am that much closer to finishing.

Very nice Wal. I really enjoy your projects. Keep those pics coming.

You're gonna have to make the stripper pole removable so you can hide it from the wife when she goes, I'm guessin'

Well thank you fowlman. I will definately be taking photos as I go on this project. I want to do this one top notch and spare no details. I can see this will open an entire new box of options. Even if we can't get the boat in shallow enough, we can stay on the boat in absolute comfort with all the ammenities. We don't have to worry about hiding it ect. Then we can use our little lay out boats and get out on the flats to hunt. I have one spot in mind where a deep channel comes from the bay into the marsh. That channel runs right up alonside a 50 acre mud flat that nobody hunts because you can't get to it. The mud boats can run into it but can't stop and get back on plane again. I could anchor off next to the flat and padle no more than 100 yards. The other thing this will cure is the hotel. I don't mind paying hotels but the thought of loading all my stuff, MY WIFE'S STUFF, dog stuff, hunting stuff just pains me. Then you get to the hotel you have to unload all the valuables. The decoys I use are anywhere from $150 to $300 a dozen. I leave $10 to 15 dozen in the boat and hope they don't get stolen. Next morning, load all that crap up. Get to hunting area, LOAD, UnLOAD, LOAD, UNLOAD OHHH OHHHHHH it gets crazy. You get the idea. With my new rig, everything will have a place and there is will stay. No hotel fees, No loading and unloading at the hotel. The boat will pay for itself in year one because there will be no hotel expense. I can literally wake up to coffee in my freakin underwear, if I please and shoot a daylight bird. Think about it. I get home from work on Friday, hook up and leave. Get to Lake X and drive out to the selected hunt spot. Place decoys where I want them and anchor off. Fire up the grill and eat supper, pop in a DVD and drift off to sleep. Wake up all rested, no rush (Other than waiting on the coffee), shoot birds. If it is a slow day, I won't hear"I am hungry, you ready to go?" None of that anymore. The first one that cries out he is hungry is getting saddled with the cooking of breakfast.

How do you know she isn't the one who requested it?

Who needs a stripper pole when you have rafters?