Anyone have any ideas on how to stop woodpeckers from putting wholes in our 4x8 wooden blind besides killing them? I'm sick & tired of having to patch up all the wholes every year. I've put on a few coats of paint already hoping it would help but no luck. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks...

They are why I started using hardiboard on my blinds.

Heck, I had woodpeckers pecking my 55 gallon steel drum feeder over the labor day weekend. They crazy.

Seriously, are you sure it's woodpeckers? Have you seen them doing it? Wood-boring bees will make holes too. That can kind of change your strategy a little.

Honestly, I don't know for sure. I have never seen them at the blind. But something is putting wholes up to the size of golf balls.

Hmm. Do you see residual "saw dust" below the holes. Most source say Carpenter/wood boring bees will only make a 1/2-3/4" diameter hole. If it's truly golf ball size, you may have something else. Is your blind painted?

Got to admit, they are pretty cool birds

Woodpeckers get my blinds too, the only way I know to stop them is to put sheet metal over the wood. Just make sure to seal all of the ends properly to keep the bees out. I thought of hardiboard but man that stuff's heavy, might try it on the next blind though. Maybe hardi won't be so bad...

Use hardware cloth around the area they are pecking

Aep electric has issues with woodpeckers on the power line poles. So the wrapped the poles with a fine chicken wire and the birds moved on

This ^^

We have had problems with them. Only thing we have done is wrapped our blinds with tin over the wood and started building out of Hardi. Is the wood old? I read a lot about this and what they are after is small bugs in the old plywood. Maybe keeping them freshly painted will help and the new LP Wood siding is suppose to have something in it to help prevent the bugs from living in it but I have no idea how well it works.

make sure you don't have any thing loose,rattles,virabation,woodpeckers come to the noise thinking it a insect.
dlineman

The wood is not old and it has been painted a few times. They started attacking it the first season we put it out there & haven't stopped. I'm heading out there this weekend to patch up the holes for now & figure out what to do. To cover the whole thing in hardi is going to be a pain in the [censored]. But just might have to do it.

I had trouble with wasps, mud dobbers and daddy longlegs in my blinds. I added an insecticide to the paint before painting inside and outside. Or bug bomb the blind if you think woodpeckers are finding bugs.

Or trap a wildcat or neighbor's cat and stick it in that blind for a week, with drinking water.