Build It, They Might Come

A lesson on not listening to anyone, pure American craftsmanship, and the prouder moments.

I groaned as I felt my left leg slowly sink past my knee into the mud for the fourth time that morning.

“Okay, here we go,” I told myself, as I used a two-by-four as a brace to push myself up and break the suction of the mud on my hip boots. 

It reminded me of that Jason Isbell song “Outfit,” and a particular line of advice a father gave his son:

You want to feel old after 42 years/Keep dropping the hammer and grinding the gears.

Still, it was my own damn fault. The erosion on the Gulf Coast island I chose to build a one-man blind on wasn’t’ meant to be the parade route I made of it. Despite my best efforts to make each step count and move as efficiently as possible, my 31 years turned into 62 in less than an hour on the island. 

But oh, how glorious the blind is.

Standing some four feet above the mud she towers above even the tallest mangrove. I envisioned on my first morning in the blind, the end of my barrel would nearly strike a flock of migrating pintails that had just passed a Boeing. Flocks won’t circle high above anymore; they can only start at eye level and work lower towards my decoys, which look like flecks of salt and pepper sitting on the water to the naked eye.

Her left rear leg bends in at a 12-degree angle, a unique hallmark of my elite craftsmanship, the five wood screws and numerous hammer marks, a sign of my ingenuity. 

It was less than three hours of discomfort to haul the tools and material by pirogue to my destination, which was still in sight of the boat launch, and still some 500 yards from the nearest blind. 

The first hunt that morning yielded nothing; A mottled duck swung behind me, looking to light in one of the small ponds to my rear. I missed him on two shots, not foolhardy enough to think the third shell would’ve crumpled him. The flocks of pintails and redheads worked, but nothing settled. As I flung myself out of the blind and into my pirogue to pick up decoys, that’s when I saw the glaring lack of brush for a blind that was standing as tall as a mountain over the mangroves before it. 

A stick blind allowed the author to be four feet closer to Jesus and the rafts of redheads that winter on the Texas Gulf Coast. Video by Ryne Berthelot

So, my afternoon was spent hacking palm fronds with razor sharp hooks down their stems. I nearly filled the bed of my truck with fronds before launching for the afternoon hunt.

I did so well at my task that I neither heard nor saw the first bird that came in. Rather, I stood and looked into my spread of super magnum decoys and saw a hen redhead swimming amongst the massive floaters. I mustered my most intimidating voice and yelled, “Get outta there,” though as divers tend to, she had no interest in moving. Once she cleared my last decoy, I aimed at the bird on the water and christened the blind.

Not 10 minutes later, I crumpled a drake that was keyed in on the small pod of diver decoys I had set out. After hours of uncertainty over whether my blind would work, I had my redhead limit. 

I haven’t correctly pinpointed why I’m so proud of this blind. Maybe because I was warned by my hunting partners not to. 

“They’re [the other blinds in the area] just gonna burn it down.”

“What if you find a better spot?”

“How are you going to build it by yourself?

I didn’t care. I still don’t. I saw a spot I liked, that I had killed birds in, and I knew I wanted to build something on it. Something that would last, that would keep me out of the mud and water for longer periods so I could enjoy the late morning flights of pintail and wigeon. 

Or, in reality, I’m just hard-headed and hell-bent. 

That one sounds better to me.