Jagendehütte– A Hunting Blind Profile
One of our camp’s most productive hunting venues is Jagendehütte, the hunting shed. It is the favorite haunt of our senior member, SuperCore. He spends most of rifle season in the shed and has pulled some of the camp’s biggest bucks out of there. It is also one of the oldest venues on our farm.
The history of Jagendehütte goes back to 2002. I had acquired a large packing crate from work, and over Memorial Day weekend, I primed and painted the 4 sides of the crate and some other scraps and left them to dry in the barn. In late summer, I cut out windows and such and had everything ready. I took a week off work in September and re-sided the house. I broke work early one night and drove the pieces out to Gobbler’s Knob.
The construction of Jagendehütte was about as primitive as you can imagine. The crate had two sides framed in 2X2 and two sides just plywood. I used scraps of treated 2X6 to prop the panels off the ground, leveling as I went. On the long sides, I added a door on the back and an extra scrap of the T-111 siding from the work on the house. That part went up in under an hour. The next weekend, I added oak skid runners for roof trusses and more scraps of T-111 for roof sheathing. I covered that with roll roofing. The floor was scraps of plywood screwed to a large pallet that fit inside the inside footprint. The roof is salt box style. I give us a chance to stand erect without having a lot of extra roof area
The site of Jagendehütte faces west just near the top of a knoll we call Gobbler’s Knob. It looks out on an acre or two of pasture. We frequently see deer and turkey out there feeding from the house. They come out from either side of the blind or come out of the creek we call Dead Skunk Hollow, directly in front of the blind and cross a large wide saddle by the old barn and wander over to the other flowage, the creek that runs through Hundred-Acre Wood. There is a large mature cedar thicket to the south. Shots are generally less than 100 yards. It is 90 yards to the middle of the saddle. In Turkey Season, Jagendehütte is a good place to go when it is pouring rain. The turkeys come out to feed on worms in the pasture. On good days, there is usually a flock loafing at mid-day on top of the knob that can be called.
Jagendehütte has windows on all four sides. However, it is usually the front window to the west and the side window to the North that are usually worth watching. The windows tilt in and down to afford the hunter a decent rest. I have curtains made of burlap to put up over the windows.
We blooded the blind for the first time in 2003. Little Angus was 4 and picked out a nice doe for me to shoot. It was his first time out. After that, we used it on and off until 2009, when SuperCore first showed up. He adopted the blind as his.
It has become a fairly sure producer for morning hunts. SuperCore has already passed 80, and now rides his ATV out there well before sunrise and waits patiently. There is usually action of some sort or other. He has an impressive wall of racks taken from that blind. Most good shots come from the saddle, but the deer have been known to come from anywhere.
Maintenance? For a plywood crate, Jagendehütte has held up remarkably well. The original camo paint scheme is long gone. I threw a coat of green barn paint over it about 10 years ago. The original roll roof rotted out and we replaced it in 2017.
The only thing you really need to watch out for with this blind are the upstairs and downstairs neighbors. We have learned to leave it be during the summer and I get in on the first chilly Saturday in September and spray the wasp nests. As to the downstairs neighbors, that is sort of a potluck proposition. That pallet I put down to keep the floor off the ground has been made a home by numerous furry friends, mice, weasels, and a skunk. I have been in there in the dark, just settled in, and realized I was not alone. It seemed like the floor itself was alive with all the activity going on under my feet. Something underneath was frantically trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, it made a plan and. . . BANG! The door of the blind blasted open and something escaped from underneath into the night.
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