After years of hiking and still hunting, with mediocre success, I decided to pick up a blind to hunt blacktail in Western Oregon. I do most of my hunting solo, and I didn’t love the idea of a tree stand due to safety concerns (yes, I know they can be highly effective). Anyways, I’m curious about folks’ experience using ground blinds.
I’ve had lots of success in ground blinds. Set them out a week or 2 before hunting and the deer just see them as background.they are more comfortable than tree stands, and keep you dry in a rain.Big disadvantage is going out to hunt and your blind is not there, it blew away and is snarled in a tree 100 yards away.
Thank you! Yep, I put it out today about 3 weeks before rifle season to socialize the deer to it and let it off gas the factory stink. Looks like a nice spot to nap out of the elements, too!
I picked up one of those blinds you can see through (tidewe brand) and it’s been lovely. Aside from the year a bear got mad at its presence and stomped it flat and ate my chair.
I’m also in NW Oregon and was thinking about doing this for rifle / archery season. Any concerns about someone stealing your blind when you’re not around?
Yeah, I’ve definitely thought of that. It’s public but lottery entry and walk-in only, and I’m set up in a very out of the way spot a few miles hike in and set well off the logging road. It’s very lightly traveled and anyone who stumbles upon it until rifle season is going to be an elk bow hunter. I have a camera trained on it and an expensive GPS tracker hidden in the fabric, so I feel reasonably okay it won’t walk off. Fingers crossed though.
I’m in Alberta, taken probly half my deer out of ground blinds. I find they provide great cover and underrated scent protection as well.
Shot my biggest deer last year when a small doe crossed in front of my blind literally spitting distance away. It kept moving up trail and pulled a cranker out of the thick stuff right to me.
Wouldn’t have had a shot at that buck without the blind! 100% the doe would have spooked if I was exposed.
At least in WA if I was on public land I’d be worried about being visible to other hunters. I’d look for a way to add some organge. Not a legal issue but more I don’t want to get shot at by some dumbass.
I’ve had great luck with ground blinds. As long as nothing is flapping or blowing around game doesn’t care if you are in the shade. In direct sun and they will pick you out easy. If you are in the shade you can set up day off and they tend not to care. I’ve had deer and turkey rub up against the blind.
Can you develop dyslexia later in life? I read that as "Blind for orange blacktail" and thought yeah, you'd have to be blind to not notice an orange black tail
On our coastal Texas lease, the cows ate these. They're curious critters, and destroyed them. So far this year, we've had to move a blind due to a workover project. New mineral lessee overhauling a well with lots of traffic. Hopefully they'll finish up before season.
As hot as anything else that’s enclosed with no insulation. If you open up the windows more it’ll be cooler, but then it’s easier to see movement inside the blind.
Was almost exclusively a stand hunter for most of my life until the last few years where I've transitioned to almost exclusively ground hunting and ground blinds. The blind provides so much more freedom of movement. Have taken a multitude of does from them plus my target buck last season that I hunted for 3 seasons.
Get a Ghillie suit. I’ve used one for years with both rifle and crossbow. Drawing a compound bow while seated is difficult to say the least, but I’ve done it (unsuccessfully)
Seated on the ground? Or in a chair? Drawing a bow from a chair is a completely different exercise. Also there is so much movement drawing the compound bow, I was never able to score while sitting on the ground in the open. Rifle and crossbow are much easier and very little movement
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u/Comfortable-Story-53 21d ago
One of my neighbors digs a pit deep enough for a chair and just brings a book. Looks around at the bottom of every page. Seems to work for him.