The Deer Stand

Matthew will be able to hunt with me again this year after a long, four season absence. It seems like even longer than that when I think back to our last time together for the regular gun deer season.

Matthew likes to sit beside me in the woods. I have offered to split up from him to help us cover more territory and minimize our impact on a given hunting area, but he always prefers to stay together. We used to sit on the ground; leaning side by side against a giant oak. I bought a ladder stand after he left for college that allowed me to hunt from an elevated platform. The view is vastly different from fifteen feet up and the potential for shooting opportunities seems to go up along with the height.

My ladder stand is big enough for me, but not my gear; which I had to strap to the tree behind the stand. There is no way we could create enough space for Matthew and me together this year, so we decided to get a two-man stand to hunt this year. I bought a two-man ladder stand at a local store but quickly returned it after determining that the manufacturer's idea of two men and our idea of two men were vastly different. The materials seemed flimsy and the platform would have been extremely tight. We decided, instead, to build our own platform stand.

I found plans online and made a few, minor modifications to fulfill my personal requirement to over-engineer and overbuild every project I undertake. We bought all of the lumber, fasteners and assorted hardware for the project and spent less money than we would have spent on the fancy, smaller commercial stand and went to work.

Matthew has an uncanny ability to be gone when I undertake some of my projects, so I cut everything when he was off doing something. He was there to help assemble part of the support legs and lower platform, but Diane has provided most of the construction help. She works hard, but she simply is not as strong as Matthew. We're getting it done, though.

I expect to finish the construction within the next couple of days so we can assemble the pieces in our yard to test it out. We'll do whatever tweaking is necessary with the luxury of electricity close at hand before we break it down into its four main pieces to head to the farm to erect it on our hunting ground.

Erecting the stand in place is going to require several people. Finding willing workers has been the hardest part of this entire project. At some point in the next couple of weeks, though, we will trailer everything up, make our way to the farm and get everything set for the opening of deer season on November 23.