After my incident last season, Dad decided that it would make more sense to be hidden in the woods and have more coverage than my treeseat gives me.  This will help me get a better view of the more traveled deer trails and not rely on the deer to come my way.  He wanted to build a permanent structure that would allow us to hunt in all weather conditions.

So, Dad has been busy building T3.  He constructed it in the barn to make sure all of the dimensions were right.  Our first treestand was built 16 feet off the ground using a 12 foot ladder.  Not ideal and clearly not built by hunters who knew what they were doing.  The Sky Condo was considerably better with insulation and a tar papered roof.  T3 is looking to be the best yet!

T3 being built in the shed

Once Dad and I figured out how tall everything needed to be in order for me to take good shots from every angle, he started moving pieces of it down into the woods.  The plan was for us to begin building over the winter and then paint it this spring and summer.  However, we were not planning on five feet of snow being dumped on us in a three week span.  It looks like we may have to wait until spring gets here before T3 gets built.

T3 in pieces, in the woods

I shot last season’s deer about 15 feet behind where my snowmobile is parked. You can actually see the shooting lane that I used.  The plan is to have me sit (again) close to the property line and look up towards where my stand was but also be able to see the trails that run along a stream bed and down into a bog.  There were a lot of beds and well worn trails in the snow when we were down there earlier in the winter. 

With all of the current snow, Dad and I decided to ride around and check on the deer herd.  We knew that we could probably see a few and made sure that we didn’t stay too long or move too close when we found them.  The last thing that we wanted was to force them to run in the deep snow.  They need to save all of the calories they can!

Deer and hunting stands… it makes me eager for fall!