mother nature fights back - 2020 edition

Plant.One

Well-known member
Went north this weekend to do some property maintenance, sweep out the blinds for the upcoming firearm season and cut some standing dead ash for firewood.

Got up there and as we got setup to clean the west fence of fallen branches and repost the no hunting/trespassing signs we discovered a large tree top on the roof of one of our blinds.  First time in over 20 years we've had more than a small wrist thick sized branch land on any of our 24 permanent blinds.

A large canopy height maple broke off about 25' up and all 3 tops landed bullseye style right in the roof.

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The roof was unsalvageable - every board used to construct it took some level of damage - but the rest of the blind  amazingly survived.  The back left corner post was driven down about 2" but the structure is still otherwise sound.

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The shingle layer - somehow- didn't get pierced and there's almost no water damage on the inside.


We went into town and bought a dewalt 20v pole saw and using only a single 5aH battery (amazing tool! Worth way more than the $150 they sell for!)  removed most of the limbs to reduce weight/ tangle and then pulled each section off the roof one at a time with the tractor.  Unbelievable how well that pole saw worked and how efficient it was on power consumption!!!

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Roof was replaced with metal roof sheeting and the blind is now dried in and will be cleaned out, sealed against insects and mice/squirrels again this coming weekend.  will get some more pics on the repair when we finish the cleanup - just too wet and tired to care when we were all done.

For reference this blind is 9' to the floor and the front peak is just under 19' in the air, and had a 8x8 roof on it.





The colors were just past peak, and the rain was taking a fair ammount of the canopy down

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sure does look pretty back in the woods [beeep]

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went over to quickly tack some more insulation into my deer shack to find this mess inside

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appears my door upper/lower corner latches came loose and a squirrel somehow wedged himself in and got trapped.  EVERYTHING was on the floor - including the heater and latched storage tote - not to mention all the insulation i installed last year on the lower half of the walls
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thankfully karma hit him like a truck tire and he got his tail stuck in the door frame trying to excape and i kicked what was left of his bones/fur off the back steps with my boot.

didn't have the cleanup supplies necessary to deal with it, and we were wiped from getting that tree off the other blind so i'm leaving it for this coming weekend.


Needless to say - the firewood got put in the back  burner, but we left the trailer there and intend to go back up this weekend for round 2...
 
Originally Posted By: tripod3Looks like a full time maintenance job.

with this many of them... it can be. we do several repairs/upgrades a year and every few years replace a badly weathered one or do a major overhaul on one.

like anything else - its a labor of love.


we've had them out on the fields for so long at this point - the oldest one is approaching 30 years now... i killed my first buck in it when i was 14 and i'm 43 now - that its just something that gets put on the to-do list every year.

normally we dont have to emergency replace roofs though lol

this is also the worst rodent problem i've had in mine since its been out there in the woods. usually just a mouse nest or two. the only other really bad squirrel issue we had was a couple years ago when one setup shop and decided to chew thru over a foot of pinecones next to the spruces to get to the pine nuts. we shoveled the pinecone duff and cobs out of that one lol

every once in a while a coon will setup shop and make a mess... my brother had the bottom 12 or so inches torn off his blind door this summer out in the middle of the cornfield.
 
I been helping my gunsmith keep his feeders up and running. He's in his 80's and a few weeks ago fell out of the back of his truck and a 50 pound bag of corn landed on his knee. Looking at the forage, you can sure see "Deer Season" is in the air. Love the fall season and the colors of the trees changing.

I thought all those trees were just some "Natural Camo" Plant One!! It sucks when tree's fall and tear up stuff. Glad you got it fixed up!!
 
Went back North and treated my truck like a proper truck for the weekend.

Dad picked massive standing dead ash and two more leaners that needed to be drug out to load up some firewood for my cousin.

We loaded (6) 14' main trunk sections around 12" with the largest topping out at 15" diameter, with 4 reasonable sized branches also at 14' long. We figure >2k but
 
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