Redneck Buck Palace Platinum 360 Degree 6x6 Blind

 Review Date: April 2020

When I purchased my original 61 acres of hunting land in 2014 (see the history of my land management project here) it had been logged about 10 years before and there weren’t many trees suitable for hanging a stand. There were oaks and maples every 20 yards or so, but they were only about 10 inches in diameter - if you could put up a tree stand, you would be very exposed and deer could easily spot you, especially when drawing your bow. There were some large trees left standing along the property line in various places, so I designed small food plots around several of them where the soil was suitable, and hung stands in those trees. In the middle of that original parcel I cleared a few acres and established a bigger plot that I call Big Clover. That field draws deer, and several doe groups and buck bachelor groups bed in close proximity, but there was no way to hunt it or get in and out without spooking them.

In 2018 I put a camera at the top of the central ridge to help the wireless signal connect with the chain of my Cuddelink cameras, and I unexpectedly got photos of some really nice bucks moving around during daytime. Unfortunately I couldn’t hunt up on the ridge because of the lack of trees and cover - I was finally getting daylight photos of mature bucks, but I couldn’t hunt them and it was killing me!

Over the winter I thought about my options for hunting the ridge, and it seemed that my best choice would be to put a box blind up top - the same general area I had put the camera. While I was at it, I thought it would make sense to build a food plot at the east end of Big Clover and put another box blind there. Elevated box blinds allow hunting when the weather turns nasty, so it would be great to have some options for rainy or snowy days.

Jeffrey Hintz, my friend in Wisconsin who is equally obsessed with managing land for whitetail deer, is a fan of box blinds because they give his kids a chance to hunt with crossbows or rifles. Multiple people can hunt from the same blind, they can move around more, not be as careful with noise and scent, and still be effective hunters. I looked at the Internet reviews of various blinds and I asked Jeffrey what he thought. Based on all the information I gathered, it looked like the Redneck brand was top shelf, and their Buck Palace model would be a good fit for my needs.

I am 6 foot 3 inches, so I wanted to be sure that I would have enough room to comfortably draw my bow. The Buck Palace is six feet square and has vertical windows on each corner, in addition to horizontal windows in each wall, so a tall bowhunter has options to comfortably shoot in every direction. Redneck also makes 5, 10, and 15-foot steel towers that get the blind up off the ground, out of a deer’s line of sight. There are no retail stores in my area that stock Redneck blinds, so I ordered two Buck Palace blinds direct from the company, along with two 10-foot towers. Two blinds, two towers, two curtain systems and bow hangers, shipping, and tax cost $7,400.

The company was great to deal with and, within a few weeks, I was arranging to have their driver Bud drop off the blinds and towers at my farm. The blinds come fully assembled, but the tower stands are just a lot of pieces of metal in a box, so the real work involved in putting up a Redneck blind is bolting together the tower stand. Like any complex assembly project there is a learning curve - the second tower went together a lot faster than the first. Hintz warned me about this, and recommended using a lightweight impact wrench to bolt the towers together. The impact wrench was a huge help!

One important decision I had to make upfront was whether to assemble everything and then tilt it up into position, or to put the tower in-place and then set the blind on-top. Redneck says to put it all together and then tilt the whole thing up into position, but I decided to follow Hintz’s advice and do it in two stages. The places I was locating the two blinds made the tilt-up method difficult, and I didn’t have four burly friends readily available to do the tilting.

Ok, I would be placing the tower and then setting the blind on top with my tractor, but I wasn’t sure the tractor could reach that high. I measured my tractor with the bucket fully extended and found that I would be short by a foot or so. The solution was to put a couple pallets under the blind, and dig the tower into the dirt by a foot or so. The result was a nine-foot tower, and that was plenty high for me.

I assembled the tower stands in the barn and then transported them out to their locations with the tractor. I used my backhoe to dig the areas where the stands would go, eyeballing how level they are and that they would be down about a foot. I then used the tractor to tilt the towers into position, and a carpenter’s level to adjust their footings to be level - so far so good. The blinds would be next.

I set the first Buck Palace blind on two pallets, brought the tractor in with pallet forks dogged onto the bucket, and secured everything with ropes and a ratchet-strap. I was focused on keeping the blind securely in place but if you look at the photos, you’ll see that one rope runs through the arms of the tractor’s loader - that was a huge mistake because as I lifted the blind up into position, I had to drop the angle of the bucket and that tightened the rope and almost ruined the blind. My nightmare going into this had been to drop the blind off the bucket, but in fact I almost broke the windows of the blind by squeezing it with the rope. My son Haven was helping me and luckily we figured out what was happening and corrected it before it was too late.

The plan worked, and the second blind was placed with no problems. Inside the blinds was a very strong fiberglass resin chemical smell, but I left the doors and windows open when the blinds were in the barn and the smell dissipated after a few weeks. I am impressed with the quality of everything that I’ve purchased from Redneck, as well as their customer service - the delivery was great and, when I reported that their shipping straps left indentations in the blinds, they were very responsive and sent me a couple chairs to make me feel better.

The towers are rugged, and the stairs are designed to be put under tension to eliminate squeaks when you’re climbing. The floor is padded and carpeted to deaden sound. The walls are covered with acoustic foam soundproofing. The windows are solid and are raised silently.

I located one blind at the trail junction where I’d had a couple mature bucks on camera in 2018. I hinge-cut the trees on either side of the blind to create a funnel that I hoped would keep the deer from bedding or traveling to the east of the junction and force them to walk around upwind of the blind. To facilitate and direct deer travel, I cut north/south trails on the west side of the hinge-cut barrier, connecting the trails to the Ledges food plot on the north and Big Clover on the south. I built a water hole in front of the blind with a 110 gallon livestock tank, cleared shooting lanes, and put up a camera.

All that activity probably had an effect - I didn’t get many deer on camera at that location in 2019 and, because I wasn’t seeing deer, I never bothered to hunt out of that blind. I plan to move the blind to the west end of the Big Field in 2020.

The other Redneck Buck Palace is at the east end of Big Clover, nestled into the tree line. The section of Big Clover right in front of the blind had never been cultivated, so I cleared it, harrowed the ground, mixed in several loads of cow manure, and planted it with Whitetail Institute Pure Attraction. A couple trails converge by that new food plot, and I hinge-cut barriers around it to keep deer from bedding and traveling behind the blind.

I was getting some deer activity on camera in the fall of 2019, so I hunted the Big Clover Redneck a couple times. I think that the access is good - I park my QuietKat in the woods about 300 yards away downwind and come in on a trail that should be far enough away from any bedded or feeding deer. I only saw one deer from that blind while hunting last year. I was opening a window and the clip that secures it made a sound when I accidentally let it go - immediately a nice buck snapped his head up 100 yards away up-wind where he’d been feeding on clover behind a berm. He probably figured that something was wrong, because he went back into the bedding area to his south.

The Redneck Buck Palace is sturdy, quiet, comfortable, and everything I would expect from a top-of-the-line elevated box blind. It’s certainly big enough for a tall bowhunter - the only question I have is how it will be to shoot out of one of the horizontal windows. The vertical windows are fine for bow hunting, but the horizontal windows seem to be a bit too high for a seated shot, and maybe too low for standing. And the windows will fog up on a cold day - I use a small propane heater to make the blind toasty warm, but the condensation on the windows is handled by a small squeegee.

As you can see by the cost I paid, these are expensive blinds, but I can’t imagine anyone being truly disappointed by a Redneck Buck Palace. I’m not yet really loving hunting from a blind, but give me time. So far I’d rather be in a well concealed tree stand, able to hear and see everything going on in all directions around me, but sometime in the not too distant future I think it will all come together. I’ll be hunting in a place that I couldn’t otherwise hunt, or the day will be so nasty I’d otherwise be sitting in front of the fire, and a nice buck will stroll in front of my blind, giving me a memory that will last a lifetime.

UPDATE MARCH 2022:

In the past two years I’ve hunted many times from my Rednecks, moved them to new locations, repositioned them for better shot options, and then finally harvested my first buck. Their quality continues to be great, and they are holding-up well to normal wear and tear (though you sure can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time when you work with a backhoe too close to the steel tower frames!). They are finally in the right position, and I now know when and how to hunt from them.

Redneck Two is positioned just back from my Big Field on the north side at a gap in the berm. There are good trees here for a tree stand, but the wind would be a problem. The deer approach the gap from the north, west, and east, so they would smell me if the wind was out of the south or west. The field is directly to the south, and they are often already in the field before approaching the gap, so they would smell me if the wind is out of the north. The Redneck allows me to come-in during the day when the wind is out of the south, hunt until dark with the windows closed so nothing smells me, and then leave in the dark when the deer are upwind in the field.

This is a great strategy, but that blind is in full sun during the entire day, so a sunny warm day in the early season is a problem. The blind will get so warm that there is nothing you can do to keep from sweating. When it is cooler outside it will still get so warm that pants and boots need to go! Underwear hunts are common. I didn’t hunt there during the early season in 2021, but I wasn’t getting any trophy bucks on camera there either. I suppose that if I had a special buck regularly coming by there, and it was a warm and sunny day, I would just have to hunt in shorts and tee shirt and let the sweat flow!

I have learned that shooting through the horizontal windows is hard with a bow - nearly impossible for me because of my height and chair configuration. I’m too low for the window when sitting, and too tall when standing. The issue when sitting is that I can barely aim at a deer through the bottom of the open window because of the shot angle and the height of the chair. A bow site is above your arrow so the arrow might actually shoot into the bottom edge of the window frame. I hate to think of the consequences of shooting point-blank into fiberglass with a carbon arrow in an enclosed space. When standing, I would have to bend my knees past the point of being comfortable and hold it while I aimed, all during the short heart-pounding seconds that a buck would give me when passing in front of the blind.

Maybe a different chair would work, like a bar stool, but that would be less comforable. Instead, I have repositioned the blind so the vertical corner windows will give me all the room I need. This past November I was hunting from Redneck Two when a nine-point buck walked by. He followed the plan perfectly, and I was able to easily make the shot through the corner window. To read about that hunt, click on this link: 2021 Land Management.