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    In the old days, during turkey season, I would try to disguise my presence by hiding behind a rose bush, usually sitting on a wet tree stump. Along with getting poked with thorns from the rose bushes, I would be wet and cold. This made for a generally unpleasant experience. Eventually, I broke down and bought a pop-up turkey blind. This makes hunting much more comfortable, and a person can move around a bit without being spotted by the turkeys.

   I decided to set up my blind on Wednesday as I was planning to go hunting on Thursday morning. I have been known to wait until the morning I am going hunting to set up the blind but doing that in the darkness of the early morning is not as easy as readying everything in the daylight prior to hunting morning.

   I loaded my blind, chair, tent stakes and hammer in the side-by-side, told my wife I would be back in a few minutes and headed for the thousand-yard bench. This is an area in the timber where two trails meet and has a clearing surrounded by old oak trees. Turkeys like to roost in these oaks and the gobblers will strut along the trails doing their mating dance. I have had good luck hunting this area for several years.

   Upon arrival, I pulled out the blind to set it up. It is a very simple pop-up tent with fiberglass poles to hold it rigid. The easiest way I have found to set it up is to put the tent over my head and pop the fiberglass braces out. With two pops of the braces, a person is done. That is the way it is supposed to work and always has in the past. On this afternoon, the one side popped out and the other side went sideways and collapsed. The inside of the blind is dark even on a bright day. I could not see what was wrong. I struggled with it, trying several more times to pop it out. I finally collapsed the first side and tried popping out the second one first. This caused me to get my feet tangled in the tie down ropes and fall on the ground inside the totally collapsed blind. After extricating myself from the jumble of fiberglass rods, tie-down ropes, and canvas, I decided to turn the tent inside out to see if I could determine the problem. I could not. By the time I got it right side out again, I had a real mess. I was finally able to pop out the one side, but the other side was askew with one fiberglass rod sticking out of a window and two others crossed. It was standing upright with a considerable sag on one side but would function. I staked it down and called it close enough. I was sure my wife was ready to send out a search party since my few minutes absence had drawn out to over an hour.

   The next morning, I made my way to my sorry looking turkey blind in the darkness. It was sagging on one side but still functional. I drank coffee and ate granola bars while waiting for daylight. Deer, squirrels, and rabbits wandered by as dawn broke. I could hear turkeys gobbling up and down the valley, but none near me. I am not sure why there were no turkeys in the timber near me but it could have something to do with a person wrestling a tent looking like a Three Stooges routine on the prior afternoon.

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