I got tired of fighting it. Shortly after buying the property I identified a great spot to put a tower blind for firearms hunting, and possibly even archery or crossbow hunting. Not wanting to drop a crazy amount of money on a big name hard-sided blind, I found a recipe for a durable wooden tower and took advantage of my industry discount to purchase a Redneck soft-sided Ghillie Blind to put on top of it. It worked great for two years, but by year three it was showing signs of wearing out. I had just started looking for a replacement cover when some nasty thunderstorms hit the area just before the start of turkey season. I didn’t think much of it at the time because the blind had withstood several storms and high winds, but I was in for a rude awakening.
On the opening day of turkey season, my friend Mike Groman and I situated ourselves in a ground blind on the opposite side of Buck Meadow. As daylight improved I started to realize I couldn’t see my blind. I was hoping it was just the angle from where I was sitting, but deep down I had a hunch this was bad. I never anchored the blind to the ground and my laziness finally came back to bite me. Long story short, Mike and I found the tower and blind thrown over the hill and totaled, which I detailed in an earlier post titled The Rebuild.
As I wrote in that article, I rebuilt the tower and had a plan to simply attach a regular pop-up blind to it for hunting season. That plan worked okay, but I didn’t love it. I had to constantly lower the blind so it didn’t get damaged by wind and I knew it wasn’t going to be a long-term solution. That’s why when I was at the 2026 Great American Outdoor Show I made it a point to visit all of the hunting blind dealers to see what they had to offer. By this point I was willing to pay more than I had, but still not the $3,000+ required to buy a higher end model. I also wanted something that I could install myself and wouldn’t cost me several hundred bucks to have shipped and placed. With all that in mind, I eventually ran into Hughes Products Company, which had several blind designs that seemed to check most of my boxes.
The model that stood out to me was the Intimidator. While I didn’t love that the floor was only four feet by four feet, the way the walls project outward gave the blind an overall spacious feeling with plenty of room to move around. I also like the simple window design and height, which allowed me to fully stand. After a good conversation with one of the owners, Mrs. Hughes, I agreed to make the purchase and planning began to have it delivered in early March. I ended up getting what I thought was a good deal at the special show price, which was about $1,600 for the blind, steel platform and tower that could extend to 10 feet high, and shipping.
The next step was to take down the wooden tower I rebuilt just last summer. It was frustrating, but I figured I could use those materials to put another blind in what I call the Pretty Woods area of the property. It only took me part of a day to get the tower down so the job wasn’t too bad. I finally got the call that the Intimidator was going to ship, and I opted to have it delivered to the XPO Logistics depot in Clearfield, PA. My dad and I made a day trip out of it driving up to get the blind, stopping for lunch, and visiting Grice Gun Shop before dropping the unit off at Horseshoe Hills. We did have to break the packaging down at the depot to get everything to fit in my Toyota Tacoma, but that was a minor frustration.
It took my dad and I three trips to get the job done, but we eventually got the Intimidator erected and anchored to the ground. We had some challenges with the instructions and part of the problem was the ones in the box didn’t match what I found online. The physical work required to build the blind was pretty easy, but being misguided is what caused the job to go longer than it should have. Some of the parts were poorly labeled or not labeled at all, and that didn’t help. Saying all that, with a little patience and persistence, we finally got the job done. It’s not perfect in some ways, but overall it’s in good shape. I imagine if we had to build a second one it would go a lot faster and easier but I’m not sure I can agree with my friend Mrs. Hughes that, “It’s really easy to install and a couple people can do it in a few hours.”
In the end you get what you pay for but now that it’s built I still feel like I got decent value. Without having hunting from it yet, I give the Intimidator and Hughes Products Company the following grades:
- Customer Service: A
- Design: B
- Material Quality: B
- Assembly Ease and Instructions: C
- Overall Value: B
To be fair, dad and I may have not followed directions in exactly the order they were given and that may have led to having to redo a few things. The very first line in the instructions did say to read the entire manual first, but who does that? Anyway, we got the thing done and once we’ve had some time to hunt from it I’ll be able to provide a deeper review.
All that’s left to do is paint the Intimidator and maybe make a few tweaks to get it just the way I want it. That’s going to have to wait a bit though because I’m a little tired of messing with it. It was a lot of time, effort, and money for something I’ll rarely use, but I guess I have the comfort of knowing it’s there when I need it. I hope this is the last story I’m writing about tower blinds for a long time.