This year winter seems to be tip toeing through northern Minnesota. My snowblower still has a full tank of gas. My heating bill is only two figures, and the typical cold snap is lasting hours rather than days.

While this makes many smile, my camera and I are anxiously awaiting the inevitable big dump of snow. You see, last winter my friend Sparky Stensaas and I made some wonderful images from a quinzee photo blind.  And without snow, I’m without a quinzhee.

Historically quinzhees were used by Native Americans as temporary hunting shelters. While not as sturdy as an igloo, the quinzhee can be built in a manner of hours, making for quick shelter when on the move tracking game.

Construction is pretty straight forward. Make a sufficiently large pile of snow (ours was about 5 feet high and 10 feet around). Wait for several hours for the snow to compress and setup before returning to dig out the center.  To ensure the quinzhee walls remain adequately thick, place sticks 10-12″ into the snow pile to serve as guides as you excavate. With a little sweat equity, you have a blind that keeps you out of the wind, is relatively warm, and muffles sound.

Placing your quinzhee photo blind is probably the most important detail in construction.  We tried to visualize how early morning and late afternoon light would fall across the area. We also placed perches such that they provided clean backgrounds and reasonable camera to subject distances. And finally, and most importantly, all this was constructed around a road killed deer.

A perfect setup for eagles, coyotes, or even wolves. Should be easy right? Not so much.

Nikon D300, ISO 400, Nikon 600mm f/4, 1/3200 sec @ f/4

For every click of the shutter there was at least 3 hours of crouching inside a snow bank trying to keep fingers functional, viewfinders un-fogged and backsides warm. Sounds like my own little sufferfest, but funny thing is, I can’t wait to do it again.

 crow & raven  |  Nikon D300, ISO 400, Nikon 600mm f/4, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6

rough-legged hawk  |   Nikon D300, ISO 200, Nikon 600mm f/4, 1/800 sec @ f/5.6