I’m a townie who moved to the area in my late thirties and started hunting in my early fifties. First I hunted from tree stands on generous friends’ property. As I met more hunters, I was invited to hunt from a friend’s one-person tower stand that silently rotated to let me survey the paths to my left and right. Still, I envied those with elevated shootin’ shacks that evolved from tree stands, then left the tree behind to become clubhouses on stilts. I’d seen them peeking from the edge of fields. I’d heard stories about elaborate ones and imagined them being full of overly masculine and tacky knick-knacks, like when Ken takes over Barbie’s Dream House in the 2023 movie, making it his Mojo Dojo Casa House.

I first checked into the Hotel in 2022. It is much more understated than Ken’s fantasy. Like any good hotel, it provides comfort, and you need to make reservations. However, it is by invitation only. When I got to know the proprietor, Roger Kingsley, he invited me to use one of his DMAP tags to kill a doe on his farm and “booked” me an afternoon slot. The Hotel is about eight hundred yards from the house; the floor is sixteen feet high. I climbed up to the small back deck, flipped the silent wooden latch, and pulled the antler handle to reveal a carpeted 36-square-foot room holding two padded office chairs tucked up to a shooting bench under a double window. Roger opened the right window because I’m a left-handed shooter, and stacked pieces of wood and a sandbag to customize my rifle prop. Then we waited. The wind was mostly blocked, and we could even whisper some. I got a good-sized doe that day and could still feel my toes.

Roger grew up farming this land and built the original shack in this spot because the shooting lane straight ahead was an access road to the high field where they always saw deer bedding or crossing. It was 2008, the year his family sold the cows, and he had more time to hunt. He also became a grandfather that year. The first crude structure was a test, but soon his hunch about the spot was confirmed. That structure was smaller with no plexiglass, so the only way to see was unboarding the windows. In the first ten years, he cleared six more lanes spoking out, counting the first access road as 12:00—the Dead Zone. Here his six-year-old grandson shot his first deer with a crossbow.

In 2018 he remodeled it, doubling the floor plan into what it is today. “It was inevitable that this was going to get bigger,” he says, “because I was going to be spending lots of time with the grandkids.” He claims he’s not a very talented carpenter but can get the job done. “I wanted to be able to sit here in brutal weather and still see out.” He also needed space and concealment because “kids can’t sit still.”

While hunting with his grandkids is the main motivation, Roger shares his shootin’ shacks with others like me. Last year twenty-seven folks hunted from his eleven stands scattered about, but the Hotel is the grandest and “killingest.” A sign on the wall says, “Welcome to the Hotel” and lists the amenities and rules, with his phone number underneath. A digital clock gives indoor and outdoor temps. The place is clean, with a couple tasteful wall decorations over the gun rack. Here the odds are good, and the view is exceptional. Recently he watched a ruffed grouse tell off a yearling deer who was probably getting too close to the babies. Roger’s video shows the yearling putting its head down and jumping around, causing the grouse to jump, sometimes bopping the deer in the head.

I ask him if he ever sleeps in the Hotel, because that’s what I’d be tempted to do. He looks at me like that’s silly, given he has a comfortable bed nearby and a side-by-side to get him there quick. Fair point.

I’ve never hunted with my friend, whom I’ll call Daniel Boone for his privacy, but whenever we talked hunting, he’d give me updates on his Redneck Hotel. Over the years it got higher, ’til he was toying with the idea of putting a hot tub on the roof deck. He had other shootin’ shacks on the property he and his wife bought about ten years ago, but they’d first built this as a one-level space with room to hang out and have a broad view of the valley.

When I got up the nerve to ask for a tour, he drove me to it. The bottom floor is almost the size of a single wide, and real windows with no screens face the valley field surrounded by trees. Like Roger’s, there’s no insulation or electricity. There’s a cooler at one end, with food and drinks for hunters needing to take a break, even if they’re at other stands and blinds on the property. This is the center, the heart of the hunt.

On the wall between the two main windows is a watercolor of a bobcat in the Pennsylvania hills. He hung this painting because it reminds him of growing up and hunting near Gaines with friends. His mom would give him plastic bread bags to put over his socks to keep his feet dry, and his dad gave him Sternos to warm his hands enough that he could shoot. “I thought, ‘No way my grandkids are doing that,’” he tells me. One of his grandsons shot his first deer and turkey from here. He invites some fathers with young children to bring their sons hunting. “They’re so busy. This gives them a chance to make these kinds of memories.”

At the end of the first level, he’s erected a square tower. A wooden staircase, listing to the right, leads to the second level. Boone grins, expecting my reaction, and says, “Everything is completely safe, but not completely square.” He and his grandson do most of the work, calling themselves Close Enough Construction. The second level doesn’t have room for more than the staircase opening and a narrow landing, so they decided to start using ladders. Because of that, the third level has room for a twin bed. Another ladder and we’re at the fourth level, with an easy chair bigger than the opening at the ladder. Boone likes to come here at night, listen to audiobooks until he falls asleep, then wake up at dawn to see the wildlife below.

Up one more ladder and we’re on the roof with a chest-high railing. Now I can see there are deer on the knoll behind us. He says, “To me, all this is so much more fun than hunting. I love to hunt, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t care if I shoot anything anymore.”

Seems to me these grampas are enjoying being kids again with their grandkids, whether they’re hunting or not. Boone has one shootin’ shack that his granddaughter calls her treehouse because he put all her play furniture in it when she was little.

“When we were kids, we built forts,” Roger says about himself and his brother. Then he laughs. “And boy, if we’d had this kind of thing when we were kids we definitely would have slept here!” Boone says building forts is more fun when you’re older and you can afford the materials you want.

Apparently, some grown-up Kens build their own Dream Houses. And pass those dreams down.