Students at three Alabama high schools have been building hunting blinds for disabled hunters as part of a project funded by a community development committee.

The blinds, for deer and waterfowl hunters, will be set at the 240-acre Cherokee Physically Disabled Hunting Area in northwest Alabama. Three blinds will be available for disabled hunters to use in the upcoming waterfowl and deer seasons, according to Mitchell Marks, a wildlife biologist for the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, Wildlife Section. Eighteen sites for disabled hunters are located on state public hunting lands in Alabama.

A $5,000 grant from the Colbert County Community Development Committee paid for materials for the blinds. The grant was applied for by the county’s road department, according to Assistant Colbert County Engineer Jeremy Robison. The road department asked for help from students at Colbert County and Cherokee high schools and the Muscle Shoals Center for Technology.

Joel Retherford, building construction instructor at the Muscle Shoals Center for Technology, told the Florence TimesDaily in this report that about 40 students in the schools have been working on the project in carpentry classes.

“That’s the great thing about this,” Retherford told the TimesDaily. “They love it and they really enjoy getting in there on something big like this.”

Coleman Patterson, 74, has limited mobility due to hip surgery and arthritis. But he doesn’t plan to quit hunting.

“I’m not in a wheelchair, yet, knock on wood, but I’m about two steps to it,” Patterson told the newspaper. “There are a lot of people who are handicapped that like to hunt.”

Read the complete TimesDaily story here.