by Jack Seville
In the dark, you paddle quietly. A hint of the sun’s rising shows on the horizon and water laps the side of your boat. Before you sits your Labrador, his ears alert. Between you and him lies a pile of decoys. You are on your way to one of life’s real pleasures . . . a morning of duck shooting. You set out the decoys and hide the boat amongst some reeds, camouflaging it. Then you arrange your shooting gear and hunker down below the gunwale with the Lab to wait for the arrival of the ducks. Every part of this experience is exhilarating. But perhaps most filled with anticipation of all the day’s events is the trip out in the duck boat. The truth is, however, that few duck hunters have a duck boat. Most think one too expensive to own or too heavy to carry or too complicated to build or . . . too something. Too many duck hunters settle for the best they can do from the near shore and never try to get out where the water is and the hunting’s at its best. Which is where this boat comes in. It's a design that solves the problems a duck hunter sometimes has with his duck boat. Copied from craft used by veteran hunters on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, the boat has several things that recommend it. First, AquaDuck it can be built inexpensively. Secondly, the boat isn’t awkward. Designed to hold one man plus one dog plus gear, she can be moved about by one man and carried on the top of a car. And thirdly, the boat makes an easy project to put together. Essentially an oblong box with a rocker bottom, construction materials are mostly two sheets of 1/4-in. plywood and a quantity of 1-in, lumber. The hull is compartmentalized into three watertight chambers, and there’s not a difficult curve in the craft. As a boat, she demonstrates a nice design. She can be rowed or poled with an oar, or powered by a 2- or 3-hp outboard, or towed to her station by another boat. The wide stance and flat bottom give her good stability—you can stand up on one of the side decks or the forward deck and not tip over. Yet she ranks high in maneuverability. And as a duck blind, the boat offers some thoughtful features. One of these is the grass rail that surrounds the cockpit and provides a place to stuff grass and reeds to make good camouflage. Ahd another is the cockpit itself, which is shallow but with a coaming all around. In use, you lie in the cockpit with feet at the transom and gun pointed aft. The coaming slants down toward the stern to give an unobstructed view.
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