Lee McManus
My name is Lee McManus and I live in the heart of the "Duck Factory", South Dakota. I am 51 years old and killed my first duck at age 10. I have been addicted to waterfowling ever since. My family has lived in South Dakota for over a hundred years and each generation has been waterfowlers. My son is the fifth generation of our family to gun our prairie potholes and sloughs, something I'm VERY proud of and brag about a lot. The reason I mention all of this is to give you a sense of how deeply imbedded this sport is in my heart.
About ten years ago a friend brought me a copy of Small Boat Journal (SBJ) and pointed out the article about Sam Devlin's Black Brant (see links on the left bar). Although we had boat hunted some, in jon boats and small V-hulls, we never needed to do much of it because we just had so many other ways of hunting. The boat hunting I'd done wasn't anything special and did not offer any particular advantage over wade-in, field or pass shooting hunts (except for the "boot-sucking" issue). But, I'd always been enamored with the stories of the old market hunters and their water rigs, and the magic it added to the sport. I also thought their boats were just plain cool...especially the Barnegat type boats. Add to that the ability of being able to get into any water and hunt low, I was pretty intrigued with the idea of that type of gunning. Sam's design definitely got my attention.
I called Sam, we talked, and I ordered some plans...then I sat on them for ten years (just always seemed to be something that got in the way)...but at the end of every season I always said "next year".
So, this past year with 50 year old legs under me, I got to thinking pretty seriously about the project. The thing that got me off the dime, though, was a late season hunt in a flooded oxbow of a small river. The Mallards were stacked up serious in that spot and really wanted to stay there. We flushed them out without shooting into them (a trick we often use... generally after about 20 minutes they'll start to trickle back and you can onesy-twosy your limit) and got ready for the come-back shoot. The only problem was that there was only about ten inches of very sparse cover above the foot deep water in that hole. The ducks would cup up without even circling, drop in, then flare at about 70 yards...very frustrating. I told Erin, my son, that I've finally found the trigger that's gonna make me build that "low boat".
I called Sam back, told him we'd talked about 10 years ago and I'd never gotten around to building the boat, and was there anything new I needed to know. After he got up off the floor, I'm sure, we had a nice conversation about what was new and what I should be doing. He also mentioned this page...one of the truly luckiest days of my waterfowling life. To make a long story short, we agreed that the Black Brant III would be the best choice for my needs and hunting conditions. The following shots show the result of the effort. I have not included any construction shots as that has been more than adequetly covered on Eric's construction page.
