Who, what, when and where of duck boats

Matt Vanderpan

Matt Vanderpan

Active member
Hey guys I was wondering if there was a good book/books out there that spells out the W's of duckboats. I see the pictures that get posted and read the stories that are being told but feel a bit lost since I have no idea the difference between a sneakboat and a scull boat or what a devlin, barnegat, broadbill, black brant and so on are. Is there a written history of traditional duck boats out there? I would like to know where they originated, who made them famous or infamous, what were they made of prior to plywood and epoxy???.....and a hundred other questions. I have a collection of books on waterfowl and wildfowl hunting and and so on, but was wondering if there were any about duckboats. If any of you have a good book or books about what I am looking for, I am more than willing to pay the shipping if I could borrow the book to read.
 
Matt,go into the main index at the top of the page and scroll down to duckboat specs and this will give you some insight on the types of duck boats that have been developed for various types of hunting.There is no perfect boat that will cover all types of waterfown hunting.You can never have enough boats.Many will agree,I'm sure.It's a start.
 
I think that this site is the closest thing to what you are looking for!
Like Joe suggested, if you go to the home page & look in the other pages & indexes, there is a virtual plethora of information on duck boats. I cant think of any book that has this much information.
 
Mystic Seaport has a book of sneak box plans and I think they have some history in it.

John Gardners "classic small watercraft" contains the history and construction methods of many old styles of boats including the sneak box. This has to editions and the most current version has both together. Amazon carries them.
 
If you can find a copy of "Successful Waterfowling" by Zack Taylor, it has a great section on different duckboats. In fact that's my standard answer when anybody wants a book about ANYTHING waterfowl related.

Kirk
 
Want to read a great book free? http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext...gine what it would have been like back then.
 
Here is a quote from a section of "Four Months in a Sneak Box" that made me chuckle to myself the first time I read it.

"The vices[/url] and virtues of the mosquito may be summed up in a few words, always remembering that it is the FEMALE, and not the MALE, to whom humanity is indebted for lessons of patience. The female mosquito deposits about three hundred eggs, nearly the shape of a grain of wheat, arranging and gluing them perpendicularly side by side, until the whole resembles a solid, canoe-like body, which floats about on the surface of the water. Press this little boat of eggs deep into the water, and its buoyancy causes it to rise immediately to the surface, where it maintains its true position of a well-ballasted craft, right side up. The warmth of the sun, tempered with the moisture of the water, soon hatches the eggs, and the larva, as wigglers or wrigglers, descend to the bottom of the quiet pool, and feed upon the decaying vegetable matter. It moves actively through the stagnant water in its passage to the surface, aerifying it, and at the same time doing faithfully its work as scavenger by consuming vegetable germs and putrefying matter. Professor G. F. Sanborn, and other leading American entomologists, assert that the mosquito saves from twenty-five to forty per cent. in our death-list among those who are exposed to malarial influences."


There are other similar gems of the late 19th century in there. Well worth reading for both the historical aspects and the entertainment.
 
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You can find good reading and pictures in some of the older decoy books. The outlaw gunner by harry walsh , gunning the chesapeake by roy walsh, chesapeake bay decoys by crow haven publishers, gunners paradise by jane townsend.
 
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