Belly boat?

Roadkillwarrior · 06-19-2007, 05:12 PM

I read a article about this guy who hunts flooded river bottoms by useing a "belly boat", kinda of like an inner tube that has a harness that keeps you from falling through. I found somthing like this on Cabelas that is used for fishing and I think Im going to try it. There are alot of places that I hunt that are to deep to stand where alot of ducks like to congrigate when are river bottoms are flooded. Dont need a dog neither, just swim out and get it. Any one else heard of this or tried it?

KonaBoy · 06-19-2007, 08:17 PM

I've done it a few times. I just used an old transport inner-tube with a home-made harness. Only hard part is getting to where you wanna go, but wear flippers, and you'll get there. Definetly a different experience. Since my tube was black, I made a skirt out of old dirty burlap just to cover to shiny blackness. I found the ducks came in closer, I guess I just looked like a chunk of dirt or something. Any other questions feel free to ask.

SwampTHING · 06-22-2007, 10:26 AM

theyre tough too control.. you will end up going backwards into the area you want to be in,, not the best way too sneak up on anything. We have used them a bit.. best situation we used them for when birds kept landing right along side a lily pad mass. we put a couple of them just inside the mass and shot the birds that were landing on the outer edges. If your in a situation where you cant touch bottom,, they will throw you back a bit when you pull the trigger.

TEmbry · 06-22-2007, 03:44 PM

sounds like it could be challenging, but in some cases rewarding. i personally dont have a use for one, or id look into it. everywhere i hunt i can either take my 15 foot jon boat (rivers and lakes) or else touch bottom in my waders (flooded fields, streams, creeks, ponds). if i had a situation in between where i needed something to float on, but smaller than my boat, i would probably look into riggin up something like this. good luck with this. and just think, only 3 more months till the september wood duck and teal season. 4 till goose season, at least around here. CANT WAIT!

Colorado Luckydog · 06-22-2007, 07:33 PM

We used a belly boat to pick up ducks, before we had dogs. I'm not sure I would want to shoot out of one though. I would sure take the advice of using flippers. After we lost one of ours it was comical to watch us pick up ducks!

Roadkillwarrior · 06-23-2007, 06:36 AM

Hey, Maybe I can hook a trolling motor up to it!!!-lol. The flipper Idea sounds pretty good. I bet you can hardly walk after kicking your legs to get around with waders on.