BUCKS BY BOAT

Canoeing

Editor's Note: When you hunt with a boat, you can reach remote areas where other hunters don't hunt, leave little or no human odor as you go to your stand site and have a quick, easy and efficient way of getting any buck you take out of the woods without much dragging. If you decide to hunt using a boat or a canoe, you drastically can increase your odds for finding more bucks and for taking bigger bucks each season. You also can enter the woods silently.

I particularly enjoy canoeing to bucks, but the canoe has two serious drawbacks. Because it has no keel, the canoe doesn't have the stability on the water or the safety that a johnboat or a two-man fishing boat does. If the hunters in a canoe, the one in the front or the back, lacks experience, then more than likely one of them will tip over the canoe. I know because I've tipped a canoe over several times. Always wear a life jacket when hunting from a boat or a canoe, and take a dry bag with a towel, an extra change of clothes, an extra pair of boots and some waterproof matches with you in a waterproof bag like canoers use. Although I've never had to use my extra clothes, I feel about that equipment the same way I do a life preserver. If you don't have to use a life preserver or the equipment in the dry bag, you win. If you need the life preserver and the equipment in the dry bag, you still win. However, if you don't have either, you can lose big time. The boat also gives me an easy and quiet way to get tree stands in and out of the woods. Too, if I take a deer, I can get that deer from the deep woods back to my vehicle without much effort or trouble.

TOMORROW: THE TRUISM FOR TAKING BIG BUCKS OR LIVING A TROPHY LIFE