How to Customize Your Boat for Hunting Conditions

If you want to take your boat out for a successful hunting expedition, you are going to need to make some fairly minor modifications to get it ready. While you may think that you can just take your boat out onto the lake or swamp and shoot ducks or deer, the animals are smarter than you think, so an unmodified boat might not cut it. Customizing a boat for hunting conditions is not terribly expensive, but it is not exactly cheap either. There are basically three modifications you have to make to your boat, and they are all about stealth and camouflage.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Boat hull
• Motor or oars
• Blind
• Decoys and a place to store them
• Gun Holder
• Additional camouflage

1. Consider the paint job of the hull. While the colors of the lake and the banks will vary throughout the year and with location, a simple camouflage paint job should get you through. Many boats designed for hunting and fishing come with a camouflage paint job. If you need to have your boat painted, expect to pay anywhere from forty to one hundred and forty dollars a gallon for paint, plus the labor involved. It may be cheaper just to buy a new hull.
2. Install a blind. Like an army scout sniper, you want to keep yourself as invisible as possible. Blinds come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They are fairly simple to install, and just about anyone should be able to bolt one on. Some models do not even have to be completely attached; they just stand up in the boat. A full blind will cost between five hundred and a thousand dollars, depending on the retailer. Augment your blind with attachments, such as fake grass or sticks. Measure your boat before you order your blind.
3. Add a seat. While a seat is not entirely necessary, it can certainly make quite a difference in your comfort as you wait for the game to appear. There are hundreds of types of seats available, from simple planks to wonderful, swiveling, full backed chairs. You are only limited by your specific criteria and your wallet.
4. It is a good idea to maximize your hull space so that you and your hunting partners can move around. Consider installing space saving devices such as bags and other containers that hang outside of the hull. These bags can hold your catch, decoys and other hunting tools.

Tips & Warnings

• After you make the conversions, leave your boat out in the elements for a while to allow the manufacturing smells to dissipate.
• Keep a lot of room on your boat, for both safety and convenience.