How to Camouflage a Duck Hunting Boat

There are many ways you can take your duck hunting game to the next level, however, the very best thing you can do is spend time working on your boat to camouflage it and turn it into a suitable blind.

Changing your decoys and adjusting the call which you use are all great tactics, but when ducks keep disappearing at the last minute and you miss your shot, then the chances are that the duck can see you. They are far from being stupid animals and will flee at the earliest sign that something is up, and by not correctly concealing yourself by camouflaging your boat you are going to miss out on success. If you're looking for some advice on how to hunt waterfowl from a duck hunting boat, then check here.

Your Boat Can Be Your Biggest Downfall

Ducks which are familiar with a particular area will know when what seems to be an island has shown up overnight, and they will avoid it. Why? Because, like we said, they are not stupid animals!

Although camouflaging your boat helps you appear less conspicuous, it does not mean that you can go floating around in the middle of a lake and expect to rake in piles of duck. You have to be careful with your positioning and only hunt from one location for a short amount of time. Staying as far away as possible from the target but being close enough to still have a perfect shot is by far your biggest challenge, but it’s something which needs to be done.

Concealing a Duck Hunting Boat

The end-goal of camouflaging your duck hunting boat is making it look like it’s part of the vegetation. To that end, you want to be decorating and painting it in a way which helps you blend in with reeds, pieces of terrain and the water.

Lots of products are available online to help you do this, such as purpose-made stencils which look like marsh grasses and cattails. If you don’t want to invest in stencils, then you can always go out and get the real thing, stick them to your boat and just spray paint over them!

Using this combination of marsh grass and cattail-type pattern is the best for duck hunting boats, however, you can also opt for creating random wavy shapes on your boat too. The key to camouflaging properly is not using straight and sharp-edged lines or shapes which stand out.

For water-based hunting, there are only a few color schemes which will help conceal it properly. Stick to more earthy tones (greens and browns in different shades, especially deep greens and tan browns.)

Ultimately, the key to picking a color scheme is to think about where you are going to be using your boat. On an open lake without much vegetation then it might be harder, however, if your hunting area has lots of vegetation then it is usually easier to decorate your boat in a way which will provide the best level of concealment.

Don’t go crazy with spray paint, however. The best strategy is to start off with a base color of deep green and then break that big block of green up by incorporating the rest of your colors.

For added benefit, purchase faux vegetation and netting which you can throw over your boat once it’s completed which will help break up the paintwork and add more depths of shape to your boat’s design. Although camo painting is good, it’s still going to be easy to determine the unnatural shape of your boat unless you add in a way to break it up.

If you have any accessories in the boat, then you should camouflage these too, including your rifle! There are lots of decals and camouflaged designs you can apply to your hunting tools to prevent them from reflecting any lighting and being seen by ducks.