The beauty of small boats is that you can hunt where motorheads fear to tread. No offense intended to the many good hunters who use them, but big motor boats seem to carry most of the skybusters, too.

Quietly poling a sneak boat through rice and rushes before dawn, hearing quacking on the water, unseen birds rising into the dark sky and whistling overhead - to me, that's a quintessential experience of duck hunting that the motorheads miss.

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