Layout Boat

I had heard of layout boats and seen pictures of them, but had never hunted from one. When I started hunting with Morris Whitfield I came to find out that he had a 2-man layout boat. He had hunted with a guide on Mitchell Bay and had a layout boat built by the guide after the season. Drove all the way up there to pick it up. Then when he got it back down here, most guys weren't interested in hunting from it for one reason or the other. I eventually bought the boat from Whit and never hunted from it. I gave it away a year or so ago with the deal that the new owner would invite me to hunt with him. I don't think he got around to hunting from it all season. The problem with that big layout boat was that you had to trailer it to wherever you were hunting, then tow it behind your boat. Very seldom do I have a big enough crowd of hunting partners to be able to do that. You also want your partners to be good enough sailors to operate the tender when you are in the layout boat. I don't often have that luxury. So I let it go in hopes that the new owner could get some use out of it and that maybe I'd get a chance to hunt it again. But the few times I hunted from the boat with Whitfield it was a killing machine.

We shot Scoter from it for a couple seasons. Scoter aren't all that bright in the first place, and the layout boat almost made it a slaughter instead of a hunt. We used 26 inch barrels with Improved Cylinder chokes and still had to be careful not to shoot the birds up too badly. The ducks literally came within arms reach of the boat. We shot a limit every time we hunted it and with my Dad to run the tender it worked out great. Whit was left-handed so it made for a perfect shooting situation. We set the decoys in a teardrop pattern directly astern of the boat and each of us just shot on our side.

One day we had a bit of a fiasco. Steel shot had become mandatory and we were cheating a little. Anyhow, we were laying there in the boat when Dad radioed us and said a 'strange' boat was coming our way. Didn't look too strange to me, but Whit was always in a turmoil with the local Game Warden and he thought it was the "man" and told me to get rid of my lead shells. I had only taken a few lead reloads with me so it wasn't that big of a deal. Until, in the process of unloading my 870 I had a shell run back under the shell lifter and jam my whole gun. No way to get it out except to disassemble the gun. All you 870 shooters know what I'm talking about. I can take my 870 apart pretty quickly, but laying on your back in a pitching layout boat increases the difficulty level just a little. I got it cleared before the 'strange' boat got there. Whit didn't have any trouble getting rid of his lead shells. He pitched 4 full boxes of expensive shells over the side.

The 'strange' boat turned out to be a couple old fishermen who came to see what the strange looking boat we were in was all about. That made Whit so mad that he called for Dad to come pick him up and he chased the old men clear to Pamlico Point hollering and cursing at them. Sort of overkill. Old "poacher Whit" was just mad about throwing $50 worth of shells over the side.

I see little 1-man layout boats all the time now and the hunters seem to love them. I may hunt that way again someday, because it was fun. But all the work involved makes it a bit much when you have a nice big stake blind to hunt from.