I have been designing, building, and hunting with my own duck hunting boats for more than 20 years now and when the request came along for a bigger Sneak Box-type boat that could hunt 3 hunters with dogs and gear, I leapt on the opportunity. This was from a simple point of view, an enlarging of many boats that I had done before but with a couple of extra twists that would make her hunt more effectively with such a crowd of hunters. It was important to have a boat with a big enough cockpit to handle the shooters but was also important to hold the draft or depth of the boat down to a minimum to allow taking her into the shallows. I wanted to use enough power to plane the boat with her full load of hunters and gear and still keep as low of a profile as possible to almost allow the Scaup to be used as a layout boat for low-blind hunting conditions.

This boat can carry more than 120 decoys and there is room believe it or not to hunt up to 3 hunters and a dog to pick up downed birds. The cockpit opening is almost nine and a half feet long and more than 4 feet wide. But yet there is enough side deck as to allow the boat to be grassed out and concealed. From coast to coast this is the finest and most concealable 3-person boat going. — Sam Devlin

The Scaup 16 is available in study and full construction plans.

The Scaup is also available in an 18-foot version with study and construction plans. Bring two dogs!