Who has hunted Houghton lake

Going to buy a place on Houghton lk. I'm familiar with the fishing but I've only hunted it once, years ago. How's the duck hunting? Middle grounds? North bay?

[WEEZER]

I have never hunted the actual Lake before, however I know they do really well on the divers!!!
You should also check out the deadstream marsh! I have hunted there before and there are a lot of areas to set up for the puddlers and geese.

[dux43]

I used to live in Prudenville,and hunted the middle grounds and north bay too. In fact i hunted all over the lake. This was in the early 80s so i cant speak for today. We always had a lot of "bills" and redheads on the lake back then.
As far as the area around Houghton lk., I always did best on the muskegon river between the deadstream swamp and 55.
You might want to try the dead horse swamp south of 55. It produced better than the dead stream, and it dosent get hammered nearly as hard.
Or you could go to canoe camps road and .....wait a minute I"m not going to tell you all the good places. I might want to go back this year and try it again..hehehe..

[DuckMan]

This question reminds me of an interesting conversation I had with a conservation officer a couple of years ago.

We were duck hunting in an area not too far from Long Lake in Harrison and we were checked by the officer when we hit the shore to load up...scared the heck out us with the way he just "emerged" from the foliage. We don't break any game laws but when you are in the middle of nowhere and someone is all of a sudden "just there" and starts speaking to you...it startles you.

Anyway, after he was done checking everything, my buddy asks about hunting Long Lake. My buddy has access rights, but was curious about hunting it because there are numerous homes on the lake. The officer told us that we couldn't hunt it unless we had permission from the landowner. We started asking more detailed questions and he ended up telling us that where ever we hunt on the lake, we need permission from the closest landowner.

I still don't understand that rationale. If that were the case, why can you hunt Houghton lake, Saginaw Bay or any big water without getting permission? I asked the CO if it had to do with the fact there was no DNR access site on the lake and he told me "No".

Anyone have any insight?

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DuckMan

[dux43]

Duckman
I"ve never heard of that before. I know you cant hunt within 450 ft.of a dwelling without permission and that applies to waterfowl hunting on lakes or streams too.
I"ve been checked several times over the years at the public landings on more than one lake and, have never had any C.O. tell me anything like that.
On a private lk.I guess you have to have permission from someone or you would be trespassing in gaining access.
Or maybe I"ve been violating for the past 30 yrs. That would prove interesting in court being that 2 of my hunting buddies are state troopers.

dux43, I've hunted deadstream the last two openers and your right, alot of ducks but also alot of SKYBUSTERS!!! Thanks for the other info.