Buddies did it last year in Traverse city area. Ran into some psycho guy doing it too.. They did see a giant buck as well.

 

Of course this is only legal where you are floating thru land open to public hunting, like state or federal land?

 

Correct

 

 

Badass! I think I’ll be planning a trip. Just gotta find a buddy to go with me.

 

Its fun and never boring.

 

Was watching YouTube last night and there was a dude around my age doing it in the UP and it looked like a riot.

Good to see he took a wounded deer. He gets very excited and moves around a lot.

 

Man, could you imagine the bend before some big hot shot horn humpers hunt club with a river running through it. They think they got the market cornered and then some hillrods with a 30-30 comes through and tags "their" buck with a 30yr old canoe and come flannel on. You could almost hear the cries over the sound of their egos crumbling, see the tears on their sitka camo and still laughing about it when their wives are trying to pick you up at the bar later that night.

 

He did a cast and blast video on the PM river last year. He was steelhead fishing and rifle hunting at the same time. I think he did one on the Manistee river as well. He even camped overnight once. Looks like fun!

 

We used to float the Muskegon to different duck hunting spots and would always jump deer, usually bucks, along the river. They would often jump up out of their beds and just stand there watching you.

 

There’s another older video of 2 guys in a canoe floating through the national forest. The guy in the back paddled while the guy up front sat with the gun. They ended up shooting a doe that was on the edge of the river.

 

I believe you could do this anywhere, not just public land, if you shoot the deer within the jurisdictional limits of the waterway. It seems just like fishing, nothing anyone can say as long as you stay in the waterway. Recovery of a shot deer that runs onto private land could definitely be a problem.

 

No you can’t. It is not just like fishing. Hunting and trapping rights belong exclusively to the riparian owner. That is not the case with fishing.

 

You can reach some good areas especially in the UP. Be badass to float in and make camp and hunt .

 

There is a very nice camping spot on a island located just south of the bottom of the Horse Race Rssapids on the Paint River.
I hunted off of that island for two years, both east and west via my canoe to paddle into spots and still hunt and call. No monster buck killed, just eaters. I did run into a pair of sourdoughs from Alaska, father/son, who had a buck down on the bank east bank and a mile to drag it to get west to the nearest woods road. I gave the dad directions on how to get their truck campter to the Wisconsin Electric campground site south of Crystal Falls to pick us up and asked him to check on my truck to make sure it hadn't been vandalized or damaged where I parked it there. His son and I paddled back to my campsite and retrieved my bone saw and cut the buck down to prepare it to load and paddled it across to the WE campsite landing.

A couple of suggestions: Gut the deer prior loading it to drop the total weight of the canoe. Cut the legs off at the joints prior loading as well, particularly if the deer is already stiff-makes loading and unloading FAR easier, as well as losing a little more weight. Get the deer as low in the boat as possible and center the load with both paddlers on board; you wil appreciate this as you break through the skim ice which reminds you just how cold the water actually is... Make sure you have a stable canoe that can handle the weight of two people and a deer and ditch sitting in the paddling seats mounted at gunnel level to paddle off you knees with your butt/hips against the face of the seats or a thwart to lower the center of gravity. I am always surprised to paddle several brands of rotomolded canoes due to their instablility and poor tracking ability since they have no keels or keelsons. Find a spot to beach the canoe and then step out to pull it further inshore, standing and stepping out is a huge mistake. Keep you hands on the gunnels and step to the side from a crouch so you can shift your weight quickly. Use your bone saw to cut the deer in half immediately behind the rib cage on a very large buck- aids in loading/unlodaing it and distributing the total load.

I paddled upstream from my campsite last year to a large landlocked oxbow inaccessible from the Forest Service road system to the northeast last year. Waaaay too mild and warm the first four days for deer to move, but the tent camping was comfortable while waiting for the weather to break and get colder. I called this buck into range a day after I saw him following a doe, yearling and fawn "train" as I was walking back to the river- way too many eyes to get in range initially.

 

Good to know

 

A houseboat as a blind??

Yowzah!

Spend a solid week on the river..

 

Quite a few years I've done it. Make sure you have plenty of public. We always case guns when floating through private.

 

I also use to wade water ways when I was more stable on my feet.

 

Always want to go down by the Ausbable near uncles place! No for a fact there's a big buck SOMEWHERE down there!... I get scared of getting stuck with 0 service. Yeah, could let family know where about I am guess would work. Hear someone yell for miles up there. If I ever make it back up I'm going to the river! Man I miss walking sometimes. Never gets at me until deer season...

 

No you can’t. It is not just like fishing. Hunting and trapping rights belong exclusively to the riparian owner. That is not the case with fishing.

NO. Very much not true. You must have legal access to the land abutting the water in order to hunt it. This is why you can't just set a waterfowl spread out wherever you want. Property owners have riparian rights.

Quite a few years I've done it. Make sure you have plenty of public. We always case guns when floating through private.

I've never done it but was wondering when floating through private are there law about the weapon? Unload? case? Lock?

 

Got some questions about doing this on the pere Marquette. If state owns one bank and private the other, can you still hunt the state side from the river?

 

wondering the same thing

 

Used to float the flat river opening day for years. Put a few dandy bucks in the canoe. All the guys coming in at dark would drive the deer right down to the edge of the river. At times there was so much orange around us you'd of thought you were in a construction zone. And then I'd bust a big buck laying on the bank..kaboom and then paddle our asses off to get back up streem to collect our prize. And of course it was state land. Good times. Miss my buddy George. Rip. Bro.

 

Haven't done it in years but did it back when we still used to have to wear back tags. This trip we were hunting with T/C Hawkens and patched round balls. It was 18 below zero and our thinking was that the air temp coming off the water might be warmer than the temp in the woods.

This buck was laying along the bank and stood up for a broadside shot as we canoed past him.

Not for the faint of heart in December but you can be successful.

 

That guy has a lot of good videos. Lots of floating, camping, fishing and cooking. Good stuff!

 

Kyle is very entertaining to say the least.

 

Energetic guy for sure

 

Never had much success (1 doe) but used to do it with my dad and my two son on the main ausable and the south branch of it also. I remember why we started doing it , because a friend trapped it and would tell me how many deer he saw, this was during muzzleloader so we went a few days later. First trip was a 5 hour float two boats and no deer sightings..lol. Have seen some good ones after though

 

I've float hunted for close to 50 years, the guy in the video should of use his electric motor instead of oars, he wouldn't of spooked so my deer, i've used a 8" flat bottom on small shallow river like the flat, n a canoe on most other rivers, there's a picture of my grand river float boat a 20' deck boat, with a tripod on it, it up my eye level at about 17' above the water, there's a picture of it in my album

 

It's a big hassle to be legal with a ETM.
All guns must be cased and unloaded under any power.
I still have marks from steel shot on the front of my Canoe sneaking up on Ducks.

 

A couple guys from downstate used to float our section and a couple others all private

Nobody said much and they killed deer every year... Than people started finding footprints all over there place so stuff changed... Than some down staters have some.ground.across the road we used to take care of... They came up mid week end of gun season, they ran into the floaters sitting... Guns were drawn by both parties...

Next time they came up all there mounts were thrown their drywall, windows smashed ...

Our HS sports trainer had ground across the road from the river... A vacant lot owned by downstaters sat on the river across the road .. These clowns took it over and camped there... They had the audacity to put a bait pile on the guy I knows place across the road that they could shoot from the camper...

Needless to say the locals are good people until you cross the line, than you have a buncha pissed off locals..