Kayaks are an incredibly beneficial tool when it comes to waterfowl hunting. I am an avid kayak duck hunter and have been using them since 2016. It is hard for me to imagine chasing ducks without the best duck hunting kayak.
If you are new to kayaks, you might be overwhelmed with all of the options. Do you really need a specialized duck hunting kayak? Find the answers in this guide.
Below are my reviews of the 4 best duck hunting kayaks that you should consider, along with survey results from other kayak duck hunters.
While there are many great hunting kayaks to consider, here is a short list of what I consider to be the 4 best duck hunting kayaks:
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I am passionate about kayak duck hunting and have my own favorites, but I also asked experienced duck hunters what their favorite duck hunting kayak was; see the results below.
Shop our collection of the best duck hunting kayaks to find detailed buyers guides and an easy online buying experience for kayaks. Not sure what to pick? Keep reading below for detailed reviews on our 4 favorites.
Having the best duck hunting kayak for your specific situation is important, so you need to decide what style of kayak fits your needs. There are three main styles of kayaks and each has advantages and disadvantages.
This is a type of kayak where you sit on top rather than sit down inside of it. The kayak design relies on the buoyancy of the air trapped in the sealed hull to float, as compared to a traditional kayak that displaces water with an open cockpit.
It is a popular style of kayak for open water fishing because you can take a few waves over the side and not have to worry about sinking, the water just drains out of the scupper holes. Sit on top kayaks are also popular among duck hunters because they are the easiest kind of kayak to get in and out of.
A sit on top kayak is typically heavier than the other styles because it is totally sealed. It has lower sides which makes it more difficult to build a blind around, but there are custom blinds designed for popular sit on top models like the NuCanoe Layout Blind.
This is a good option to consider, especially if you want a multi-purpose kayak for fishing and hunting.
Compared to a sit on top style kayak, a sit inside kayak is exactly what you would think it is. A kayak that you sit inside of. The benefit of a sit inside kayak is that once you are inside, you already are partially covered.
You will stay drier with this style of kayak compared to the others when paddling, but the trade-off is it’s harder to climb in and out of. Depending on the size of the sit in kayak that you have, it can also feel a little cramped when you start adding extra gear and bulky clothes/waders.
Just like all kayak designs, these have a range of price points. However, compared to other styles, a sit inside kayak is typically the cheapest design you can get. They are lightweight, and easy to modify as well. If you are looking for a multi-purpose kayak for hunting and recreational use such as paddling, this might be a good option.
A hybrid kayak is a bit of a cross between the previous two styles. It may or may not have a sealed hull, but it doesn’t have a top cover and is usually open with deeper sides. This design hits the sweet spot for easy to get in and out of, while maintaining enough depth to make it easy to hide.
These styles of kayaks fall into a middle of the road price and are typically a nice upgrade over budget sit in or sit on top style kayak. They are a popular design among other hunters as well.
Hybrid kayaks are great for duck hunting and you can find custom hunting blinds like the Northern Flight Waterfowl Blind that work very well.
View all kayak styles available for purchase at Kayak Guys – Shop Kayaks; where we make it easy to buy a hunting kayak online.
This is a 12 foot kayak that weighs 76lbs, which is a little heavy to be dragging long distances but works just fine for unloading out of a truck or shorter drags. It has a capacity of 450lbs and has plenty of storage space in the front and back for decoys and gear due to the open design.
I have been using my Ascend H12 since 2020, and it has been a blast to hunt out of. It is roomy, reasonably easy to paddle, and very stable. I am about 170lbs and have no issues standing up in this kayak, although I don’t find it balanced enough that I would consider shooting or fishing out of it while standing. It is also low profile and incredibly easy to hide.
One of the huge advantages of the Ascend H12 kayak is that there is a Cabela’s Northern Flight kayak blind made specifically for this kayak. You can buy this kayak and the blind from Cabela’s in the afternoon, and be ready to hunt ducks the next morning.
For the price, I do not believe there is anything better than this setup for general purpose kayak duck hunting that is commercially available. If you are looking for a complete kayak duck hunting setup, the Ascend H12 and Northern Flight kayak duck blind should be a strong consideration.
One downside I see with this kayak is the poor motor mounting options. I am sure it would handle a trolling motor alright, but I tried to use a small 3hp longtail mud motor and it just wasn’t stable enough.
The extra weight sitting towards the back and high up just made it a little too sketchy for me to use on a regular basis. I did hunt out of it twice with the motor during the early season and managed not to get wet, but I wasn’t willing to risk it as the weather got colder.
Read the full breakdown of these scores and shop the most popular duck hunting kayaks available for purchase at Kayak Guys
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Out of all the kayaks listed, this is the only one that I have not personally hunted out of. But I researched it very heavily when looking for a 12 foot kayak, and the only reason why I went with the Ascend H12 was because of cost.
A Frontier 12 duck hunting kayak setup is probably the most expensive kayak you can buy. By the time you purchase the kayak and the duck hunting blind they offer, it is easily double what the Ascend H12 costs.
With that being said, this is one of the best duck hunting kayaks available. The feature I love the most about this kayak is the built-in motor mount. I have watched videos of people using it with anything from a long tail mud motor to a trolling motor, and been very impressed with the performance.
There is a very good chance I purchase this kayak for myself at some point in the future. I am also very interested in the 10ft version that still supports a motor and yet cuts down a little weight for easier loading/unloading.
The Frontier 12 has a weight of 80lbs but because of the sit on top design, can carry a very impressive 650lbs. Although, it is important to note that this is the total capacity. Meaning anything over the self-bailing capacity of 400lbs means the water won’t drain out of the scupper holes.
It also has a width of 41” which is great for stability and gear, but it will make it a little harder to paddle because of the width.
Overall, this is a very solid duck hunting kayak and if it weren’t for the price, it would probably be my top recommendation. However, if you can swallow the initial purchase price, it will make an excellent all around kayak, from duck hunting to fishing and more.
Read the full breakdown of these scores and shop the most popular duck hunting kayaks available for purchase at Kayak Guys
Shop for NuCanoe Frontier 12 Kayak at Kayak Guys:
This is the kayak that I started hunting with when I was in college. You will notice it hits two of the best duck hunting kayak categories. If you are concerned about budget or weight, this is the kayak for you.
One of my favorite places to hunt in college was a small public wetland that required close to a half mile walk, and I had to climb up and over a steep, near vertical bank. Hunting that location with a kayak longer than 10ft and heavier than 75lbs would be very difficult. In fact, I have never seen anyone hunt that location with a kayak.
This is what makes a lightweight kayak so incredibly beneficial. I have a portable blind that I can set up any way I want. Doesn’t matter if there are 2 inches of water or 3 feet. It is super low profile so I can hide out in shallow vegetation where others can’t. It is easily my favorite way to hunt ducks.
The Pelican 100 makes a great duck hunting kayak because it is small, lightweight, and cheap. It has a double arch hull that provides excellent stability. It is a great entry kayak for recreational paddling, but if you are willing to make some modifications to it, it can become a great custom kayak duck hunting blind. Check out my full kayak blind build
This kayak provides you with a ton of options. If you are a DIY’er and willing to do some work, you can have a complete kayak duck hunting setup for a third of the price of the commercially available options.
This is also a popular recreational kayak which means it can be found used on local buy/sell pages if you are willing to look. The Pelican 100 is not the ideal setup if you plan to hunt open water or paddle long distances, but for shallow water walk-in-access public marshes, I would consider it one of my most useful waterfowl hunting tools.
Read the full breakdown of these scores and shop the most popular duck hunting kayaks available for purchase at Kayak Guys
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The Carsten Pintail isn’t exactly a kayak, but it does fit within the category of a small boat that can be paddled. Almost. The thing is, there just aren’t very many kayaks that I would recommend that are incredibly stable and that work well for hunting with a dog.
The Ascend H12 and the Frontier 12 are certainly stable, and you can definitely hunt with a dog out of those kayaks, but do they excel in that category? In my opinion, no. That’s where the Carsten Pintail comes in. This fiberglass boat/kayak is the ideal setup for layout duck hunting with one man and a dog.
If I hunted with a big 80lb plus lab and hunted by myself or with other layout boat hunters the majority of the time, I would still have my Carsten Pintail. It is stable enough to stand up in and move around with ease, yet small enough to load in the back of the truck.
The Carsten Pintail is a very popular duck hunting kayak, and for good reason. It does a lot of things very well, and it could be the perfect fit for a certain situation.
I purchased the Pintail and used it for several seasons. I started off paddling it on walk in public hunting areas but quickly got tired of that. You can paddle this boat, but if you want to go long distances it takes quite a bit of effort.
Midway through the season, I added my mini swamp runner mud motor with a DIY motor mount and that was the perfect fit for the boat. However, after a few hunts, I got tired of unloading a 100lb kayak plus 50lb motor in and out of the bed of the truck. So I bought a trailer for it. That was a very nice layout duck hunting setup and I really enjoyed using it, but it just wasn’t quite the perfect fit for my hunting scenarios.
After I bought an Ascend H12, along with a 16ft motorized john boat, the Carstens Pintail ended up landing somewhere in between, and just didn’t get the same amount of use as my other setups. I eventually got rid of it to make space for other boats, but I would not hesitate to buy another if I started to do more solo duck hunting with just myself and a dog.
Read the full breakdown of these scores and shop the most popular duck hunting kayaks available for purchase at Kayak Guys
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For most duck hunting situations, the choice comes down to the Ascend H12 vs the NuCanoe Frontier 12. The Ascend H12 is a great mid-range hybrid kayak that you can’t go wrong with. If you prefer a sit on top style and have the budget for a premium hunting kayak, the NuCanoe Frontier 12 is a great choice. Both of these kayaks have a custom-fit commercially available blind which will make your duck hunting kayak setup a breeze.
Ready for easy transport and concealability this duck season? See our Kayaks For Sale and view detailed reviews of the top rated models. Shop the most popular duck hunting kayaks available for purchase at Kayak Guys – where we make it easy to buy a hunting kayak online.
Looking for more information before you decide? Call or Text (855) WTR-FOWL to talk us! Or, keep reading below for the features you need in the best duck hunting kayak.
For the best duck hunting kayak, it is very important to have a relatively flat or pontoon style hull. A lot of the hybrid kayaks will have this, as well as a lot of the cheaper beginner kayaks you can find at outdoor stores.
The flatter hull gives the feeling of more stability on smooth water. They don’t ride as smoothly in rough water but offer much better support when considering most duck hunting scenarios/shooting from a kayak.
When looking for a high-performance paddling kayak, most of the hulls will be more rounded than flat. This helps them paddle easier, and it actually helps with stability when it comes to riding through rough waves.
If you don’t plan to shoot from your kayak but only use it as a mode of transportation, you might consider a rounded hull. But please believe me when I say, you do not want to shoot out of one.
An overhead crossing shot will have you shifting your weight to the side, and with the recoil of the gun, you will likely lose your balance and get dumped out of the kayak.
Another important thing to consider is the overall weight of your kayak duck hunting setup. Most of my kayak duck hunting is done on walk-in public access grounds. This means I might carry, cart, or drag my kayak up to a half mile before I get to a spot with water.
My primary setup is dedicated to being ultra-lightweight. Even if your situation is different, weight is still probably a consideration.
Whether you are loading/unloading out of a truck bed right by the water or dragging the kayak a few hundred feet to drop in, less weight is almost always better. You would be surprised how heavy a camouflaged and brush-covered kayak can get after the end of a rainy hunt.
I try to decrease the weight of my overall setup in any way possible, and it all starts with having an extremely light kayak.
Even if you end up going with a heavier option, there are still some tricks to help out. Such as using kayak carts or by using lightweight decoys like silhouettes or windsocks.
One of the final things I would consider before looking at specific duck hunting kayaks is how well the kayak tracks. I am referring to how easily the kayak keeps a straight line.
Depending on the size and the hull type, some kayaks will want to shift or turn every time you paddle. This makes traveling longer distances very tiring and can make paddling against the wind downright difficult.
If you plan on using your kayak as a mode of transportation, carefully consider how it handles. And keep in mind how it will paddle when it has a full duck hunting kayak blind on it.
This is one area that I don’t have a lot of expertise in, because I mostly drag or cart my kayak into small marshes. But if I go on a hunt that I need to paddle, I typically will use my larger ascend H12 because it is easier to paddle than my small light-weight kayak.
As with most things, there are trade-offs when it comes to kayak duck hunting, so think through your hunting scenario and decide what features are most important to you.
Ready for the easiest online kayak buying experience? Shop our #1 pick for the best premium duck hunting kayak today!
The Frontier 12 is a premium hunting kayak designed for maximum stability and excels as a transportable layout blind – making it the best duck hunting kayak.
If you are just getting into kayaks, I encourage you to check out some of our other duck hunting kayak posts. See the FAQ section below for helpful tips and links to other articles. If you have any questions, feel free to send us a message!
A simple camo paint job might work if you aren’t hunting from your kayak, but if you want to use your kayak as a blind, using vegetation to help disappear in the marsh is essential. First, you need a good way to attach the brush. There are a ton of different materials that can help. I have used everything from chicken wire, plastic snow fence, nylon straps, and bungee cords.
Next, you need to decide what kind of brush you want to add. My personal preference is a combination of natural and synthetic grass. I put on a base layer of raffia on my kayak.
This stuff is great, it has held up over several seasons and shows no sign of wearing out. I have it zip-tied it in small bundles to the nylon straps and chicken wire of my kayak blind.
It’s tempting to put it on thick, but after my first hunting season, I actually took some of it off my blind to make more room for natural vegetation.
While the base layer of raffia is usually good enough to hide during early season, once the mallards show up I take a few minutes every hunt to add on some natural vegetation from the hunting spot.
This can be whatever I have available. Smartweed, tumbleweeds, sunflowers, cattails, anything that is growing at the hunting spot. This is a crucial step to making the kayak duck blind really disappear.
Bungee cords around the blind can really make this step easier, they allow you to stuff large handfuls of vegetation in at one time. The natural vegetation isn’t as secure as the raffia, but I freshen it up every hunt anyways.
I shoot out of my kayak regularly. However, I wouldn’t recommend shooting out of a kayak in deep/open water. It also really depends on the type of kayak you have, some are better suited to shooting out of than others.
Most of the time when duck hunting, you can find a way to push your kayak into the weeds. That adds a lot of stability and makes it pretty secure to shoot from your kayak.
I do like to angle my kayak slightly away from my intended direction of shooting. When sitting down, it can be tough to twist for shots to the dominant side, and angling the kayak helps.
When hunting with a group, we usually put the lefty on the far right side, and a right-handed person on the far left side of the line of kayaks. This tends to result in the best shot setup for everyone involved.
Typically, when I am kayak duck hunting I like to use a small decoy spread. The focus is more on getting to the right spot and having a good hide than it is on trying to pull ducks into a spot they don’t want to be. So it’s usually pretty easy to find the space for a dozen or so decoys somewhere in the kayak. (See the best mallard duck decoys reviews).
I like to use texas rigged decoys when kayak hunting. If it’s during a time of the season that I am switching up my hunting methods weekly, I will typically toss them all in a mesh decoy bag because it makes it easier to swap between the kayak and the boat.
But if I know I’m hunting from the kayak the next day, I’ll just set the decoys loose in the bottom of the kayak and pull them out the next morning. I prefer light weight texas rigs with shorter cables, it just makes it easier to manage in most of my marsh hunting situations. Regardless of the size you need, it’s tough to beat lifetime texas rigs.
If you are looking for ways to set a bigger spread, there are a few options. If you go with a bigger kayak like the Ascend H12, then you can fit a few more decoys. Or, you can tow a decoy sled behind the kayak. I have done this on a few occasions and it works out pretty decent.
Just make sure to keep the weight centered low in the sled so it doesn’t tip over. It also adds a little drag for paddling, but it isn’t very noticeable unless paddling through thick cover or into high winds.
One last way around the limited space of a hunting kayak is to mix up the decoy spread a little. There are some options for decoys that take up less room than your standard floating mallard spread.
A few dozen windsocks can pack up nicely, or you could consider silhouettes or shell decoys that stack. If you go that route, you will need to be hunting fairly shallow water since those decoy methods rely on stakes.
See the full post for my top 11 favorite kayak hunting accessories.
I have a separate post that goes into the details of my kayak duck blind builds. If you are looking for some ideas for a diy kayak duck blind, check this out.
With my current duck hunting kayak setup, I no longer use a gun holder. My kayak has flip open doors and I keep the shotgun inside the blind with me, much like a traditional layout blind.
However, before I modified my kayak to use as a layout duck blind, I had an ATV style gun mount. The ATV gun mount works out really well when doing any sort of paddling where you want your gun to be secure, but readily available.
There are 3 primary ways for how to use a kayak for duck hunting:
In this article, I go in-depth on different ways and methods for using a duck hunting kayak.
If you plan to use your kayak for any of the listed methods, there will be some helpful tips in this post.
I am passionate about duck hunting and using a kayak is one of my favorite ways to chase after highly pressured public land ducks. I hope these tips help you pick out your own best duck hunting kayak.
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