Great Expectations

Posted on September 26, 2007 by Steve Mealman 

(Shannon's Note: Most of you know I always look forward to my yearly visit with Steven Mealman. This will be the first time in five years that I missed the September goose-hunting saga with him. However, leave it to him to keep me posted on what I am missing these days. So this week I'm turning my blog over to Steven Mealman.)

Now I have had the privilege of using or stealing most of Tackett's equipment over the past six years here at Firewater. Those items vary from his boots to his truck and everything in between. I have also been responsible for most of the damage caused to these items. Now, most people would say that I am a thief and a bad friend, but I see it more as an extreme field tester. I feel that it is my duty to try these items out to the best of my ability before they move onto their owner.

That being said, there is one piece of equipment that I was very excited to "extremely field test" and that is the new boat that ProDrive just built for Tackett. I watched just liked everyone else on the message board about what was going on with this boat. I saw the design and thought it was a great idea to hunt out of; but I was skeptical on how comfortable it would be to ride in and drive. I have never run a ProDrive, but knew its reputation for being the 4WD of mud motors. I new Tackett was bringing this boat up to Firewater this year so I had great expectations for what I could do both with and to this boat.

When Tackett first pulled in with the boat behind his truck, I got that familiar feeling of a new toy and let's see what we can do with it. We decided to take the boat out to a huge slough that is choked with cattails. Two years prior, we took the 16' War Eagle with the 26hp Mud Buddy into this slough. This slough has hundreds of holes in it, but there is 50 to 100 yards of cattails in between each hole. It took us two days to cut a 300-yard long channel to get to the first big piece of open water.

When we first launched this new ProDrive boat into the slough I was pretty skeptical of how we would do cutting a new channel in this place because this boat is about twice as heavy. If the Mud Buddy got stuck, we could pile out, turn the boat around and just take another run at it until we would eventually ram a channel into the cattails. With this boat there was no way we were turning this baby around in the 8-foot tall cattails.

We jumped into the boat and sat down in the seats that were on the bottom of the boat. I found out quickly that this was the place to be. We were out of the wind and were not going to be smacked in the face by cattails - something all duck hunters have to live with, but not us any more.

As we approached the first wall of cattails in this new toy, Tackett lowered the motor just a touch into the muddy soup and hammered down on the throttle. We crashed into the cattails for about twenty feet before finally slowing to a halt. This caused me to have an involuntary reaching of depression. This reaction was caused by always having to turn the other boat around, and struggling in the mud for about half and hour until we got free. Tackett looked at me and said, "don't worry, brotha, we got this". He leaned over the side, pulled the T-plug, and quickly ratcheted the motor 3 times. This caused the lower unit of the motor to turn into reverse. He popped the ProDrive into gear and we backed up like we were in open water. This motor just turned a thirty-minute Herculean feet of strength into a 45-second non-issue.

After ratcheting the lower unit back into the forward position, Justin lowered the motor a little deeper into the mud and hammered down again. This time we made it about forty yards before slowing to a stop! We backed up and plunged through the cattails about four more times and we reached the first large piece of open water. This boat and motor that ProDrive designed just did in twenty minutes what it took Eric Fortenberry, Tackett, and myself two days of bleeding, sweating, and swearing to do in the old boat. We were able to explore the whole four miles of that slough in about four hours.

Not only would this boat muscle its way through the thickest cattails Mother Nature can throw at us; but it also handles like a bass boat at 20 miles per hour loaded with 4 guys. Unlike long-shafted mud motors, you don't have to train like you are climbing Mount Everest to run it. You can sit down and plunge through the toughest of cover and never have to stand up and use the tiller like a oar while you fight your way though thick cover.

This new ProDrive boat and motor just gave us the ability to hunt spots that we have only talked about hunting. This is one piece of equipment that Tackett had better keep an eye on because there is a good chance that I will have to do a lot of "extreme field testing" on at my house in Minnesota. I can honestly say that this boat has met all my expectations and it is hands down the greatest all around duck hunting boat I have ever seen.

I will let everyone know how this new boat is to hunt out of with the Avery® pop-up blind once the duck season starts September 29th.

-Steve Mealman