For some reason I cannot remember half that I am supposed to remember, but non important info will stay in my head for years, especially if that info was told in the form of a story, or had anything to do with hunting, fishing, or shooting.

Back in the early nineties, I served with another Lieutenant when I was in the 82nd Airborne. This guy was an absolute genius, and had a real deal photographic memory. He was also a Cajun. He was a West Point graduate, and I remember him telling me that when he first went to West Point, other cadets could not understand him when he spoke. He trained himself to speak with without an accent. Once in a while if he got real tired or real mad, you could hear the Cajun come out in him.

This LT liked me, because I ran coon hounds and hunted and fished a lot, and he did a little hunting with me at Fort Bragg. In a conversation one day, he told me about swamp boats that he grew up hunting out of, where folks took Briggs and Stratton engines, and ran a shaft through the back of a pirogue. The way he described it, I envisioned the shaft running through the floor, but I never saw one. For some reason, that conversation just came back to me, and I figured that I must have misunderstood him, and figured he must have been talking about long tail motors. I have just become familiar with mud motors in the last three years, and just got my first LT last year.

http://www.louisianasportsman.com/lpca/ ... &id=432954

I googled it though, and found that there are Pirogues that are motorized (the above link), and the shaft does go through the floor. Is this a predecessor of the modern day mud boat, or is it something completely different? Do folks still use these, or has the modern day mud motor replaced it?

While i am asking questions, here are a few more. What is the history of the modern day mud motor? did they originate from LA, or did we get the idea from the long shaft motors they use in places like Thailand?

Now that mud motors are pretty common in much of America, what is stopping a bigger more well known company like Johnson, Evinrude, Honda, Suzuki.... from building mud motors?

I would think that with some high tech engineering, a big company like them could build a heck of a motor. With the right advertizing, they would sell like hot cakes.

I think Coco got the idea from Thailand

Who is Coco?

ImageUploadedByTapatalk 21370373138.955454.jpgi just built this
There's an entire build thread on here

Looks like someone on the mud buddy site wrote up a history of sorts.

I am still interested in those Pirogues with the shaft going through the floor. Do people still use them?


http://www.mudbuddy.com/forum/who-inven ... -6994.html

Mud motor are only common in the south. Why would the big companies spend the money on r&d on designing one. There are probably 800:1 outboard to mud motor in the USA. If u owned a business what would your target audience be.

forever draggin


Do you have a link?

That is a cool looking rig. What powers it? How fast will it run? Is it hard to steer?

Gameover

you might be right, but I would bet the mud motor has a lot of uses, and in more places than just the south.

I grew up in Michigan, and we had miles and miles of shallow lakes, cat tail marshes, and swamps where a mud motor would be just as useful as in Florida or Louisiana.

I would also say the big companies like Honda, Suzuki, and other motor makers sell motors across the world. There are places in South America, Africa, Asia, and all manner of other places where a shallow water motor would have much use.

In America is it all about advertising. if an action movie came out, depicting cool guys tearing through the swamps in a fast mud motor, think of how many folks would be introduced to a concept in boat motors that they never even knew existed. I live in an area where they are not very common. When I put my boat in at the river, I always get at least one person who wants to come up and look at my LT, and asks questions. I have got a few folks say that they have seen LTs on the show " Swamp People". You would be amazed at how many folks across the US watch shows like Samp People or Duck Dynasty.

on the other hand, if there was an explosion in popularity of mud motors, there would be regulations and restrictions that would follow. Some nut would start complaining that we are killing some rare swamp weeds or some other malarkey where the feminists would be looking to stop what we do. I remember when the three wheelers were the craze, and in a short amount of time, they got smacked with a ten year import ban.

Ranger I don't have a link cuz I'm on tapatalk, search " fiberglass inboard"

It's the same thing as the pirogue ur talking bout

U could also google Kirk boats in des allemands la. They use 70hp Subaru engines and those things scoot

Here u go bud
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38818&hilit=Fiberglass

25mph by myself
24.5 with a buddy

Steers easy. They r slower than a sd, but will go through some shit. Yea people still use them

Here's another build of a different one
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38313&hilit=Inboard

If u run alot of Lilly's the inboard shine. There is no Lilly pack to big for them. The only bad enemy on an inboard is hard bottom, when the skeg burys you are in trouble

And stumps

I ran those pirogue with the brigs 5.5 when I was a kid.
I really dont think it all began 10 to 15 years ago like you think.
The mud boat designs stem back to the old putt putt boat designs.
If you have never rode in an old wodden putt putt you dont know what you are nissing.
I hate to say it but Dean probably has a lot more knoledge on the old putt puts's
Check out the video and pictures.

http://techeboatshow.com/

some also have big engines with the shaft through the transom, they call them supergodevils

a guy I hunt with has one with a gm350 in it

viewtopic.php?t=8366


Your gonna be a while but here's some history

I don't know about the thru-hull designs...saw a pic of something like that at a museum up in Reelfoot Lake, Tn. A central florida mud motor dealer posted a pic of a longtail motor used here in the 1920's!! It was a small one-cylinder motor, fitted with a long shaft used here in the estuaries and coastal areas. It is true the Germans used a direct drive longtail motor to ferry troops in marshes in the Eastern front. My wife showed me her Malaysia video from the early 1990's and a big river canoe with a large block motor longtail. We began using Coco's GD in 1989, that was an 18 HP Briggs LT- slow but reliable, got us to the ducks, we've never looked back, except my friend has morphed to a shortail, I still use the tried and true LT.

They have used that boat on reelfoot lake in northwest Tn. for 75 years. Google reelfoot lake boat.

I used to hunt on a lease south of Dulac, la where we used a pirogue with an inboard to drag a train of about 10 pirogues behind it. As we'd pass by a blind or a hole the last pirogue would drop off until all were distributed.

forever draggin

Looks like you got some serious boat building and fabricating skills.


The mud motor is an interesting history. I will be curious to see what mud motors look like ten years from now.

My grandfather used to run a Dispro boat back in the 1930's - 1940's on Lake Scugog near Toronto. he used it for musky trolling but probably not for duck hunting. Dispros were wooden boats with an inboard connceted to Disappearing Propeller Shaft through the floor. Here's some pictures, the one-lung motors are very similar to those in the LA Wooden Boat Show videos. http://www.dippy.ca/how.htm

Eventually Dispro was unable to compete with them newfangled rowboat motors that Mr. Evenrude and others cranked out in mass quantities.
Scugog was, and still is, a shallow, muddy and weedy lake, which is why I have two GDLTs (and 5 Johnsonrude 3's with the weedless 'Anglematic Drive') today.

the one i rode in would go anywhere that was slightly moist it was a beast

The Wankel-which is known for high end and not so much torque- was the motor I was questioning.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

i think he has a velvet drive on it...

220hp marine gm 3500

3rd gen rx-7s had a 3 rotor. I believe its the 20b

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Ranger P,

I was high school age during the Viet Nam war. The Navy guys that were on river gun boats over there saw the use of primitive long tails and air colled inboards by the locals.

A bunch of guys in Bayou Gauche near Des Allemands put some small brigg stratton engines in pirogues and small skiffs at this time and called them "putt putts"

Over 45 years ago now.