Diver Hunting Eastern Michigan

Author: Noah Ungetheim 9/27/2025

When the wind picks up and the air and water chill you to the bone, most people stay inside. But for a certain group of waterfowl hunters, that’s exactly when things start to get exciting.

Starting in mid-November, at the first sign of a strong north wind out of Canada, the birds start moving. The redheads, goldeneyes, and the black-and-white divers—what we waterfowlers call "divers"—begin their migration down Lake Huron into Lakes St. Clair and Erie.

I was lucky enough to live in Detroit for four years while stationed there with the U.S. Coast Guard. When I first got into duck hunting, it was all about chasing mallards and pintails. I thought that would always be my passion—until January 2021.

That winter, I was invited on a hunt on the last day of the season—an experience unlike anything I had ever known. I grew up hunting in southern Indiana, and I’d never hunted big, open water before. That day changed everything.

We set up on a small patch of public land, perched on sketchy rocks, leaning against the few scraggly trees around us while waves crashed at our feet. That morning, I shot my first two divers: a hen bufflehead and a stud drake redhead, which I now have mounted in my garage.

All spring and summer after that hunt, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was that just a one-time fluke? Could I get on those birds again?

The following season, my buddy and I built makeshift diver decoys and rigged two longlines. After getting in some solid puddle duck hunts early in the season, we turned our focus back to big water. Unfortunately, our success didn’t follow. We hadn’t yet figured out what had made that first hunt work so well.

Then I won a guided diver hunt for veterans and active-duty military. That trip was a turning point. I asked the guide every question I could think of, trying to learn what to look for. His advice was simple but game-changing: rocky shorelines.

If I could find a rocky shoreline with public access, I needed to scout it—put eyes on the area, learn the flight lines, and be patient.

We wrapped up the 2022 season without the diver shoot we were hoping for, but we had something better: knowledge. We knew how to prepare for the next year.

In 2023, I brought my kayak up from southern Indiana, and that changed everything. It gave us access to the hard-to-reach places that aren’t accessible on foot. That’s how we found the island—our little honey hole. I don’t think we ever got skunked there. At the very least, a lone bufflehead would always swing by to save the hunt.

I was terrified the first time I took my kayak out on big water—and rightfully so. One wrong move, one flip, and you might not come back up. Respecting the water became my number one rule. If I didn’t like the wind or the chop, I stayed on shore. But when I pushed past that fear, it usually paid off.

Some of my favorite memories are bouncing through the waves in my kayak at 2 a.m., with nothing but a headlamp to light the way, riding the swell until we reached our island or whatever rocky shoreline we’d chosen that day.

Another surprising lesson came with understanding the law: on federally regulated water, you only need to be 250 yards from a house to legally hunt. I never thought I’d hunt ducks in a spot where I could see into someone’s back window, but as long as your feet are in the water, you’re within your rights. Some of my best hunts happened in odd little corners like that.

By the end of the 2023 season, I had checked several new species off my list: canvasback, common merganser, bluebills, and plenty more buffleheads.

In the spring of 2024, I found out I was being transferred to Missouri. I was crushed—I knew I was leaving behind the style of hunting I had grown to love.

Ask Peyton—I still tell those stories all the time. I dream of those mornings on the rocks in eastern Michigan, chasing diver ducks under a slate-gray sky.