A canoe is only dangerous if you do something stupid in it, like trying to use one during duck season when you have little experience in one. I used one for many years and hunted Skadgit, Nisqually, Greys Harbour, and the Potholes resv. I knew the Potholes good enough that I could put in at Mardon in the fog and run a compass heading to the sand dunes. I wouldn't do it today with guys running across the lake in the dark staring at their GPS instead of where they are going.
I grew up in a canoe, fishing, camping, running trap lines, duck hunting and ricing out of one.
Dogs in a canoe, one of then reasons the American Water Spaniel was the darling of market hunters in the upper Midwest was its size, it was bread to work out of small skiffs and canoes used oon the rivers and marshes there. The labs popularity almost coincides with the development of the reliable outboard.
A canoe is a great boat, most of this country was explored and settled with it. If your going to hunt out of one get to know it in the summer on a nice warm day and push it to its limits a dunking in the summer is a fun day , in December it could kill you. There is no highly portable boat that will even come close to hauling a large spread of decoys as effortlessly as a canoe.
When I moved to WA the one thing that didn't get left in WI was my canoe.
