By Dave Hurteau

We all have our embarrassing secrets. I’ll spare you mine, for the most part. But for the purposes of this blog, I will admit to one: As much as I would like to trace my interest in archery to the likes of Hill, Bear, Pope, or Young, the truth is that the real greats were all before my time. No, being a product of the television generation (an embarrassing admission itself), my initial fascination with archery was sparked by the exploding arrows of—cringe—Bo and Luke Duke.

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By David E. Petzal

As synthetic hunting clothing gets lighter, thinner, and warmer, it’s tempting to regard wool as outmoded. However, sheep spent millions of years perfecting it for your benefit, and wool has a couple of qualities that I have yet to see any synthetic match—it’s really, truly quiet, and oh boy, is it tough. If you’re looking for something to wear while you creep through the peckerpole pines for the next 40 years, wool is what you want.

Which is why you should be aware of a new company called Silent Predator. This firm makes extremely high quality wool parkas, jackets, vests, and trousers, all in camo. The wool is milled for them by Pendleton and sewn to order in Canada. Here’s how it works: Go to silentpredator.ca and look for the name of the dealer nearest you. He is your contact. Give him a call and tell him what kind of hunting you do and he can suggest what you need. (While you’re on the website, click on Products and you can get a good idea of what’s available.)

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By David E. Petzal

Under Armour started as a manufacturer of gym clothes for people with 28-inch waists and 52-inch chests. Recently, they branched out into hunting clothes, and this September, I found myself in a hunting camp where I was the only one not wearing something from Under Armour. Shocked and appalled at how out of touch I was, I got hold of two items from Under Armour. One is the Men’s ArmourLoft Component Hunting Jacket,  and the other is the Men’s Big Shell Hunting Jacket . I’ve worn them in fair weather and foul in New York and Maine and Montana and Wyoming, and am pleased to report they’re nothing short of terrific.

The Component Hunting Jacket is designed to be worn under the Big Shell, or it can be worn by itself. It’s devoid of bells and whistles, and is extremely warm. I don’t know what it’s stuffed with—possibly the undercoats of musk oxen—but if you get cold wearing this thing, best see a doctor. Because the stuffing is so dense, it will not squash down into a fist-sized wad, but that’s about the end of its limitations.

The Big Shell Jacket, despite being labeled a jacket, is about parka length on a person of average height. It’s very light, folds into a small package, is cut quite full, and is very simple in design. There is no special pocket for your Lone Ranger Decoder Ring. Blessedly, it comes in loden green and not camo, which means you can wear it almost anywhere and blend in and you can wear it in the off-season as well. Under Armour says it is wind and water proof, and they are not kidding.
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By David E. Petzal

Some time ago I introduced you to the Work Sharp Knife and Tool Sharpener, a small belt sharpener that has had roughly the same impact on Western civilization as the printing press, penicillin, and the Hula Hoop, and all because it is the first device that will let even the most fumble-fingered put a razor edge on nearly anything that cuts. (I have put a paper-slicing edge on a Cold Steel Spetsnaz shovel with it.)
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By David E. Petzal

I’ll spare you the usual litany of reasons why the world as we know it is coming unglued. Needless to say, you should be shopping for the occasion, and if you’re looking for a good fixed-blade knife, here are two that are so similar in purpose and construction that I decided to review them together.

The Ranger Puuko is made in Finland, where it was designed as a survival knife by a Finnish officer named J.P. Peltonen. The original Ranger has a 6-inch blade, but people noticed that if you lopped an inch off that, it would make a dandy hunting knife. And so the Ranger Puuko you see here has a 5-inch drop-point blade made of forged tool steel hardened to Rc 58 and coated with Teflon, a 5-inch handle of hardened rubber, and a totally cool leather sheath with a safety liner and an internal rubber keeper that snaps down on the handle and holds it firmly in place.

It’s not a pretty knife, or a finely finished one. It’s meant to be used very hard. The blade is thick and strong, sharpens very easily to a blood-curdling edge, and holds that edge reasonably well. The price for the either the 5-inch-blade Ranger or the 6-inch is $169.50 from kellamknives.com.

The second knife is a brand new one from Cold Steel, and can best be described as a Ka-Bar on steroids (pictured below). It’s called the Leatherneck SF (for “Semper Fi”) and follows the general lines of the Ka-Bar, but with improvements. The 6 ¾-inch blade is made of a steel called SK-5, which is the Japanese equivalent of American 1080, a high-carbon tool steel. It’s hardened to Rc57-58 and came to me with an appallingly sharp edge and kept it extremely well. As with the Ranger, this blade will rust, and so it, too, is coated.
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By Philip Bourjaily

Camo Systems netting is the best camo blind material I have found. How good is it? It is so good I buy it at retail, which is the rarest compliment an outdoor writer * can bestow.

The ripstop, rubberized die-cut netting is more or less a civilian version of what is known as anti-aircraft netting at surplus stores. It comes in sheets sized as small as 43” x 9’ 10” for one or two person blinds up to giant 60’x 150’ pieces in case you want to hide a house.

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