Excellent quality: really good, durable materials, seams and stitching are solid, and the fabrics used are top notch.
It’s really cool looking, with very bright hunter orange all over the thing.
Super nice shell pockets with simple Velcro closure, easy to access shells quickly and keep them in the pockets.
Decent cargo space (but not ideal; see below).
Good hip belt and other straps.
My main beef with this vest is that for some reason they designed it so the hydration bladder pouch rides below the bite valve! To get water, you have to lean over so the bladder is above the bite valve. This wouldn’t be so bad but I water my dog with the bladder, and this design makes it pretty much impossible. The other real bummer about the hydration accommodation in this vest is that it’s too small to hold a decent-sized bladder for even a half-day hunt in any weather.
L.L. Bean Technical Upland Vest ridin’ low
The cargo pockets, which are actually too small to store any bulky clothes (chukar hunting is one of the most layering-centric activities I know of), ride a bit too low, right on my butt (I’m 6′ tall and I got the regular size vest). It comes with a couple of clip-on pouches, too, but when installed on the shoulder straps they’re in the way so I didn’t even put them on.
So I’m returning it, darn it. Why can’t someone make a chukar vest that’s hydration bladder compatible and has enough storage space for an all-day hunt? For now, I’m sticking with the best vest I’ve found (for my money), Cabela’s Lite’N-Load Strap Vest.
I realize this is the third gear review I’ve done on Cabela’s gear, and am not crazy about this fact. But I’ve spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to find an upland hunting vest or pack that’s better than this one so I can buy it and review that instead of this. But I have not found one. So, for now, this is the best chukar hunting vest I know.
I’ve used this vest exclusively over the past three seasons, totaling about 75 or 80 days with it, and – remarkably – it shows almost no wear and tear.
It (almost) holds everything I need for an all-day outing
It accommodates a hydration system
It’s easy to load lots of birds in it
Easy layering
Nice design
The thing I like best about this pack/vest is that I can chukar hunt with it; the vest does not impede hiking up steep hills. This is because the shell pockets are integrated right onto each side of the padded hip belt instead of hanging down off the front of the vest. I had a strap vest from another maker whose far-too-large shell pockets rode in front and made walking up steep chukar terrain even more miserable, clanging on my things with every step. The Cabela’s vest keeps the shell pockets nicely out of the way. Each pocket has a two-way zipper on top, and holds a box of shells. The outside of each pocket has a very thin pouch with a snap closure that could hold your license or car keys, with a little key tether inside each pocket. I put shells in the right pocket, and my GPS and keys in the left one.
Notice the shell pockets, out of the way
The shoulder straps are padded, easily adjustable, and have a hydration hose clamp on the left strap, as well as loops to hang all kinds of crap on. I put my e-collar control on the left strap right where the sternum strap clips together.
The padded hip belt also has loops to hang stuff on, and a large swift-clip buckle that’s easy to use even with heavy gloves. Together, the shoulder, hip, and sternum straps offer enough adjustability to custom fit this thing to any weirdly contorted body, which is more common than one might think when considering the odd creatures who hunt chukar.
The back of the vest, the part that rides on your back, is padded mesh, similar to the shoulder and hip straps, and has little channels in it to help ventilate. I’ve never ended even the most brutal day feeling like the pack didn’t fit well or caused me any pain.
The vest’s main compartment has a slip for a hydration pack, and I use an insulated Camelback 100-oz. bladder in mine. It’s a tight fit, but works. I use the insulated thingy mainly to protect the bladder (I’ve punctured several in previous rigs). The bladder’s drinking hose exits the vest through a hole in the top of the pack near the hoisting strap. Simple but effective design.
The hydration bladder leaves little room for much else, but I keep a first-aid kit in there, and extra gloves or other small doo-dads. Then there’s a smaller zippered pocket where I keep my wallet/license, cell phone, and a little food. Very little food. And this is the pack’s only problem, which I’ll get to in a minute.
The bird pouch is very spacious, though, and easy to load on the fly. I put a limit of chukar and a large blue grouse in it one day and honestly didn’t feel loaded down or worry I’d lose birds from the vest. No issue here.
Finally, there’s a simple bungee system that I strap layered clothing to quickly and easily. And that’s it. The best I’ve found for what I carry and how I hunt. (As I write this, it’s on sale at Cabela’s online store for $50.)
Issues
When I bought this vest three years ago I expected it would self destruct within a year or two because the nylon fabric appears much lighter-weight (and less durable) than other vests I’ve seen. Made in China, the vest just looked kind of cheap. As mentioned earlier, though, this thing has held up amazingly well. There are no tears, unraveling seams, broken zippers, failed snaps or buckles, or anything else. I suppose that the lightweight fabric helps give the vest its name. It truly is a lightweight pack/vest. Still, if I were to reconstruct this vest I’d use a slightly heavier-duty fabric.
The one main issue with this thing, though, truly is the small carrying capacity of its main compartment. If I’m going out all day, I’d like to have more room for extra clothes or layering and – most importantly – extra food and water. 100 ounces in September on the steeps isn’t enough for me and my dog on an all-day hunt. Even when it gets cold, if we’re doing more up-and-down than usual on a half-day hunt, we nearly drain the hydration bladder. But there’s really no room to put another water bottle unless you stick it in the bird pouch, which – if yours is anything like mine – doesn’t appeal to me too much. If they could add two or three inches all the way around the main compartment that would make this the perfect pack. Otherwise I’m extremely pleased with this thing, which only cost me $80.
Feeling a bit surly, laid up with a nasty cold, reduced to scavenging through fields of youtube garbage for something resembling authenticity. Cats on treadmills (hilarious, for a while). The immensely popular FAIL video phenomenon (people seriously injuring themselves with the help of gravity, elastics, and small engines). I need to get out, but…
Youtube has everything. Infinite hunting videos, including a few of mine. Hoping for a find, I searched for “upland bird hunting” videos, and found myself getting increasingly irritated by the overabundance of “shooting preserve” and outfitter videos showing fat rich people shooting birds they won’t have to clean and most likely won’t eat, either.
Then I found a longer video about hunting Huns and sharptail on public land in western Montana. Looked authentic, but had suspiciously good production quality and a soundtrack way inside Puddle of Mud or Solid Waste. Promising. I should have turned it off when one of the Kansan talking heads appeared wearing a Garmin shirt. Halfway through the vid there’s a scene with an English setter absolutely blitzing straightline through some brush with the voice-over, “The dogs are really birdy in here…” Really? Cut to the three dudes in glorious late afternoon Montana rays lumbering leisurely through tall grass. One grabs his Garmin Astro, looks at it for a second, and non-nonchalantly says, “Well, we’ve got a dog on point somewhere close; looks like he’s about 100 yards southwest. Let’s go get some birds.” Cut back to the Garmin guy: “The Garmin Astro has really changed the face of upland bird hunting.” I guess so. Now, as long as you don’t mind the price tag, you don’t even have to know where your dog is. Ever.
The $650 Garmin Astro
It should go without saying that this is wrong. What are you doing out there? Why are you hunting birds? If your dog matters to you, why don’t you keep track of your four-legged partner? I see this too often. While running on a trail near my house I encountered a beautiful English setter with a couple e-collars and antennas laced around its neck, sprinting the other way. Over a half-mile later I found his owners, ablaze in hunter orange caps and Orvis chaps. Around their necks hung thousands of dollars of electronic tracking devices, and in the mouth of the patriarch of this bunch was a good ol’ fashioned whistle. He shrieked on it steadily, at least once a second, turning serenity to sheer sonic hell. About three quarters of a mile behind these folks were two other setters romping around the brush on their extended electronic leashes.
Angus and my shadow, snow and e-collar
I shouldn’t let it bother me. I should look at it as a sign that going after wild birds in wild, hard-to-hunt places is fairly safe. I don’t care that these guys with their technology and hired dogs are the ones flooding the Web with photos of tailgates littered with multi-limits on all available species. To be fair, I use an e-collar on Angus, always have. I use it to get his attention and to reinforce our working relationship by helping him stay close enough to me so I can read him. The best thing about it is that I don’t ever need to call him, and we can hunt quietly. This matters to me. Watching Angus hunt, watching him check to see where I am, to see if I might want him to shift directions, watching him apply his superior sensory equipment to the mutual pursuit, watching him creep, point, adjust, get excited: call me old fashioned, but this stuff is way more interesting to me than looking at a 2.78″ diagonal color GPS screen to see what my mutt’s up to.
About a year ago I posted a review of the Benelli Ultra Light 12-gauge shotgun. I just wanted to give a bit of an update on this thing. The short story is that I still love it, probably more now than last season, for a couple of reasons.
A year ago today, about 30 minutes into my morning hunt I jumped off of a big rock to get down a steep slope to Angus, who’d been locked in point for a while. I landed wrong, and shredded my ankle badly. My post, “Bad Day” details this experience, but doesn’t mention that in order to get back to my truck, about a mile away down horrendous basalt scree and over severely undulating terrain, I had to use my Benelli, fairly new at the time, as a crutch. Not being able to put any weight on my left leg, I held the Ultra Light by the barrel (after remembering to unload it) and used the gel pad on the stock end to stabilize me. Three hours later, I was back at the truck, sick to my stomach for many reasons, one of which was the damage to the gun I was sure I’d done.
But when I looked at the gel pad, it was only slightly scraped. I was also worried about the stress I’d put on it that, surely, Benelli’s engineers couldn’t have intended the gun to absorb. With my down time I checked the tolerances and fittings for any play and couldn’t detect any. I was also sure I’d scraped the walnut pretty badly, but – despite getting separated from my gun during the fall, when it slid about thirty feet below me and came to rest with the barrel pointing right at me – the stock sustained only minor scratches. Conclusion: although she’s a looker, she’s pretty tough, too.
Rain or shine, the Benelli Ultralight’s a great chukar gun
But appearances aren’t the only things that matter, and I’m happy to say that after putting hundreds of rounds through the gun it hasn’t hiccuped, or even sighed. And, as I mentioned before, I shoot the cheapest loads money can buy. I’ve scraped it a lot more this season than last, mostly because I’m hunting terrain I probably shouldn’t. Despite the steeper slopes and being less fit than last year, the gun’s light weight has continued to prevent me from the sore forearms and shoulder I’d get lugging my heavier 12-gauges up and down all day.
Finally, despite being a perennially poor shot, I’ve gained confidence with this gun I never had with others, and am bagging more birds as a result. Shots I used to pass on because they seemed too far out I’ve been routinely successful making this year. I suppose that can happen with any gun, but my feeling is that because it’s light my arms work better than if they were fatigued from carrying a heavier gun. Or maybe I’m just over-reaching here and still trying to justify spending what was for me a lot of cash on a shotgun. In any case, I’m glad I got it and – if I ever get another gun – would buy another Benelli. It’s the best chukar gun I’ve had, as well as the best grouse, Hun, and pheasant gun.
It’s hot, but it’s also chukar season, so I managed to get out for the first time this year just a few days ago. I donned the pants I got a couple months ago at Cabela’s – their Early Season Upland Pants. If you’ve seen my video “Chukar Hunting in January,” you’ll notice that my old trusty pants have two big purple patches on the butt (gotten on the day of the “Chukar Idiot” last December). Anyway, my wife insisted that if she’s going to continue taking pictures and video of me chukar hunting I should have some pants that don’t make me look stupid. Thus, these pants.
For $50, I am way impressed. This is the first pair of lightweight bird pants I’ve used, and my main question about them is: why did I wait so dang long? They’re made of lightweight cotton ripstop, which is a perfect weight to be durable but allow your legs to breath on those steep ascents. The crotch is gusseted so you can lunge straight uphill without having the pants bind you, and the solid nylon guard layers on the front and back lower sections performed superbly at keeping cheat grass, cockle burrs, hawthorn stickers and other dried vegetation from penetrating or sticking to the pants. Lots of pockets with long, easy-to-grab zipper pulls, a well-designed series of belt loops, and quality construction (at least it appears that way after one pretty good test) make these pants a winner. I’m even thinking they’d be my go-to pair in winter since I can wear some poly long-johns underneath them. On top of all these positives, I crossed a calf-deep creek early in my hunt and was surprised when I got to the other side to notice that the pants had not absorbed any water at all! They must be treated with some of that DWR stuff, which I’m expecting will wear off. But it sure was nice not to have to slog water-logged legs up the steep slope awaiting me on the other side. Highly recommended.
