Not just for the birds

Tag: chukar vests

  • What’s In Your Vest Vol. 2

    What’s In Your Vest Vol. 2

    A few years ago I posted something about what’s in my vest, partly to seek advice and partly to offer it. I got lots of great ideas from the comments on what to include and what to jettison. I haven’t learned much since (both good and bad, I guess), but thought I’d do a quick update; if nothing else, it gave me a chance to remember what I’ve stashed away in my vest. There were some surprises, but nothing dramatic.

    The innards

    I’m still using the Badlands Upland Vest, and this is what I carry in it on most hunts. It all fits without much trouble, and there’s actually some more room in some of the pockets. It’s just that there’s not much room for bulkier things like extra layers, or a shell, and not really a good way of attaching an extra jacket or a rain shell onto the pack without a modification of some kind, or a goofy strap attached somewhere… Anyway, from upper left:

    • Midland GXT1000 radio. Important note on this radio: I was about to look for a different radio because I got sick of these running out of batteries in the middle of every hunt, even when I didn’t have them turned on the whole time. It turns out they come with a battery pack that’s super low amp-hour rated (something like 1200 mAh), and I found a suggestion on a forum of dumping the battery pack and replacing it with rechargeable Li-Ion batteries, which I found on Amazon for cheap; they’re 2800 mAh, and I haven’t had to recharge them all season! And this radio works great at long distances, even without line-of-sight.
    • Dog treats.
    • Toilet paper in ziplock.
    • Cell phone: sometimes I bring this instead of a camera, but the zoom sucks, so I use it mainly for ONXMaps I’ve downloaded for the area I’m in to show property boundaries, especially when I haven’t hunted there before.
    • Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS50: I got this mainly because its zoom is amazing, and pretty clear fully extended (the elk photos from a recent hunt were taken with the fully-extended zoom).
    • 100 oz. Camelback bladder: I’m an unconvertable bladder guy, and this time of year rarely fill it since the dogs eat lots of snow and I’m just not that thirsty when it’s 20 degrees, windy, and I’m slogging through 6 inches of white stuff. In the early season, though, I routinely run out, and often determine the end of the hunt based on my water supply.
    • Garmin Alpha: this is my third season with the Alpha and TT15/TT15-Mini, and I’m sold (after criticizing people who used them; I’m open to eating crow, and developing a taste for it). I will say that the first TT15-Mini I bought for Peat lasted only two years, which is unconscionably short for the $300 collar. I tried replacing the battery, did a bunch of trouble-shooting and research, asked Garmin if they’d repair it (no response!), and ended up just buying another. The original TT15, honking big, is still working fine with no issues (knock on wood), but it’d really be too bulky on little Peat’s neck.
    • 8 feet of paracord with a loop tied in it for collapsing conibear trap springs.
    • Leatherman Wingman: heavy, and heavy-duty. I could ditch this for a lighter pocketknife, but I’ve used a bunch of different things on it already and just feel safer knowing it’s there.
    • Stainless curved locking forceps: haven’t had to use these yet, and hope I don’t.
    • A couple of Clif Bars: sometimes I forget to re-stock these and for two reasons it’s never a problem. First, Leslie usually carries extra food and I’m a decent moocher. Second, as my friend Dale said in response to my earlier post about this: it’s a hunt, not a picnic, and you’re not going to starve on a 5-hour hike.
    • Butane lighter: I used to carry a magnesium fire stone with built-in flint, but last night I tried using it (never had before) and could not for the life of me start a fire with the thing, even in the comfort of my home and after watching the instructional video. Oh well. I was never a Boy Scout.
    • Ziplock with dryer lint, which is supposed to be a good fire starter. I didn’t try igniting this; maybe I should.
    • Ziplock with some bandages, wipes, and antibiotic ointment.
    • InfaLab Nick Relief Styptic Powder: a recommendation for stopping small bleeds.
    • ChloraPrep Triple Swabstick: someone recommended this, and it’s expensive so I’m not sure where I got it, but it’s light, doesn’t take much space, and might come in handy.
    • Quikclot Advanced Clotting Sponge: someone recommended this, also expensive, but it seemed like a good idea to have just in case. With Murphy’s Law determining so much of the cosmic order of things, I feel better knowing it’s there.
    • Felco C7 Cable Cutters: heavy, expensive, and worth your dog’s life if it gets caught in a snare you can’t undo. (Cutting a snare is at 6:45 in the video.)
    • Headlamp: I’d forgotten this was in my vest, but am glad it’s there.
    • Space Blanket: I just like saying “space blanket” and think having one in a chukar vest is appropriate beyond description.
    • Extra hat and gloves: depending on the season, these might or might not be in my pack, and possibly I’ll trade them out for warmer or cooler items, depending…
    • Shells: we’re now a two-Benelli family, and Leslie has commandeered my 12-gauge Ultra Light (but I’m about to reneg on that deal and return her 20-gauge Montefeltro) which impacts the weight and number of shells one might have in the vest. Right now there are 20 1-ounce/7.5 shot 20-gauge shells in my vest, but I can only fit 15 12-gauge shells in the same pocket. I’ve only needed more than 15 shells once this season (and ran out that day in the middle of lots of birds!), and have averaged just 4 shots per hunt for my 33 outings this season (but 6 of those hunts were skunks).
    • Extra glasses: I need cheaters for fine print, which I’d need to read to use any of the first-aid stuff. I don’t carry extra sunglasses, but they’re on my hat about half the time on each hunt, so I counted these as “carry” items.
    • Idaho Sportsman’s Combo license: this is a photo-copied and laminated copy of my hunting license on one side, and my driver license on the other. I’m honestly not sure if that’s legal, but don’t like carrying my heavy wallet in my vest and don’t like moving my driver license from one place to another because I’ll eventually lose it or have to tell the ISP that my DL is in my bird vest. Does anybody else do this?
    • Oregon non-resident license: I should have my head examined for buying this, but I had the best of intentions.
    • SPOT Gen3 emergency beacon: a very cool device that can be a life-saver, and your pal at home can track you on a computer (if you like that idea). Beware of the annual subscription cost (mine was $225 this year), and that you’ll need a Search-And-Rescue membership on top of that. I have an auto-renew SAR membership for Leslie and me that costs $35 a year through GEOS.
    • Spare batteries: these are AA, and I’d forgotten they were in my vest, but I guess I thought I’d use them for my radio if the batteries died. The headlamp uses AAA, so not much use there…
    • Duct tape: I have a 1/2″ roll I got for taping dog booties more securely onto Peat’s wee feet, but had forgotten about the several feet of regular width tape wrapped around a short pencil.
    • Finally, dog booties from Dogbooties.com, out of Anchorage, Alaska. These things are amazing, and cheap. They stay on, don’t slip on ice like the rubber ones do, are super durable, and come in all kinds of cool colors. Plus, they’re super easy to install and remove. Peat spent about 4 entire hunts in these things (just on his front paws), and got used to them very quickly, and was not impaired or hampered from them.

    So that’s that. The only modification I’m thinking of making right now is to figure out how I can bring the honking Nikon D7000 with 18-300 lens along with my gun and vest so I can hunt and take good photos. So far I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that, and with my back issue it’s probably a good thing I haven’t tried. Greedy? Next year I’m thinking of giving the Wingworks vest a try… the Badlands is hard to beat, but the price for its streamlined-ness is that it’s tough to get birds in the pouch when the pockets have a bunch of stuff in them. So I’m thinking of next year already.

    I’d love to hear from people about their ideas for vest essentials, or if you think I’m missing something crucial or should get rid of something…



  • Q5 Centerfire Vest Review

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    Q5 Centerfire Upland Vest

    When I found out about this vest, I had to get my hands on it. After hunting for years with packs or vests that lacked certain features, the Centerfire Upland Bird Vest appeared to fill all the holes. So, toward the end of last season I managed to get one and use it a few times. It took a while to set up properly because of its infinite adjustability, but once I dialed it in, it performed as expected. Better, actually. Overall, I don’t think there’s a better upland vest available (although I haven’t tried them all), and the price tag – at the higher end of the scale – is more than fair for the features and quality of the product. If your current vest doesn’t offer adequate carrying capacity for gear and birds, the Centerfire might be the ticket.

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    Big vest for big country

    Storage: you can pretty much load this vest with everything but the kitchen sink. It has so many pockets you might need a spreadsheet to track where you put things. Most of the pockets are adjustable, too, so you can move them laterally along the hip belt to suit your style of hiking, and the shell pockets – big enough to hold a box of shells each – have a zipper and a Velcro flap; thoughtful design (although I’d prefer the flaps have radius or rounded instead of 90-degree corners because they kept poking my skinny bare arms – something I hadn’t noticed last season when I wore long sleeves; not a big deal, but a wee naggy thing.) With the full version of the vest (they offer a base model, too, to which you can pick and choose your pockets), you also get a removable daypack, which I never used because I didn’t fill up the other pockets. But if you’re going on an all-day hike in weather that could change drastically, you could load this vest up with everything you could possibly need and never worry about where to put stuff, even if you limited on multiple species.

    Bird “pouch”: Speaking of birds, the pouch might better be described as a “porch” or even a “carport.” It’s big, and easily the easiest to load of any vest I’ve used. And you can easily remove it to clean it out. I haven’t seen this type of game bag on any vest before, and it’s one of the most innovative things about this vest, in my opinion.

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    My friend Rob with his fully-loaded Centerfire Upland Bird Vest

    Hydration: Water’s probably the most important thing to bring if you hunt with dogs. This vest features a pouch to put a hydration bladder in, as well as removable water bottle pockets, which would allow you to bring – in these three spots alone (there’s room elsewhere for more bottles) – 164 ounces of water. My back hurts just thinking about that. I’m not a bottle guy, so I only use a bladder, and my 100-ounce bladder extends past the fairly shallow built-in pouch, but there’s a thoughtful snap-strap that allows you to secure the top of a bladder (if the bladder has a loop or hook on the top of it; mine does, but not all do) so it doesn’t collapse in the vest. To take the bladder out requires undoing three snaps and the Velcro closure at the top of the mesh cover and unthreading the hose, which is fairly simple compared to other vests I’ve used a bladder in. I’m not exactly sure why the bladder pouch couldn’t be deeper on the Centerfire, but maybe it’s to accommodate the smaller pouches out there. For my 100-ounce bladder, though, I’d like a deeper pouch; another wee naggy thing.

    Usability and Comfort: Although I haven’t loaded the Centerfire to capacity, I’m confident that if I did it would handle the load with stability and comfort. The padded shoulder straps are contoured around the neck in a smart “yoke” which distributes the upper load better than other packs I’ve used. But the big deal on this vest is the padded hip belt, which carries – very stably and comfortably – as much as you can throw at it. No matter the terrain or angle of incline or descent, I rarely if ever felt I was carrying anything. It’s really that comfortable. Of course, you’re going to feel it hiking up steep hills, but this vest isn’t what I noticed. I noticed the fact that I should be in better shape, and that whoever invented gravity should be shot, and that chukar hunting might be more fun on the moon, and stuff like that.

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    My vest without the day pack, which attaches to the heavy nylon-coated mesh between the yoke and bird pouch

    Quality: These vests are made by a small company – really just a couple with some help – down in Arizona. It is simply amazing to me that they can produce the variety of products they do, with all the design variations and options, and with the quality that is so obvious on the Centerfire vest. All the stitching, seams, attachments, and other workmanship are as good as I’ve ever seen, better, actually. The materials they use are the best, too: the Cordura is heavy-duty, the D-rings, zippers, snaps and Velcro (or whatever we’re calling the hook-and-loop stuff these days) are all solid and should last longer than I will. In addition to the quality of their products, Q5 promotes another kind of quality, which you might refer to as “equality”: a percentage of every sale supports Arizona Outdoor Adventures, which helps acquaint under-privileged kids with healthy outdoor recreation. Impressive and inspiring.

    Picayune: There are some things I don’t like about the Centerfire, though, which aren’t the vest’s fault at all and have more to do with the style of hunting I find myself doing more often than not. The main thing is the vest’s size: you can’t have all that storage capacity without sizeable volume. The Centerfire is a relatively wide and deep vest – the side pockets (mounted on the hip belt behind the shell pockets) extend out a ways, which I noticed when busting through brush looking for grouse or in thickets trying to retrieve downed chukar. Similarly, the generous but rigid bird pouch extends back fairly far, which I noticed getting caught on Hawthorn brush and other branches in heavy vegetation. If I were hunting only in open terrain, or going after pheasants, I wouldn’t think twice about having this as my go-to or only vest. But for some reason I almost always find myself at least once in heavy brush, no matter what kind of hunting I’m doing.

    Overall, the Q5 Centerfire Upland Bird Vest is easily the best quality vest with the most desirable features I’ve used. If you don’t find yourself trying to squeeze into or through places where you probably shouldn’t go anyways (maybe I’ll learn one of these days), then do yourself a favor and get this vest. You won’t be sorry.