The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

Gals love to shop, and guys go to the store to buy stuff. There is no memory I have of going to a hunting/fishing store and just looking around for a few hours and then going home with nothing. That whole idea is foreign to me. Another pretty foreign idea to me is to spend about three weeks looking in every store that has the item I want in order to save $3.95 on that item.

What I am a little guilty of is buying ammunition, even when I have a lot of it. I justify this in my mind by saying “It’s never going to be less expensive and it has a very long shelf life.” Ammunition that is kept dry and stored properly is just as good at 20 years old as it was the day you bought it. I was hunting with a guy last fall who had been gifted a case of old Western shotgun shells when his neighbor died. He gave me a box and I put it on the shelf. He used them in a gun that was 60 years old, and he told me they smelled so distinctively fired, he just had to use them.

The last thing I bought that I spent a little time selecting was a good pair of hunting boots. A friend of mine tells me there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad equipment. When it comes to boots, I kind of have to agree.

How much you spend on a pair of boots should be directly related to what kind of hunting you do and how often you do it. I wore Danner Pathfinder boots for about three decades. They were about $125 a pair and seemed to do the job pretty well. I basically hunted a few days each weekend. Then I entered a different phase of upland hunting and, with the addition of several more dogs, started hunting many more days each season.

With the extra wear and tear from all of the additional miles, it soon became apparent that this economical boot was no longer up to the task. It took less than one complete season to wear the stitching out and when this happens the boot pretty much falls right apart. After purchasing three pairs of boots in three seasons, I knew I had to do something different.

I ratcheted up a few notches and started wearing a boot made by Mendle. These have a rubber cap that covers about the bottom inch all the way around the soles and then over the top of the toe. There was no exposed stitching and these lasted a lot longer. The issue I had with these is that the Gortex waterproof lining didn’t seem to last very long and soon the boots would leak. These boots were about $250 per pair but would last about three seasons.

Not bad, but I still was looking for the right combination of cost and longevity. An important thing I learned this time around was that all of the soles of hunting boots are rated for stiffness.  No shoe/boot person had ever told me about that. The smaller the number rating, the more flexible the sole. The stiffer the sole, the longer they take to break in but, in theory, they are supposed to have better overall ankle support.

All of my friends were telling me about a boot made by a company called Kenetrek. I had seen them worn by others, but I had never even checked them out because they were far out of my price range. I could afford to buy them, I just could not justify buying them because of the cost. Well, I had accumulated a number of Scheels points so I thought I might give it a look see.

I went to the store and was very surprised that in early August they had almost no boots in my size in the store. I looked over about five different manufacturers and it was all the same problem. I figured now would be the time to load up for the hunting season, which opens for doves in only 20 days. I tried on some Kenetrek’s of different styles in the right size, but not the style I wanted, and with weak knees I ordered a pair to ship to the house.

I detest buying something without having tried it on but was told if I only wear them in the house and they are the wrong size I could return them. They arrived about 10 days later and are still in the box in the corner of my garage. I have not done the carpet test, but with the sole I ordered, they consider them a 50-mile break-in boot. This is certainly a drawback, but I am hoping for the best. These boots cost a touch over $500, but if they can last five seasons, they will be cheaper per season than any of the others I have purchased in the past.

I keep telling myself there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad equipment. I may regret this decision, but only time will tell. The only thing I know for sure is that 50 miles will be completed long before my first big pheasant hunt. I am going to have a roll of a thin tape called new skin just in case.

I will keep repeating the saying “the bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low cost!”

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com