The Complete Handbook of Hunting & Shooting Jackets

Chapter 1: Understanding Hunting & Shooting Jackets

A hunting or shooting jacket is not a casual garment. It is a portable shelter system designed to protect you from a specific set of environmental conditions while allowing you the freedom of movement to shoot, climb, navigate, and carry gear. A good one is engineered around a contradiction: it must be tough, yet light; waterproof, yet breathable; and warm, yet compressible enough to stuff into a pack when the temperature climbs. To understand what a hunting jacket actually is, you have to stop thinking about it as a coat and start thinking about it as a system of components working together to manage your body's heat and moisture.

Consider a typical autumn day in the uplands. You are walking a field edge in the Dakotas hunting sharp-tailed grouse. The temperature is about 5°C, but a wind is blowing at 30 km/h. You are generating substantial body heat just walking. You crest a rise, see the dog lock up, and you stop, raise your gun, and take a shot. In the space of two minutes, you have gone from maximum exertion to total stillness. Your jacket must shed heat and moisture while you are moving, then instantly switch to retaining heat when you are still. That shift is the fundamental design problem every hunting jacket manufacturer is trying to solve. A jacket that just keeps you warm on a cold day will turn you into a sweaty mess on a walk. A jacket