Jim, I wish our good will store was a well stocked as yours.
Youper, like Jim says it depends on what part of the country you are in for some of the stuff, just like garage sales. You don't find many used crab pots in Kansas. I have several thrift stores within reasonable range and drop in once in awhile on several. One of them almost never has anything of outdoor clothing interest to me, several are OK but one of them is almost always a gold mine. This is in a strip from Seattle to the lower Mainland of BC. I decided not to say which store is so loaded with good wool and also other outdoor clothing! Often there is ski and mountaineering/climbing clothing in it, plus ironically, some superb wool dress pants.
A round about way of saying that you have to keep an eye open all year round when shopping used stuff, rather than just go buy retail. Well worth it. I hit a big thrift store yesterday, first one in months, and didn't find a single item of interest to me, though if I was short on wool dress pants for hunting, there was one pair that would do. The best store is so consistently good that I've cogitated some on why that store has so much good stuff and suspect it is local demographics: lots of high end yuppy spenders nearby who dress well in the office and on the slopes.
For the cheap pants, I have stagged them off in the bush with a hunting knife a time or two when they were too long. As I posted previously on this thread, (I think) I now leave some of the pant legs long and put a light bungee cord in the hem/cuff tight enough to stretch tight around my boot top to keep stuff out. The pant needs to be a bit long and loose to do this, so that when you lift a knee high on a steep slope, it doesn't pull the pant hem off of your boot top.
Miss Treated: thank you for the tip on washing wool!
