Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 2017 hunting done-gear review

Well as 2017 comes to a close, and with 7 big game animals on the ground plus a fair amount of birds and some high mountain fishing trips I figured I'd do a gear review of what worked and what didn't---for me at least. I hunted and fished 7 states and used this gear in temps from ~70 above to zero. Rain, snow, fog and sunshine. I am not a gear junkie, and don't use things like trekking poles, bino harness (may try one this year) or anything sitka/kuiu anymore, but what I do have I like to make sure works.



First: what I tried out this year, and have high hopes for in future years:
Tedthorn's Frankenstud slingamajigthingy-Pretty neat piece of gear, and really useful. While I don't think it was absolutely necessary to my success, it was for sure handy and well worth the money. I fully plan to keep using it. No pictures of mine, but there's plenty floating around the 'fire, and for good reason.

Gränsfors Bruk Outdoor Axe-I see nothing to complain about with this thing. I chopped off antlers, elk backbones (easier for me to get to the Tloins) and most certainly used it to get firewood when I decided a little flame was in order.


Kifaru Slick Bag and stuff sack-used on some elk hunts and Alaskan caribou. I really like it so far.

Caribou game bags-absolutely no complaints so far. Used them on everything this year.




What has worked in past years, and unsurprisingly kept working like a champ:
Steiner Peregrin 10x42s. Simply awesome binos that I like better than my Zeiss Dialyt 10x40s and Swaro EL 8.5x42s. I did send them in to have the cheesy twist up eye cups replaced and repair the bino strap anchor pocket, but they apparently couldn't repair the anchor pocket so they sent me a brand new pair of the Peregrine's replacement, the "wildlife" as they call it in 10x42. We'll see if they're as good as the Peregrin was, optically least.

Kahtoola K10's.-I wore a steel set right down to nubs, and have had this second set for one season now. Simply awesome, though the snow skins are useless and a plastic buckle broke. I refuse to hunt anything in snow or mud without these, let alone elk and chuckar, and quite often use them on dry terrain as well. Even late season farmground pheasant hunts benefit big time from these. If I had to chose one piece of gear that is absolutely the most useful, this would be it.



Sleeping Indian wool gaitors-I have had these since high school and they're still going strong except for one button snap and one zipper that broke. I had a pair of kenetreks, but they were destroyed after 2 seasons of half use...that is to say I wore them half the time, and the Sleeping Indian set the other half.


Havalon Piranta-nothing more needs said. I SUCK at sharpening. I gutless quartered 5 of my 7 big game animals, and used nothing but my Piranta to do it with two exceptions. I used the Gränsfors Bruk Outdoor Axe once to get to the tenderloins of an elk and a gerber fixed blade to remove some half frozen backstraps and tloins, but other than that I used nothing but the piranta.

SWFA 6x42 mil quad and Leupold FXIII 6X42. No surprises here. 5 of the 7 critters plus some random coyotes and badgers were taken with these, from less than one hundred to 528 yards.



Eberlestock X2-these don't have the best rep, but I don't have an issue with mine. I should take advantage of Mystery Ranch's closeout sale going on right now, but would rather that money go towards plane tickets or a tag somewhere next year. I packed out 2 elk, a mule deer, a caribou and an axis deer this year with my X2 plus went on a few Golden Trout adventures. No issues.

Anything Filson-no need to explain.




What didn't work and I have no plans to ever try again:
Boots: Danner Vicious and AKU Jager Evo High GTX-They didn't last one season. I am going back to either Meindl or Lowa.

Berger bullets-this would take a while to explain, but I am not real impressed...again. A mule deer and two elk died from them, but all three took a second shot and there was nothing wrong with the first shot. Maybe I got into a bad lot of them or something......I dunno.

The verdict on the Sig Kilo 2000 is still out there-despite this being my second season with it.



I used more gear such as cheaper synthetic pants, swaro spotting scope, SPOT, jetboil, etc. but this is the stuff that either seems to be unimportant to folks on these boards or I don't feel real positive or negative about so far. Hope everyone had a great 2017 and an even better 2018.