Nameless Range
Well-known member
I don't do any really hardcore hunting, and I think it is evident that those who do are correct and speak from experience that the expensive stuff is the often the best stuff, but I do strongly believe there is a diminishing ROI for some of these things.
I was on the coldest hunt of my life a couple years back with some buddies. One of the guys I was with was wearing a $500 pair of Sitka stormfront pants. I was wearing some Finnish military surplus woolies I bought 10 years ago for around $100. I don't think those woolies are as light, or maybe even as warm as the Sitka's, but they aren't 1/5 the product as the proportion of the cost would allude to. Also, if I rip them when crossing a barbed wire fence, like my buddy did to his sitkas, I just patch them, and I don't feel like I have just engaged in some sort of financial distress, like my buddy did. I kind of associate it with the reason to never have a $70,000 hunting truck - I'd be worried about Montana Pinstripes on a mountain road.
In application development there is something called the 80% rule. It's a spinoff of the Pareto Principal. Basically, getting to 80% of something is sometimes optimal, as getting that last 20% could take too much energy/resources. For the types of hunting most folks do, I think this is true when it comes to $500 pants vs $100 woolies, or $20 costco adventure pants vs some name brand $200 "mountain pants" made of the exact same fabric.
I was on the coldest hunt of my life a couple years back with some buddies. One of the guys I was with was wearing a $500 pair of Sitka stormfront pants. I was wearing some Finnish military surplus woolies I bought 10 years ago for around $100. I don't think those woolies are as light, or maybe even as warm as the Sitka's, but they aren't 1/5 the product as the proportion of the cost would allude to. Also, if I rip them when crossing a barbed wire fence, like my buddy did to his sitkas, I just patch them, and I don't feel like I have just engaged in some sort of financial distress, like my buddy did. I kind of associate it with the reason to never have a $70,000 hunting truck - I'd be worried about Montana Pinstripes on a mountain road.
In application development there is something called the 80% rule. It's a spinoff of the Pareto Principal. Basically, getting to 80% of something is sometimes optimal, as getting that last 20% could take too much energy/resources. For the types of hunting most folks do, I think this is true when it comes to $500 pants vs $100 woolies, or $20 costco adventure pants vs some name brand $200 "mountain pants" made of the exact same fabric.