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Field Ethos
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By Mike Schoby
Sitting under a makeshift rainfly attempting to occasionally glass through torrential sheets of rain, my guide laughed while looking at his Inreach.
“What’s up?” I asked not lifting my head from my binocs (not because I could see anything, I just didn’t want rain pelting my eyes).
“It is showing zero percent chance of wind or rain and a sun icon for today.”
Laughing, I replied, “Well we know that is bullshit.”
“Welcome to the Alaskan Peninsula.”
We both knew better than to even look at the weather forecast. We were on day six or seven living out of an unheated tent on the Pacific side of the Peninsula looking for big brown bears in the first half of May. All that there was, was wind and rain—just in varying degrees.
The Mother of All Field Tests
To someone who has never experienced the Peninsula’s weather, the best way I could describe it is: imagine if the most fiendish of Bond villains combined a walk-in cooler with a multi-head cold shower. Enter it at 6 AM, sit down and soak it up until 9 PM. Try not to think how miserable it is as you are paying roughly $250 per hour for the privilege. While it obviously isn’t pleasant, it is how you get a big coastal brown bear.
However, while attempting to find the silver lining in the suck, I couldn’t imagine a better proving ground for gear. I had around 100 pounds of Kuiu’s finest stored inside their rainproof duffels and had been rotating through it daily. On the brief occasion when the sky cleared and the wind kicked up, layers would come off to be hung on any available alder branch to dry.
The guide and I were clad in the best clothing money could buy, and it all worked with varying degrees of success. This is not throwing shade on a particular piece of kit as the conditions were so brutal, I was surprised anything kept you warm and dry.
Case in point. I had packed two Kuiu Super Down Pro Jackets—they are my go-to for almost every mountain hunt, but on the Peninsula even though the down is treated to remain dry, the jacket would still get wet around the hood, neck and cuffs where water would seep through the shell. The good news is they dry extremely quickly, and if you got even an hour of no rain they would dry either on your body or hung over a branch.
Kuiu Katana Gale Force Jacket
But out of everything tested, one piece of Kuiu kit proved invaluable—the Katana Gale Force jacket and pants. They are billed as waterproof and windproof and body mapped insulted. I can wholeheartedly attest that all the above is true.
I could write like most other technical gear reviews published by other outlets that pretend the writer is a technical clothing expert and is littered with terms like 3DeFX+®, Duraflex®, Torain membrane, BEMIS®, and K-DWR®, as if they know what any of it means. Now the Kutana Gale Force has all of this and much more, but I had to go to the website to understand it (if you are a techno nerd, I would highly advise one visit HERE to learn more.
What I do know after a week of living in both the jacket and pant, is they kept me bone dry and warm in some of the harshest conditions to be found on earth. Also, after a week of hunting in it, you notice the small but important things. Things like waterproof adjustable cuffs, a hood that is fitted large enough to also wear a thick insulated hat or cap, full-length leg zippers for letting out moisture when hiking, fleece-lined integrated collar and high-waisted back on the pants, which adds a vital insulating layer to your core.
So as much as I rave about the Gale Force line to anyone who will listen, should everyone run out and buy a set? No.
For starters, the pant and jacket combo will set you back over a grand and for most people sitting in a treestand or ground blind for whitetails, Kuiu offers other items that will get the job done for far less money. But for truly extreme hunts where the weather actively tries to kill you, and very likely could if you were unprepared, the Kutana Gale Force system is cheap life, as well as comfort, insurance.\
Price: $1,050 (pant and jacket combo).
Pros: The best, by far, solution for wet, cold and windy hunts.
Cons: Expensive if you don’t truly need it.
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