Gear & Optics

I dropped down onto the other side of the ranch gate and onto the saturated soil. I was hunting private property south of Longview, Texas, in early April 2021, and it had been raining much of the last 24 hours. It had been raining pretty steady for the last three days of my time here in East Texas, which made the fields and pastures even more inviting to the feral hogs that so love to root up the ground.

Clay, are you really gonna write a column about socks? Yes. Yes, I am. Socks are an underrated part of your combat chassis unless you happen to be an ex-Grunt. For a Grunt, socks are of the utmost importance. If boots are the equivalent of tires, then socks are the air in those tires. A good sock can make the difference between arriving at your destination ready to fight, and arriving with blisters and boo-boos.

I’m a bit of a backpack fanatic and I’ve tested piles of them over the years. One of the things I’ve learned is there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each adventure — from the whitetail woods of the Midwest to the elk-rich Rockies — requires a particular pack.

If you are like me you tend to buy calls, use them, like them, hate them and move on to the next one.  Calls take a ton of abuse and often we pay little or no attention to taking care of them both for maintenance and for adjustments.  I sat down with a good friend and someone that calls as well as anyone I know, to discuss the call components and how anyone can disassemble, adjust, and rebuild just about any call with a few spare parts.

The Bering Optics Hogster Stimulus is no question fantastic for the dollar, if you are on a very limited budget. At $1599, you would be hard pressed to find something that will hang with it as far as capabilities go. But what if you have a little more in the tank? To answer that question, we took a look at the Stimulus side by side with Hogster R-35.

As I have returned to the Malaria swamp we call the Southeastern United States, I have also resurrected a classic boot to fuel adventures. It may be old, it may be far from stylish, but it should be on your radar if you live anywhere water is a way of life. I am talking about the classic green jungle boot. Tried and true, it still can’t be beaten for certain environments.

I’m always looking for a better mousetrap. So far, the AZIAK Equipment bino clamp is the best lightweight bino/tripod adapter I’ve seen for hunting and lightweight applications where saving every ounce of weight matters.

I don’t shoot hogs from a blind here in Texas so I often find myself shooting from strange angles or on uneven terrain. Last year I did a review of the BogPod DeathGrip carbon fiber tripod and while it provided excellent stability…. its 7.5 pound weight made it cumbersome to pack up and carry across different pastures thru the night. I wanted to explore how much of a tradeoff I’m willing to make between stability and maneuverability.

That was one of the furthest shots I’ve even made with a thermal optic, at night, on a hog. My guide and fellow hunters were cheering my shot, and I certainly felt good about it. But I also knew the REAP-IR made the shot possible.