Bespoke Shooting Suit- recommendations - Page 3

I don't know your ideas about custom suits online. If you'd like to buy one online, here is a choice for you: http://www.upunique.com/collection/suits

How about Leonard Logsdail's Poacher Jacket?

http://logsdailclassic.com/categories/The-Poacher-Jacket/

Careful with Bookster. They might be friendly and stay behind their products. But they don't deliver in time whatsoever, seem to have a production (say: tailoring) problem, i.e. too small workforce, and a very bad attitude to tell customers that their 50%-pre-payed clothing hasn't even been started after 4 months! Happened to me and my wife recently. We wanted to support the English tailoring business and ordered bespoke suit, trousers and coat from Bookster and faced a fiasko. In the end I received my suit 4 months after ordering; at that time the rest of the order hadn't even been started yet. Email exchange with Bookster avaailable on request. Arne

Four months! Luxury!.

I've had a pair of trousers on order for seven months.

Still no sign of delivery.

tTE

Rifle? Not likely.

...

Pretentious thread of the day! People are writing "rather" and stuff, ha.

I think the reason JL picked you up on that is not that he is "borderline weird" but because he is a senior and extensively published firearms journalist. Afficiandos often care about precise use of terminology in a way that the wider population can find odd. He's picking you up in the same way we might pick someone up on calling a blucher an oxford, a sports jacket a blazer, and so on.

JL would probably be too modest to wish to be described as an expert, but I would be happy to characterise him as such (and should his Grulla be a straight-gripped 12 bore, 27" barreled assisted opener, then he and I would prove to have strangely convergent tastes in firearms as well as clothing).

Thanks for the vindication. I do have to wonder if anyone who makes a gaffe of the magnitude of saying "drawing a gun" when he obviously means mounting a shotgun can be much of a shooting man either.

I might mention I have known many of the pioneers and eminent figures of the sport of handgun hunting. To the best of my knowledge, none of them wore a Norfolk jacket or anything similar while engaging in this pursuit.

My Grulla is indeed a straight-gripped 12 bore but has 28-inch (IC & M) barrels. Alas, it does not have the assisted opening feature, which doubtless reduces me to the ranks of the proles (where I probably belong anyway).

Isn't the shooting suit exclusive to birding? In which case there's no usual place for a pistol. Something tells me folks never chased boar into a thicket wearing a shooting suit.

As for modern sporting tweed, there is this, and the matching trousers. Try not to wince:

http://www.barbour.com/us/mens/jackets-and-coats/tweed/sporting-lightweight-washable-tweed

First, regarding JLibourel's qualifications, IIRC, he is not just a highly-respected journalist, he was also the Editor-in-Chief of a monthly magazine for many years. As an editor, I imagine the draw vs. mount thing not only leaped of the page at him, it leaped off the page and beat him vigorously about the head and shoulders.

Secondly, various forms of shooting suits are unusual, to be sure, but they are not all that rare. Cordings sells them OTR. This is the jacket in their house check but you can buy trousers, breeks or even a waistcoat to match.

http://www.cordings.co.uk/field-clothing/men-s-field-clothing/jackets/action-back-jacket-house-check-1.html

You NEVER EVER chase a wild pig because it is far too dangerous, that's what the dogs do. Poor dogs.

Just encountering a wild pig is risky.

Jan (if I may)

Vindication is the least I can do. As a field-sports minded lad in the country (and formerly a more than occasional competitive target shooter), I grew up reading your stuff whenever I had saved enough to buy one of those - at the time - exotic imported American gun magazines.

I dislike the assisted opener (aka "hard closer") feature and only tolerate it because it is a used gun with other virtues including nice wood (also bored quarter and half, btw). Non-assisted is hardly "prole" and assisted may even be slightly nouveau riche: in general, whether we are talking clothes, cars, women, or firearms, unnecessary complications which add expense, decrease reliability, and do not enhance function should be avoided. :-)

To sort of return to the original question, almost no-one even in Britain now requires a traditional shooting suit or jacket. It is an anachronism now bordering on affectation. That is no reason not to own one (I have a twenty year old SAB OTR jacket with lovely "action back" shoulder pleats that will probably outlive me), but on almost all shoots the vast majority of "guns" (= shooters) will be in tweed shooting coats (not jackets), wax jackets, or the more modern Harkila/etc gore-texy stuff. If you want to fit in, that is the way to go. Turn up in an obviously new 3-piece shooting suit with a shiny cased pair of Purdeys and everyone willl think you are: (i) trying too hard; and (ii) an American employee of Goldman Sachs; or (iii) some other variety of uncouth dickhead.

I suspect this depends upon mood. I've been within a few feet of wild pigs on a couple of occasions.

This is the type of thing that spun JLibourel up to start with....

 

There are a whole lot of wild boar hunters that once the dogs corner a hog go in from behind and cut the throat with a knife. In fact it could be considered the right way to dispatch the hog. And a section of the knife industry makes knives just for this although a simple Bowie knife will work and works well.

 

As to the dogs that is what they are breed, born and live for. Just like my Toller as a pup sitting in the empty 12 pound keg of red dot gunpowder in my Avator was born and breed to hunt birds. Wild birds, ruffled grouse and pheasants. They would be poor dogs if they were not allowed to hunt and do what every fiber of their being drives them to do. Just as some men are also driven to hunt.

 

I prefer the Wing Works vest myself which I am wearing in this picture. And have found birds don't really care so much what you are wearing when you shoot at them. Or what gun you are using, I prefer my barrels to be stacked over each instead of side by side myself. And find nothing wrong with a single bbl pump or auto either. 

Indeed, hunting swords and Boar spears were once common in Europe.

That said, the closest I've been to a live boar was at Teufelsberg, barely a couple feet, actually. They appear to be very socialized there an the general rule is so long as you stick to a trail they won't bother you regardless of proximity.

Oh so the dogs set on a pig and never once get injured? Really? Are your pigs are the domestic variety let loose?

I've worked with pros who hunt for a living, not enthusiasts who play with Rambo knives. I never saw them miss with a gun, that sort of pro. My colleague accompanied one who tracked 15km through forest and found the thief's house that walked off with his documents (returned minus the cash) ... that sort of pro.

Poor dog ....