Substantial improvements to hunting gear in the last 10 years?

[Mike Islander]

I forgot all about flashlights, batteries, battery banks, and bows.

 

[wildcat33]

Packs are light years different than a decade ago. Headlamps are insanely better. The jetboil style stove rocked the earth on its axis. Sleeping pads are miles better. Hot tents hit the mainstream.

I'll ignore the snarky comment about premium boots. If someone can get by with irish setters, rock on.

 

[5MilesBack]

Most of the stuff I use is from more than 10 years ago. I have a newer bow (2014) but my other two bows are equally capable and are 13 and 14 years old. Even my modern stuff is still more than 10 years old, like my Leica CRF rangefinder which is 13 years old. My GPS is at least that old. I took a pair of merino base bottoms out of the lineup last year that are filled with holes, but they were 12 years old last year. That's the biggest change.......is just having to replace consumables with similar items available today. But if stuff didn't wear out, I'd still be using the old stuff for the most part. I still have my Stone Glacier pack which was one of their first......can't even remember when they came out but had to be more than 10 years ago. I'll put my 31 year old Toyota up against any of the newer trucks out there.

 

[Poser]

And dropping the sucker and having the light bulb filament break. I practiced changing the bulb with no light...

Sometimes the batteries would only last 20 minutes or so because literally nobody else was using those giant things and they would often sit on shelves for years.

 

[Phaseolus]

Or the rotary switch would turn on in your pack and the light would be dead when you were done fishing on Grand Mesa on a moonless night.

 

[RCB]

Packs are light years different than a decade ago. Headlamps are insanely better. The jetboil style stove rocked the earth on its axis. Sleeping pads are miles better. Hot tents hit the mainstream.

I'll ignore the snarky comment about premium boots. If someone can get by with irish setters, rock on.

Sorry if it came off as snarky. I guess my thought was... was there truly nothing like the Lowa Tibet (etc. etc.) 10 years ago? I mean, it's leather and rubber. Good craftsmanship, sure, but good craftsmanship has always existed. I don't get the sense that boot-making technology has really advanced much in the last ten years. Life rifles. But, to be fair, I wouldn't actually know - I wasn't in the market 10 years ago.

 

[Billy Goat]

Has hunter success increased in the last ten years? I suspect it has. Be curious to check. I suspect that could be from improvements in hunting gear.

I'm not saying that you need to have modern stuff at all to be successful, but a rangefinder for example takes a skill out of the equation to some extent. With archery it took skill to get to the point you could accurately estimate range, now you can instantly know. Similar can be said for gun hunting. Shortened the learning or success curve for a few I'm sure

 

[RCB]

Were range finders not around 10 years ago? I thought they were. If not that's definitely a big one.

 

[MuleyFever]

I moved out west 9 years ago so I really changed up how and what I hunted with coming from the tree stand. A lot of what is said has not changed much in 10 years. Not substantially anyway. I think the difference is that many items went more main stream in the last 10 years. Now we just have more options on the high end items.

10 years ago Kifaru was making pretty much the same packs. Rangefinders were not much different. I bought great boots. I had a Jetboil. I had an X-therm. Sleeping bags were the same. Hunting clothing basically just finally caught up to mountaineering stuff. I had a GPS with land boundaries and aerial photos. Bows just dont advance very fast. I found this forum as a resource.

 

[Whitetoptom]

As I started to think about it I almost can't believe how much the gear I am using has improved in the past ten years. I am probably more frugal now than I was then. Now I invest in gear instead of just buying s%@$. It kind of started with my first pair of three layer goretex Simms waders. At that point I finally realized the value of investment in good gear. Those waders are still hanging in my garage ready for the next trip. That goes back a few more years to early 2007 if I remember right. The stuff I use now is light years ahead of the cheap disposable walmart/basspro stuff I settled on back then.

 

[Billy Goat]

Were range finders not around 10 years ago? I thought they were. If not that's definitely a big one.

They have been around for 30 years that I can remember. But the early ones didn't shoot a laser, they had a focus wheel, and weren't very accurate. I think I got my first laser rangefinder around 2005, that was a high-end one at the time. The technology has gotten a lot better and cheaper since then.

Also as I have gotten older time goes by a lot faster, so what I think of as a decade ago is off a bit.

 

[Justin Crossley]

Were range finders not around 10 years ago? I thought they were. If not that's definitely a big one.

Rangefinders were around ten years ago but the technology in them has improved dramatically.

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

 

[lukerville]

The two biggest things that I can think of are:

1. Rangefinders (think Sig Kilo 2400 or latest Leica)
2. Phone Mapping (onX and Basemap)

onX was a game changer!

 

[choovhntr]

Trail cameras. They have come a long way in ten years and have completely changed the whitetail hunting world.
Go Hunt. Everyone having draw odds and unit statistics without having to put in hours and hours of research for each unit has definitely changed the amount of applicants and outcomes for any given unit.