Cabela's Dry-Plus® Performance™ Upland Coat

[nj gsp]

A few weeks ago, I bought Cabela's Dry-Plus® Performance™ Upland Coat (Item:8IS-942883).

Here's my impression: it's comfortable, but I found while trying them on at the store that there is a lot of variability in coats of the same size. One had sleeves that were too short - like the large size sleeve had been sown on the XL coat. The XL was tight, the 2XL too big - but by trying on four 2XL coats I was able to find one that fit, i.e. was only a little bigger than the XL.

While wearing the coat, if I try to put my hands in the had warmer pockets (behind the cargo pockets) they invariably find their way into the game bag instead.

No big deal, but after using it today for what I bought it for - hunting in the rain - here's what I have the real problem with: It's not actually waterproof. Dry-Plus isn't dry at all. After only an hour in light drizzle with occasional showers, it seemed fine. But after things turned to light rain interspersed with a couple of brief heavy showers in the next hour, I was soaked right to the skin.

I didn't buy the Gore-Tex version, because of the game bag inside the coat - once you've unzipped the coat to put birds in the bag, you can't zip it back up again (I tested the coats using a couple of Dokken dummies borrowed from the dog training department).

So, it's going to be returned the next chance I get, and the search for a decent waterproof upland coat continues!

[nj gsp]

After spending 30 minutes picking all the beggar's ticks off the coat, here's another negative: the fabric really grabs and holds those pesky little burrs, far worse than my old Cabela's coat. I ended up scraping them off with a knife, because they were so difficult to pull off.