This product is manufactured with hunting in mind: field archery, or shooting. I don't do that: I observe wildlife, and photograph and film, as an amateur. I often adopt a full camouflage approach to concealment, and was looking for a backpack that was congruous with the camo regime I adopt for clothing and masking my optical equipment. On longer trips it needs also to double as my handluggage, carrying quite high-value and fragile optics on flights, where I do not wish to check my 80mm angled telescope, 10x40 binoculars, compact digital camera with spare batteries, chargers, digiscoping adapter, shutter release, etc in as hold baggage.
This pack meets these objectives perfectly. It is
exceptionally well-made, and well thought out for field use. The hydration will be useful in summer months, especially on trips to hotter climes; but the harness and compartment systems, and numerous exterior pouches, mesh pockets, etc are excellent, and although I have not yet abandoned the bungee strap from my binoculars nonetheless the integral backpack bino strap system is well delivered and may be of use one day.
Nearly every feature performs very, very well. My only quibbles are ~
- that the radio comms pouch on the strap is too small even for the smaller of my two sets of 2-way radios, although I have so many other clip options for radios (and anyway, they're not an item I use very often) that I am sure I will find a suitable solution after a few more outings; and
- that the clips to stop belt straps from dangling when not using the hip belt but rather keeping it in concealed mode are a good thought, but not the best design and on my first few trips I found the need to fiddle whilst in the field to keep straps under control. I have added an additional mechanism of my own which has fixed the problem.
Overall though, and whereas there is a
lot of mediocre gear on the market which sells solely on camo pattern, not on the intrinsic quality of design and workmanship: this product is first class and Timberhawk clearly aspire to be at the top of the league in this field and are close to achieving this.
This was also my first experience of using
Overstock.com, the website where I found the best deal on this. The international delivery was slightly slower than the 10-12 days indicated at the time of placing the order so there was a need to check with customer services and use the tracking service: communications around this were good. I would not hesitate to recommend Overstock and it is very likely that I will use the service again.
