Being a mountainous little island in the middle of the ocean, New Zealand is blessed with some pretty changeable weather. You name it, we have to deal with it.
Here at PointsSouth we end up spending a lot time hunting in some pretty average weather, in fact we are often deliberately going out in bad weather because we know where the animals will be in those sort of conditions.
Because of the above points we take our gear pretty seriously.
For a long time now the hunting apparel available to us in New Zealand has been well below the standards of other industries such as skiing and mountaineering. Most skiers wouldn’t go near a jacket with a waterproof rating of only 10,000mm, so why do we for hunting? Especially when we are more likely to encounter seriously wet conditions.
More important than waterproofing is breathability. Most people won’t realise but often they are getting wet from perspiration i.e. the jackets not leaking, it’s actually just not breathing.
Do your homework, a number of hunting brands available here don’t even put a figure on their breathability. Why is that? To confuse things even more with waterproofing and breathability ratings, a manufacturer can virtually state any number they like within reason. Often relying on the ratings their fabric supplier has told them, and then more often than not going and printing a camo pattern on the fabric which will effect these numbers also.
Mountain hunting is without a doubt a pursuit where breathability is super important. We bust our guts and sweat, then stop and glass. If your clothing system isn’t breathing then you’re going to end up damp and then cold. And it is a system, a system of layers and they all need to breath.
After a lot of research and through testing, PointsSouth has partnered up with the guys at Firstlite. We wanted industry leading apparel for ourselves and we also wanted industry leading apparel to be available in New Zealand. So we’ve done it, we’ve put our necks out, brought stock and built a webstore. So you too can now get your hands on this stuff easily and at a realistic price.
Firstlite offers the highest level of waterproofing and breathability available in the hunting industry. Anybody can make claims, but very few brands actually use third party independent testing to prove it. Firstlite's Seak Stormtight jacket for example boasts a lab proven waterproof rating of 30k and breathability of 36.6k!!
Click here and see the results for yourself.
Over the coming weeks and months we are going to continue to add products to our store. What you are going to see are only the quality goods we ourselves use and trust and are suited to mountain hunting in New Zealand. Some of these might potentially not be from “hunting” brands, but have been selected by the PointsSouth crew based on our own real life experiences of using and abusing them.
We are excited to offer you a more trusted shopping experience where you know that we use what we sell and that a particular product performs and is fit for purpose. PointsSouth (well Firstlite really) has quite literally got your back.
Check out the new PointsSouth web store here
