Originally Posted by
Hank6046
I was going to post exactly this, but was embarrassed to...
Don't buy from Cabelas though - sign up for emails direct from Mechanix, then when they have sales that are going on all the time, buy direct from Mechanix website. Should commonly run around $25/pr with the discount.
Not the most toasty warm gloves overall, but unbeatable for that price.
HOWEVER.... having T&Ed them a little this winter, they have 2 drawbacks
1) They are not TRUE waterproof rated. The outer camo shell WILL soak up water just like anything else. Repels light rain/falling snow just fine, but if you fell in a creek or were digging around in the snow/mud/etc a long time, then they will soak it up. The inner liner seems to be 99% waterproof though.
What this means is that, if you soak the outer camo shell layer, your hand will stay dry, BUT with the water right up against the inner sleeve, even though your hand will stay dry, you will lose a lot of the warming ability of the glove, so your hands will quickly start to get cold, even if you wring the water out.
That being said, for the price, it's not hard to get a second set, and carry them with you to swap to if you expect this to happen.
2) The inner waterproof fleecy liner isn't quite fixed in place, so it does the usual thing where if you just yank the glove off, it turns inside out... I grab each finger at the tip and pull one by one till it's loose enough to get my hand out without this happening.
For this reason, I recommend NOT bothering with the Sub20(?) version w/ the full gauntlets - while I'd have preferred that style of glove, the fingers on them are a bit stiffer, and with the non-fixed liner, your fingers just slosh around in the glove, so, for example if you are trying to bend your fingers to pick up a small part, your fingers will "slip" inside the shell, while the outer shell remains straight yet floppy now that there's not finger in the tip. Infuriating...
This is NOT a problem with the SUB35 gloves, as the whole shell is more flexible and a bit thinner and more form-fitting to the hand, so at worst it's like wearing a padded regular mechanix shooting glove.
As JSHBike mentioned, the "insulated original" glove is (mostly) not worth bothering with - not because they are too stiff (I have a pair, they stretch/break in quickly and are then just fine), but because they simply suck. They are not waterproof (in fact, due to the trademark mechanix material, they are like wearing sponges on your hands, if you, say, put a hand down while going prone during rain/mud/snow), and the "insulation", in order to keep them pretty thin, is essentially nonexistent, so they are good for maybe fall weather at best.
They are still thin enough to shoot reasonably well in, so if that's a #1 need, I guess a little insulation is better than none. Just expect to soak them if you look at water funny, at which point, they'll be useless. If your hands run warm, you are just as well off with several pairs of regular Mechanix gloves to swap between, or whatever other shooting gloves you already like. My hands do NOT run warm, and I still haven't bothered to get another pair of the insulated originals....
"Once we get some iron in our souls, we'll get some iron in our hands..."
"...A rapid, aggressive response will let you get away with some pretty audacious things if you are willing to be mean, fast, and naked."-Failure2Stop
"The Right can meme; the Left can organize. I guess now we know which one is important." - Random internet comment
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