Gear for the Marginal Lands: Pants on the Margin

© 2010 Joshua Stark

I've gone through many different styles of pants, and many different materials, and I always come back to the same thing: I like jeans.

Maybe it's because they were invented in California for California conditions, or maybe it's because I've worn them all my life and my leg-hairs are rubbed off where they should be, but either way, I find jeans the most comfortable, longest-lasting pants for my kind of outside stuff.

Of course, there are specialty pants for particular conditions - waders, in particular, are the only way to go when you are hunting flooded marshes in Winter. But for the vast majority of my outdoors activities, jeans fit the bill.

So I was happy to find a jeans manufacturer in the U.S. who makes hunting pants. Pointer Brand jeans offers a few options, one of which are brush chaps in woodland camo, so I bought a pair to see how they work.

I've always been partial to Wrangler jeans, but unfortunately, they moved their manufacturing to Mexico. Levi's moved recently, too, from San Francisco to China, I believe (though I could be wrong on that). Pointer Brand is made in Bristol, Tennessee, and has been since 1913.

Their jeans fit well, and they have ample pocket space (one of my weird jeans criteria). The zipper is good, but the button on top was not sewn on perfectly well, and had to be touched up. The jeans material is already broken-in feeling, and the cordura chaps provide ample protection from everything up to star thistles. My only problem with cordura during hunting is the constant zip! zip! sound as they rub together.

I do wish Wrangler had stayed in the U.S., because they are very comfortable. But, I can't in good conscience support on this blog a company who will move just a few hundred miles south because it knows the labor is treated worse there and cannot legally move to better conditions. Free trade isn't free if labor cannot freely move, and if governments are not freely elected.

However, there are a number of manufacturers who still make jeans in the U.S. If you are interested, check out this website for a good listing:

http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/jeans.htm

Interestingly, many U.S. manufacturers offer prices competitive with the big, imported name brands.

What pants do you swear by?