Harkila Pro Hunter Review

Quick walk out in the country. Well, two hour one. It's raining at the moment, lightly. I'm expecting a heavy shower any minute because it's been coming heavy, light, heavy light all day. I really wanted to rain quite heavily in order to test this gear. This is a Härkila Pro Hunter jacket and also Härkila Pro Hunter trousers. And I've also got 10 inch Kevlar fronted Härkila boots as well. I'll put the details to all these things Links in the video description. Starting to get heavy, excellent. In this video, I'm gonna go for quite a strenuous walk up and down hills, through woods, through dense foliage, through dirt and wet, testing this gear. Hopefully I'll be able to keep good video quality. I will keep cleaning the lens, but it is starting to rain quite heavily now, which is excellent. Under here, I've got a base layer from Helikon, which is a thermal base layer. Thermal base layer under the trousers, and I've also got a light North Face fleece on as well. So that's what I've got on underneath this gear. As far as socks go, I would normally wear seal skin, medium length, medium weight socks. But for the purpose of this test, I want to be able to instantly tell if the water's coming into the boots. With waterproof socks, I can't do that, so I've got just ordinary hiking socks on in these boots. For those of you doubting whether it's actually wet, it is wet. Have a look at that river behind me. It's in an absolute raging flood. It's been raining for days. The ground's sodden. There's puddles everywhere. All the vegetation's wet. Perfect conditions for testing this gear. Now for this, I'm testing not only the waterproof abilities of this gear, but also the breathability as well. I'm expecting the sweat. So I am expecting sweat to build up on the inside of it. Whether that reaches uncomfortable level or not will remain to be seen. Big old badger set, which is flooded out, full of water. That other hole's totally flooded out. It just shows you how much water there's been. Incredible. Filling up a badger set. Oh, a bugger. That's a fox set. They're not faring any better either. Absolutely full of water. Well, that area down there is where a little stream comes in. Or what normally is a little stream. To meet the river that was going to be my crossing point going down here. I do want to test the materials as best I can but I think that's asking a bit much. I need waders to get over that. I still feel pretty dry although I think there's some sweat building up on my back. Certainly building up on my head it's running down my nose and maybe making this test a little bit too strenuous. I've worn this stuff exactly the same way when I've been watching my son play football standing still in bleaching rain and stayed perfectly dry. But I wasn't generating any sweat then, I think it might be getting wet from the inside. One thing I have noticed about this material being active for this test is that it's very quiet. That's apparently one of the selling points. People have argued over whether it's quiet or not, it's not as quiet as like a brushed fabric but it's very very quiet compared to a lot of waterproof materials. Very quiet, certainly quiet enough for rifle shooting where you've got to be very stealthy. So that's a good plus point. Right, about an hour into this test and I'm starting to feel a little bit claggy. I think it's because of sweat. There's two little vent pockets, one on each side here behind your main hand pocket. So I've opened those up, see if that'll let a little bit moisture out and see if it makes it a wee bit more comfortable. Remember a little while back I opened up these vents? There you go, there's one there. And there's one on the other side, because I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable. I could feel the sweat starting to build up on my shoulders, probably because I was so active in this gear. And I'm wearing thermals underneath it. Well, half an hour later, when I haven't been any less active, it actually feels a lot more comfortable. I like outdoor gear that's nice and flexible. Because if it isn't flexible, you run the risk of tearing it, getting it holed with barbed wire, or generally knackering it. through it not being flexible not allowing your body to move where it wants to move. So far with what I've done today I haven't had any problems with this at all. Still absolutely pouring down but with these little vents open I'm actually feeling more comfortable than I was even 20 minutes ago. It's obviously allowing the air laden with moisture to get out and the water's not getting in either because it's it's in underneath my arms the water's kind of running off the outsides and away so when the rain falls it isn't getting in here. I've got a phone in here, I've got wireless headphones in here, I've got gloves in this pocket, and I've got a woolly hat in this pocket. I'm going to wait until the end of the test, get them all out, and see if there's any moisture on any of them. Ideally, I want them all to be bone dry. I'm sitting here in full rain, bleaching down, and I couldn't care less. Nice and dry, warm, comfortable inside of here, and I'm loving it. I haven't seen much in the way of wildlife unfortunately and I do like coming out when it's wet because normally you do see quite a lot of wildlife hiding in the depths of the woods. Today there's been absolutely nothing but it's rained for the past week or so. I think everything's migrated south, possibly to North Africa. There we go. One thing I've noticed when this all gets very wet on the outside is that the hood tends to be very low so you can't really see very far in front of you unless you've got a hat on. I did have a hat on earlier on and that bulked it up a little bit. It raised this and it allowed me to see much further out into the distance. I suppose if I had hair, it would do the same as well. But unfortunately, I haven't got any hair. But if I just turn that up on the outside, it allows me to see clean through, still keeps me dry, and it stays there as well. It doesn't just flop back. It feels good. It feels very comfortable to walk in. And although it might look bulky... It certainly looks a little bit bulky on the viewfinder there. It doesn't feel bulky. It doesn't feel as if it's cumbersome when you're walking along, even when you're going up and down hills, across the sides of hills, climbing over things. It certainly doesn't feel bulky. If you are worried about it looking a bit bulky and possibly being built for bigger frames, like me, there is a Pro Hunter X version. That's a newer version of this gear. And it's got a slightly tighter cut. In fact it looks a lot tighter. The trousers are almost like a dress trouser. There's a good friend of mine got the Pro Hunter X trousers and he's quite skinny, or should I say he's in shape and I'm not. I looked at the trousers that he had on and I thought my thighs are far too big to get into there and my backside certainly isn't size zero, so I'm glad I just went for the ordinary Pro Hunters. Same with this as well because I have quite a square, I have quite a round frame. This is for a 42 inch chest and it fits very, very well. I've also got the, I've also got a Harkala, I'm going to get the name wrong, Anabola Windstopper jersey, which is like a wool jumper with a Gore-Tex membrane in between, between two layers of wool, extremely warm. I knew that that would be far too warm for this test, so I didn't put it on. That's why I just went with a light fleece. But that is an excellent piece of kit as well. Right. If anybody sees me here, they're going to think I'm absolutely nuts, sitting in the rain on the face of it, looking soaking wet, talking to a camera in the middle of nowhere. So I'm going to go home, get this kit off, and we'll see how well it's kept the water out. And in the case of the top, also how well it's shed the perspiration that I've built up in the first half hour or so. Start with the jacket. There is a bit of condensation in there. It's not sopping wet, but it is moist. Certainly wasn't uncomfortable and I actually thought it was drying out after the first hour and a half or so when I was pretty active and generating quite a lot of sweat. Arms are dry, whether you can see any moisture on there, can't see any, it looks dry. Get down to the base layer, that feels dry. Although the inside of the coat felt a little bit moist, that feels dry. That feels as if it's generated a little bit of sweat but it's not too bad, I still smell fresh as well. Absolutely bone dry. They never felt uncomfortable at all during that test and that's really really dry. Moving on to the socks, bone dry. It's a little bit foisty but very very dry. They're not waterproof socks, nothing special, just cheap woolly hiking socks. Excellent. There was a little bit of moisture generated from me but the gear didn't let me down. With those little vents open, I don't know whether it was just my imagination but I do feel as if that actually let quite a lot of the moisture out. If I'd had those open before I set off, there might not have been as much sweat and moisture ridden air built up inside the coat. That might have prevented that. Certainly felt a lot more comfortable with those vents open. Oh, I haven't checked my gear yet. I've got a phone in this one. Plus headphones in this one. They actually do show a little bit of moisture on them. Yet the inside of the pocket feels dry. It's very near the vent. Possibly a little bit of moisture getting through from where the vent is into the pocket. Certainly not enough moisture in there to do them any harm. Gloves, bone dry, definitely. Inside of the pocket, woolly hat, bone dry. Get in there. Just take a very, very quick look at the boots. I'm not gonna go over all the design features of these things because you can find that elsewhere. This is purely just a performance test. And they're still totally dry inside there. And if you've watched this all the way through, you'll have seen me step in water and dirt way over the height of them. Obviously I had the trousers over the top, and I wasn't wearing gaiters, if I was wearing gaiters it would be even more protected, but even as it is, water splashing over the top of where these were underneath my trousers, it hasn't got in, certainly hasn't got underneath the trousers, but the bottom of the trousers do fit very very tight around the bottom of here. So the Härkila Pro Hunter Gear, overall very very good, well constructed, it fits me very well, my shape being I would say pretty much average, approximately... 5 foot 8, 5 foot 9 in height, more or less average build, possibly heavy set. And I think that equates to about 175 to 180 centimetres in metric. If you feel like splashing out and want some very, very good outdoor gear, I would recommend this. It is not cheap. Check out the price, as you'll see, it is not cheap, but it is very, very good. Not really suited for very active outdoor pursuits. I mean, on that walk, I was... I wasn't pushing it, I wasn't exactly jogging around, but I was going quite fast. Certainly, if I was creeping around with a rifle, I wouldn't have had the problems with the perspiration. If I was sitting pigeon shooting, sitting waiting for birds to come in, it wouldn't be a problem at all. I'd be bone dry, lovely and warm, protected from the wind, and comfortable. Being comfortable is the main thing. As I mentioned before, When I go and watch my son play football, quite often it's up on the hilltop of a contour, if anybody knows that. It's about a thousand feet above sea level, northeast England, known as the roof of the world. I'm sure it's twinned with Chicago because it pretty much is the Windy City. And quite often the weather's coming sideways. When I've been wearing this gear, standing watching him play football, I'm fairly sure that I'm the only one up there who stays 100% dry. Excellent gear. Thanks very much for watching and I'll catch you in the next video.