Stoney Creek Airmesh

If Global Warming was a Myth, we wouldn’t need the new Airmesh™

The editor tries out the new summer hunting clothes by Stoney Creek®

With so much clothing available to keep you warmer, it’s great to see a couple of items especially designed to do just the opposite. Keeping you cooler is generally harder than keeping you warm, as you can just pile on layers as you need them. But when the weather’s hot, almost anything at all will make you overheat if you’re pushing up the hills, until now…

The Fabric

Stoney Creek® has had Airmesh™ fabric out for a while now. The fabric has tiny holes actually woven into it. These tiny holes let the air through and they claim, “It’s like having instant air conditioning,” and to a large degree, they’re right. As soon as the slightest breeze kicks in, air flows through the fabric and causes sweat evaporation that cools you down quicker than an ice-pack!

In the trousers, they’ve taken their Airmesh™ fabric and added MicroTough™, another unique fabric, and placed panels in the seat and knee areas. This gives a bit of wet-weather protection where it’s needed and some protection from bush-lawyer and similar spiky plants.

The shirt is made with a completely new Airmesh™ fabric that Stoney Creek® has had developed. It is much lighter and has an even more open weave. That makes it even cooler and, best of all, is lighter and packs away to a very tiny parcel in your pack.
I tried out a piece of scrap fabric and they are both very tough, especially on the trouser. You certainly can’t tear it with your hands.

The colour for both is Realtree Hardwoods Green® that is a great match to most of our bush.

The Fit

The trousers have a new cut from what they’ve done before and I think that they’ve got the fit pretty much right. Good to see a zip fly (I know it’s a bit lazy) put in and the belt loops as well as a velcro waist adjustment is an excellent feature. They have articulated legs (made with a bend) plus two zip pockets. The fronts are Airmesh™ but cleverly lined using the pocket liner to stop your bright red underwear showing through.

The shirt is their most popular design with the vertical zip top pocket that everyone seems to have copied. Wide open cuffs with dome-closures make it easy to roll your sleeves up, although I’d like to see some sleeve tabs so you could slide them up and tab in place, as the inside of the fabric is a bit pale to have showing on a hunt.

In the Hills

If you are used to wearing shorts you’ll love these trousers as with the extra air-flow it’s just like having shorts but with the added advantage of covering those white legs (the UV light reflected is highly visible to deer) and gives your legs some protection from the bush. One negative is the tiny holes are just the right size for hook-grass seeds to poke through. The MicroTough™ knees are a good help in this regard.

The shirt is also a great product and especially for something that I had never thought of until I’d worn it in all weather conditions. That is, it dries in a flash! When you layer the shirt by covering it up, the tiny air holes act like an air trap and insulates reasonably well too. Quite a bonus.

Conclusion

The new owners of the company have recognised the need for different fabrics on the top to the legs and so have designed garments accordingly, so well done there.

I was suitably impressed with the garments. Despite having a cupboard full of hunting gear, these two garments are going to be the first to be taken on the next trip away. The weather can be unseasonably hot during the early Roar, maybe it’s “climate change” after all? As long as the stags are roaring, I won’t complain about the weather.

This gear is really designed for warm weather so remember to bring extra layers should the weather change, as it can at any time of the year.