Guest Review - David Tulloch from Insite Hunting

Guest Review - David Tulloch from Insite Hunting

You regularly get to read Bushwear's own opinion on products, but we'd be remiss if we didn't ackowledge that every retailer is a little bit biased towards their own products.  That's why we've enlisted the help of real customers from all shooting disciplines to review the goods we sell in a real environment.  This week, David Tulloch gives us his thoughts on the telescopic backpack highseat.  If you'd like to be featured on our blog and social media, drop an example review to marketing@bushwear.co.uk.

Review Time 

I received another great product from Bushwear to test and review for you.  Today's Review will be on the on:

BUSHWEAR PANTHER FOLDING HIGHSEAT

The Telescopic High seat is made of Aluminium, and weighs around 12kg, the documentation on it says it takes around a minute to set up and put away.

My Thoughts

Well what can I say, call me sad but of all the things I have reviewed and had a shot of in the shooting world I was actually excited in using this product.

I use Highseats very regularly in my work, there are a lot of advantages of having the use of a static high seat or high hide. High seats are a great safety feature, almost always offering a perfect back stop on even the flattest of landscapes.  Also, in tricky situations it helps keep your scent from the prey (a theory I have always been dubious about).  A high seat almost always gives you the upper hand.  So when Bushwear said I can play with their back pack high seat I was over the moon - what better than a high seat you can throw over your back and take anywhere or be able to change your position if you think the situation is not right, or even better a high seat that you can use for first light in one location then half way through the day move to another location for last light.

First impression when opening the box was, "My god this is gonna be too heavy!".  I don't know but I actually expected it to be lighter, ok I know it is 12kg, but truly I thought, in my mind that it would not be so heavy.

I wasn't surprised though at the quality, The material really does feel of a high quality build, giving you the reassurance when you're sitting 12 feet up a tree. On inspection there were not a lot of parts to put together so it seemed that the assembly was going to be easy.

My decision was to test it in the field and not to start working it out in the garden as I felt that was cheating, so the whole package was unpacked and thrown straight into the back of the pickup for my next outing later in the night.

That night I arrived onsite and decided the first job was to go play with the high seat, I left the shooting equipment in the truck and proceeded to put the high seat on my back and trundle across the field to set it up. I really did think it was going to be heavy as in one hand it felt it. Once on my back the seat unit's weight wasn't actually bad, in fact, it was a hell of a lot lighter than I thought. Walking about 300 yards from the bottom of the field to the top of the field I hardly knew it was there.

I got to the area I wanted to try it out on and found a nice long tree with a thickish trunk to set it up, and within about a couple of minutes I was strapping the chair of the high seat to the trunk of the tree. Now by this time it was dark and I was having to rely on my head torch to do all the working out and bearing in mind I had never put one of these up before, it went very smoothly. Before making the trek back to the truck to get my stuff I decided to test it out.

Climbing up to the seat was daunting for the first time, but, not much different from climbing an aluminium ladder. Once in the seat I actually felt quite safe and comfortable. So decided to go back and get my rifle and sit in it for a while.

In conclusion, at £195 I think it is a great alternative to a fixed position high seat and as other portable ones are far more expensive it is a good budget item. The seat is safe and comfortable and very quick to unpack and pack away allowing you the flexibility of changing your position when you need it or getting out of there when the weather turns rough.

I do have a couple of issues with this item though...

One of my biggest issues is that, although it is portable and allows you some freedom, it is a little cumbersome when you have to carry a ruck sack with a stalk's worth of food and equipment and most importantly your rifle.  But, if you're not going a long way or able to go back and get your gear like I did then this is perfect.  Also, as it is aluminium, when you climb in and out of the seat it does - as you can imagine - make some noise but that is to be expected, when you are up there in the seat it makes little noise at all so you just have to be a little quieter when climbing in and out.

I think this is another great and very usable product and if you have the budget and you have not got the opportunity to build fixed high seats or hides everywhere you need one then you will find this very, very useful.

Thank you again for Bushwear to make this available to us for review.

  New Call-to-action

 

David Tulloch is a stalker with a game management company in the Highlands of Scotland and a self employed pest controller for a number of farms in the Inverness area, When not doing pest control or deer management he is one of the administrators of Insite Hunting's 'Buy, Swap and Sell' page.  For more information visit www.facebook.com/groups/insiteshootingwww.insitehunting.com, and www.codfighters.com.