Russell APX Gale L4 jacket

Just picked up the Russell APX Gale L4 jacket in MAX-1 camo from Cabela's...on sale for only $85!!

I've been looking at the various options for jackets in this category; comparing this one to offerings from Sitka, Badlands, King's, and a couple of others.

I favered the Russell design over the others I've seen due to it's collar & cuff design, over all fit for me, and the availability of the MAX-1 or King's Shadow camo patterns.

My second choice would have to be the Badlands Velocity, with the only negatives being it's treestand oriented camo pattern and I'm not overly fond of the velcro cuffs either. Overall, an impressively nice jacket otherwise.

The King's XKG is obviously available in the western oriented Shadow camo patterns, but the main negative is the black paneling. As a bow hunter, I believe these panels can be the difference in getting busted and remaining undetected.

Lastly, I find the Sitka 90% offering to just be too spendy. I simply cannot justify the price difference over the other offerings. There were others in this category like the Core 4 Element, but I did not get the opportunity to see them in person.


Really, I think I would be happy with any of these offerings, but just got lucky with the right deal at the right time with the Cabela's offer, and it just so happened to be my favorite of the bunch, in my favorite camo pattern.

Now, I'm anxiously looking forward to trying it out on my January deer hunt. Hopefully, I can follow up with positive results.

I have had for 3 years and I love it.

You will be most impressed.

I hunted this weekend in 5 degree weather with just the L2 layer underneath it and it worked perfect. It stayed dry when I was packing (sweating) and dried out very quickly.

Finally heading out tomorrow morning to try it out.

While it was on sale at Cabela's (for a nice discount) I went ahead and picked up the L1 top and bottom. I also grabbed an APX beanie from the local Sportsman's warehouse with a gift card I got for Christmas. I'll report back next week...hopefully with a good story of the hunt as well.

Go to test out the Gale jacket and L1 base layers this weekend. It was -8* on Friday morning, so I definitely had to layer up. The jacket performed flawlessly. The material is quiet and durable. The only thing that would make this jacket absolutely perfect for me would be pit zips.

The L1 base layers worked well, but are obviously not as warm as the merino wool I have...granted the wool base layers I have are heavier and a more fair comparison might be the L2 base layer. The best news is the L1 stuff didn't stink too bad even after a couple of good hill climbs.


As far as the deer hunt goes. We did find deer in our accidental 4th choice unit, and I managed to get 80 yards or so from a 160" class perfectly typical 4x4. I stalked him to his bed, but when I got there he had gotten up to feed and he spotted me first. Overall a success, as I wasn't really expecting to find many deer, so I was more than happy to just get a chance to make a stalk on a buck of this caliber in this part of NM.