Just In Time for Duck Hunting Season

I don't generally care for shopping on the internet from large companies, mostly because they inundate you forever after with useless print catalogs. While it is true that I like old and even anachronistic things, print catalogs these days are an inexcusable waste of glossy printed, hard to recycle paper, little better in that regard than supermarket circulars, encyclopediae and phonebooks. Still, I do like to look at them and I curse the way they have of making one want something one doesn't need...but I guess that's the point.

Two such catalogs arrived today from Orvis. Orvis is a strange company to me. Last year, I ordered a Tyrolean hat from them, which I love, and I always thought of them as a sort of upscale L.L.Bean. But I must admit to being largely disappointed in their catalogs. For lack of a better word, most of the stuff is plain old frumpy, stuff for old white guys. And not cool stuff for old white guys, or even stuff brilliant in its goofiness, but just plain old dorky grandpa stuff...mostly. But the supplemental catalog, entitled "The Hunting Book", restored the imagined reputation they had with me.

Guns, fishing gear, and camping bar sets abound. That's more like it...archaic hunting stuff for old white guys. This I can hang with, maybe even find some expensive thing I don't need to pretend I'm going to buy, or even actually buy when it goes on sale, thus insuring a steady stream of these catalogs for years to come. And then I turned the page to discover Manor Tweed Estate Shooting Gear:

I suppose we all knew this kind of thing still existed in England, but amazingly it's available for sale here in the United States, as in, you can really get this stuff, and presumably wear it to go out someplace and kill a duck.

Cap, coat and sports jacket (as in: jacket worn for sport, like hunting), all rendered in real Scottish tweed.  To be worn with:

Breeks, stockings, flashes, tattersall shirts and neckties with embroidered waterfowl. Combined with the wooden case containing a bottle of Talisker and glasses shown a few pages previous, this get-up beats all stylish hell out of blaze orange, camo, and canned beer, theoretically.

As amazing as it may be that such things are available to us, you can rest assured I won't be purchasing any of it. For one thing, I don't shoot waterfowl, for another, it's extremely expensive, even if possibly worth it. Lastly, I can't help but think that hunting in America, the only thing keeping the other hunters from killing the poor bastard who arrives in this get-up for his sheer pansy-ism would be the Scotch. And after that's gone, a fella better run...fast, like a deer. Not to be harsh, but there's a fine line between liking old stuff and living in the past, and this sort of thing, anywhere but England, may be far on the wrong side of that thin line.

Personally, I'll settle for things that merely hint at this lifestyle:

Such as this pair of silly pants, which may just get me killed for sheer pansy-ism yet, acquired this morning for $5.99, hours before the arrival of the catalogs.

Cotton duck (ha-ha) canvas, printed, not embroidered....

A relic from the Brothers (there have been a lot of those lately). Irresistible.

The ever faithful Mr. Lee is altering and cleaning them as we speak, but I'll have them back just in time for duck hunting season.