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By David Foster, reprinted from www.GraysSportingJournal.com
© This article is the copyright of Gray's Sporting Journal and should not be copied or used without permission
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"Let me make this very clear," I said to my wife almost a decade ago as she cast a narrowed eye at my new French hunting boots and commented wryly on their cost. "I ain't much into vogue, know what I mean? If I'm wearing it, it's because I want to wear it, not because I want to impress you or anybody else."
Sherry rolled her narrowed eye. "Yeah," she said, "right."
"Hey," I said, perhaps a tad too defensively, "it's one thing to wear stuff because it works and another to wear it because it looks good. I bought these because they work; they're the best there is. Has nothing to do with how they look."
And I meant it. I mean it doesn't much matter what I wear. I'm a somewhat overweight, short-necked, short-waisted, double-chinned, middle-aged man. Clothing does little to improve the impression, so why try to reach for something completely unachievable? Clothing might make most men, but it only keeps this one out of jail, if you know what I mean.
 Over the past 20 or so years, however, the sporting world has gone in for vogue. These days there is stuff to wear for any contingency, whether you're afield or astream, rain or shine, fishing or hunting or something in between. From hats to coats, shirts to pants, boots to underwear-even clothing for dogs-there is something special for everybody and every need.
Take waders, for example. Today many sportsmen seem to have a wader for every purpose: a camo pattern for open-water duck blinds, another for timber, yet another for snow-covered goose fields. Anglers often have breathables for warm days, neoprene for cold days, chest-high for big water and hip-high for small streams. Yet not long ago folks who had waders had only one pair for all needs. The pastor of our church, for example, wore his black chest-high rubber waders for pond drainings, duck hunting and baptisms. My father, who was party to only one baptism, had no waders. Pond drainings he normally attended in bathing trunks, duck hunts with someone else who did have waders, and if nobody had waders or a dog, ducks were retrieved with long sticks or long waits for them to float ashore.
Dad did have an old khaki canvas hunting coat and an old pair of woolen trousers for quail hunting (along with all other kinds of hunting). Over the years the old canvas coat sort of dry-rotted away, but he stayed with it until the very end of his hunting career, looking more like a homeless person than a hunter, especially on those days when he didn't shave. And Dad was a firm believer in hunters not shaving.
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