Not a great picture of it, but this is my favorite vest I have as far as strike dog vests. I don’t have a dedicated catch dog so I can’t comment on that side of things.
This is the Elite strike vest from Southern Cross, I had them enlarge the leg holes a little bit too. I like the leg holes to fit to where you can grab the dogs front paws and stand them up on their back legs (think like they’re stretched out in a full run) and have the vest not bind up their legs at all in the range of motion. This vest is my favorite style on the collar portion as well because of the collar box. It has 100% saved my collars on multiple occasions as evident by a couple of good cuts on the box and around the collar. Dogs don’t seem to get too hot in it either.
I would not use a chin flap because we hunt in swamps and around water so much, and have heard of quite a few incidents where dogs drowned or almost drowned because of water flooding in over the top of that flap and pulling them down. If there was one thing I would change about this vest it is the holes in the straps. The end up getting ragged out over time, and in my opinion need a metal grommet at the holes. At some point I will probably see if I can find someone to add metal grommets on to this vest at the holes, other than that it has held up great. The d ring on the chest is really nice for rigging too.
Great thread Thomas!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
